Time for the last season of Falling Skies, get your dice – it’s time for a random story
generator (it’s not like this show tries to be coherent with its storytelling.
At least the characters having absolutely no characterisation means they can do
just about anything
And last season Tom found a new alien! Because all the
aliens in the galaxy want to gather on Earth. The aliens greet Tom with talk of
peace and his dead wife. A whole hallucination world of Earth being all good
and none destroyed. How many times has Tom been in these dream worlds. His
hallucination wife is talking about breast cancer as a not very subtle analogy
for the Espheni. It’s all about him getting angry and “finding his warrior”.
Then flooding him with water because he probably hasn’t bathed in a while.
On Earth Anne has taken over with Tom missing presumed
ridiculously stupid (he’s gone on another alien spaceship! He has a habit of that).
She has a speech for the crowd telling
them all that Tom and Lexi are dead (yay – oh wait, that’s the bad news). But
the Espheni did lose their power core and a whole load of their ships left
Earth for reasons unknown. She’s sure this means they’re winning (Pope speaks
up in support since he flipped his character coin and he’s a good guy today).
There’s a brief nod that Lexi was terribad evil but she’s dead now so we don’t
have to care any more.
Weaver has his people shore up their defences though Hal
wants to go on the offensive.
Alas, Tom isn’t dead and drags himself to the shore. Lexi
is still dead because the half-alien magic child is just too ridiculous to
continue when you’ve got a whole new load of ridiculousness to bring on. He
kills a skitter with an improvised weapon as proof he has “found his warrior”. He
has a moment of being all kind of shocked that he did this despite the fact
that killing Skitters has been what they’ve been doing since the first season.
He returns to camp where he runs into Pope – and Pope rambles on but tom won’t
even speak to him
Instead he goes to shock Anne who is sleeping. After a
reunion Anne does a health check on him and asks how he got home. He doesn’t
tell her instead randomly objecting to her necklace and telling them about his
weird memory hallucination and how it was a good thing and how the memory
invaders totally knew him really well. Anne decides he’s just hallucinating and
it’s totally not due to alien mind control (it’s not like that hasn’t happened
before, right?)
Tom tells the whole crowd how it’s all good even if it is
just a little freaky (hey let’s acknowledge that it’s freaky because then we
don’t actually have to do anything about it) – oh and Lexi’s dead – and this is
why they all need to be super angry because they’re just all not mad enough and
he brandishes a skitter head at everyone because showing dead corpse parts is
inspirational. Weaver looks Troubled.
Battle planning between Weaver Tom and Cochise and Weaver
wants to hit their machines before they get power back but the Volm are still
all limited for REASONS. He can spy though and tell them of some local mechs
and beamers around them. Tom wants to surge out like a berserker while Weaver
wants to be more cautious. But Chochise casually drops in if they handle their
area, other human militias around the world will handle their areas
Yes, there are numerous small armies of humans all around
the world that the Volm have been in contact with who they never mentioned
before because REASONS. Oh this show, this terrible terrible show. 317 of them,
all disorganised who need one special leader (one of them even based in
Tucson). They also discuss how there are 500 Overlords worldwide – and many of
them may have died when the power went down (I think – this important
conversation is a vague talking scene before the MUSH MORE IMPORTANT debate on
whether Matt gets to go to battle – what was there a time when they weren’t
taking kids to battle?). Of course Tom agrees and Anne is shocked and appalled
despite, y’know kiddy combat being standard.
Ben, Hal and Maggie continue their awkward love triangle
because we really need this awful plot line to keep going.
Out in the field Hal & co spot some Skitters without
an Overlord which apparently makes them chaotic and… animalistic? Even cannibalistic?
Y’know these creatures who, several seasons ago, were intelligent beings
running their own rebellion? Does anyone remember this? Does anyone care? Are
old scripts just turned into paper planes and thrown out the window by writers
making zoomy noises?
Weaver’s team faces off against mechs without enough
power to actually fight.
Tom’s team, however, is attacked by Skitters (and Anne
has developed 8 levels of badass even while talking pleasantly to the skitters
she kills to let them die) but they’re saved with Tex taking the awesome shot
and saving them.
Anne explains her getting cosy with the Skitter by saying
she doesn’t want to get “lost in rage.” Have we got the themes of the season
suitably established yet?
Because the skitters set a trap for Tom that means there
most be an Overlord nearby because Skitters (who did most of the fighting for
two seasons, who organised their own rebellion) are incapable of planning
without an Overlord close by (that would be one of those 500 on the entire
planet who always has to be close whenever Skitters act. Apparently. More zoomy
noises from the writers). Cochise tries to convince Tom that he needs to let
people rest but no, because Rage! War!
And update- not only do skitters need an Overlord nearby
but he has to be within 5 miles! (Old scripts are now being used as toilet
paper, never mind airplanes). Also Tom is now making battle plans based on the hunches
from his hallucination dream and insists everyone agrees with this. Sure Anne
and others are concerned but he just runs over them – how can they reasonably
ignore his hallucinations! They’re important, damn it!
So they attack Tom’s target and end up in a battle with a
horde of skitters – and Denny is killed off almost as an afterthought
In the midst of all the fighting and dying, Tom is left
alone (he was surrounded 10 seconds ago) to hallucinate and be led to the
Overlord – only to find him connected to Ben to communicate. Tom shoots the
Overlord in the head – not caring much about Ben’s headache. I’m pretty sure in
previous seasons “a minor headache” was not the consequence of killing someone
when they were connected to a harnessed kid – I’m sure we’ve seen Ben beaten
and bruised and Denny nearly die from that. Let’s take another moment to pity
the poor, abused cannon.
At Denny’s funeral, Tom gets bitten by a fly. This is
significant. Apparently.
This show isn’t even trying any more. Lexi was a
completely terrible storyline that made no sense, so they just drop her and the
whole woo-woo powers has just disappeared and no-one’s even going to consider
it.
Tom gets home and he is acting strangely – well no-one is
going to be suspicious of this man who was with the mind control aliens! Why
should they be?! It’s not like he has been mind controlled before? Or they had
a whole season of mind controlled shenanigans?! Oh common sense you don’t
belong on this show!
Of course, Tom acting strangely is probably missed
because he ALWAYS DOES. He has constantly made random decision that made no
sense (like getting on an alien space ship) simply because that is how the plot
moves on this show. There’s no development or progression – plot lines advance
because of unbelievable character decisions and/or random unexplained world
stuff. Like, say, there been lots of human militias they just DIDN’T MENTION
BEFORE! Or suddenly mindless skitters! Or Overlords needing to be within 5
miles despite us only seeing, what, 4 in the entire series? HOW DID THE EVEN
CONQUER THE US LIKE THIS!? Their generals have to be within 5 miles of all
their troops or their troops literally EAT each other. This all came from
NOWHERE and it’s not just dubious revelations, the previous seasons literally
would not work if these retcons were true.
And Tom’s hallucinations? How much of a dictator has he become that he can force this through? “we’re going there because hallucination possibly implanted by aliens” and he can’t just be overruled? In fact, he just says “this is where we’re going” and LEAVES THE ROOM? That’s not just him having ridiculous power but him also having zero respect for anyone in that room – they’re all expected to just go along with his hallucination dream.
Tom was actually better when he was second in command
(though still terrible) at least then he had to pretend to convince people
then.
And of course Denny had to be killed off – she was an
inconvenient Black girl whose only characterisation so far was possible love
interest for Ben – when the random storyline dice were rolled and came up love
triangle she had to be killed off to get out the way of the white love triangle.
This show
has too bad a history for me to be surprised
by this terribleness.
This show has been getting steadily more terrible. This
season doesn’t look like it’s going to change the pattern. I’m actually
impressed – in one episode they’ve hacked more plot holes into their show than
most can manage in an entire season.
