Lexi has arrived and naturally Tom wants to talk to her
and Weaver backs him despite Pope, very reasonably (argh I hate agreeing with
him), pointing out that the question of
whether or not Lexi is a threat has already been very very very convincingly settled!
Lexi tells her parents that yes she’s sorry and trusting
the genocidal aliens and their mutant factories was actually a bad idea. Tom at
least doesn’t accept her with open arms and points out the attack she was part
of, Lourdes and all the nastiness.
While they talk, Pope argues with Weaver about killing
Lexi. While Tom says how he cannot trust Lexi, not again – Pope fires a rifle
at her. Lexi woo-woo means she just catches the bullet. Still, even though Tom
agrees they have no reason to fear Lexi, he does say they have reason to hate
her – and there’s no place for her there.
Of course, Anne speaks up in favour of Lexi and accepting
her, quite willing to risk an Espheni plot – she wants time to try and promises
to keep her away from the others. Tom adds she needs to keep Lexi away from him
too. Tom does dispatch Weaver to play bodyguard
Tom goes to lecture Pope – but Pope is shaking and half
crying, he can’t face more death – he’s haunted and very much in PTSD from the
devastation of the attack. Tom still declares “my family, my problem”. Um, when
your family kills people and sides with the Espheni genocide aliens then, no,
no no not “your problem.”
The Mason sons also have doubts about their sister the
evil genocide fan, but Tom does not hear the words of others, he is Tom and he
doesn’t not have to listen to such petty concerns of lesser people.
Tom is still going ahead with the mission to the moon.
Cochise begs Tom to wait until he has contacted his father and have him provide
Volm support (though he reveals that he and his dad are at odds over whether
Earth is a lost cause) but since this is a plan that would leave Tom not being
a Big Damn Hero there’s no way that’ll fly.
When Anne gets Lexi alone she at least shows she’s not
entirely on the “yay Lexi camp” and is still very very very suspicious of her
daughter. Lexi has to do a lot of work to regain their trust. She shows off her
super powers which doesn’t really fill Anne with faith; but Lexi is sure her
super powers can help them get the Beamer to the moon to destroy the Espheni
power core. But Anne refuses – Lexi can’t be trusted and can’t stay with them.
Lexi cries and Weaver decides he needs to intervene and call Tom and Anne into
a meeting
Weaver convinces Anne that Lexi’s super powers could
actually be super useful. Tom finally relents after much nagging and every
named character lines up to tell Lexi how awful she is. Hal also slips Tom some
super dangerous Volm poison just in case (hey, I hope the ship with the
anti-volm features doesn’t notice that!)
They get on the ship and fly off, Lexi can use the ship
and we get a few “I don’t trust you” and “oh you do the same thing with your
hair your mother does” just in case we haven’t quite grasped Tom’s conflict.
And there’s a drama- see the crashed
ship is actually damaged (unsurprisingly) and there’s a leak – which won’t
necessarily kill them but will make life support work twice as hard and drain
the power too fast. To survive and not use up so much power they can’t get fly back
to Earth, Lexi has to cocoon them so they can turn off life support.
This means Tom has to let her cocoon him – and let the
horrible gunk enter his lungs. Hey it’s no weirder than any other plan he’s
had. Of course he’s not aware of anything when cocooned. He wakes to Anne and
Hal opening his cocoon declaring everything done; Lexi succeeded, the mission
was complete, they’re back on Earth and the power went down just in time to
foil an Espheni attack.
And if Falling
Skies thinks I’m buying this…
They go to Lexi and she’s changed – no ethereal robes,
she’s wearing denim. And her white blonde hair is black. He Espheni DNA has
been magically purged (yes, the radiation from the power core managed to leave
her without any kind of damage except to Espheni DNA because REASONS). Everything’s
all hopeful and wonderful. Really wonderful. As in completely unbelievably
wonderful.
Hilariously, Tom begins to suspect the truth because
people dared to do awesome things without consulting his awesomeness first!
This cannot be victory if his narcissism isn’t bowed to! Obviously-fake-Anne
calls his doubts PTSD and talks about Kadar. Oops, hallucination has forgotten Kadar
is dead. Or, rather, Lexi doesn’t realise he’s dead.
Tom wanders around a dreamscape now with an accusing
Weaver talking about him giving up on family – unlike what Weaver did.
Dream!Weaver demands he accept Lexi for who she is and a whole lot of people gathering
round to judge Tom for being so MEAN to his evil genocide supporting daughter.
(Nice touch with bringing up mind control after we just had a scene with Lexi
accepting that she wasn’t controlled). Eventually it all evolves into Lexi
being sad that she will never be forgiven and accepted by her family.
So Tom and Lexi have a great big redemption dream and how Tom is wrong that he couldn’t forgive
her and they’ve all made mistakes and this dream proves how guilty she is so he
should forgive her – blargle argle.
Sorry, I am not buying a redemption arc .
Anyway, they wake up on the moon for lots of
father/daughter bonding. And Lexi looking shifty because it looks like they don’t
have the power to get home.
I hate this redemption arc – I hate that it isn’t even an
arc, it’s a freaking hop. It’s not long enou
gh to be an arc. It’s certainly not long enough after she
happily presided over a camp where Espheni mutated humans which she considered
a solution to the war.
Nor that a character is redeemed because Tom has decided
to forgive them. Or even that it’s that easy to just get over it for that matter.
And you can shred and burn the whole idea that because someone feels guilty
they deserve to be forgiven – or because someone fears they won’t be forgiven
then suddenly we have a duty to forgive. No no no, a thousand damn times no;
the guilty party feeling bad is not an automatic trigger for redemption.
And can we throw out this ridiculous “mistake” mantra. And not just for Lexi – Tom as well. Tom hasn’t made many mistakes on this show – he has done wilfully ridiculous things and Lexi’s no better. I’m not buying the “mistake” cop out for people doing obviously foolish or outright evil things that were obviously so at the time. That’s not a “mistake” at best it’s inexcusable recklessness.
I’m also severely tired of Tom’s endless “what I say
goes, everyone listen to me, I’m te important one, all about me” which still
hasn’t been addressed.
