Tom wakes up to find he is being tended by a strange
woman who is surprisingly well dressed for a dystopia, in a room that looks
like the aliens never invaded, with kids playing outside and an older man,
similarly well dressed with a gun
The gun is because Tom decided to respond with violence
and a knife to medical care. The old man, William, has treated his injuries
and, because of that, Tom now can’t go anywhere until he’s healed. He declares
his home a safe place where there is no war and no fighting. Which sounds
ominous given the dystopia, aliens and all.
It’s all very creepily twee complete with saying grace
and no food shortages at all. Faced with the normality of it all, Tom collapses
into tears (I can get this is a major emotional moment seeing everything he has
lost, but personally I think it would be more appropriate to yell “alien
collaborator’s/clones/pod people!”)
Apparently Willie just stocked a whole lot and has a
decent farm and has just kept his head down and the whole war has just passed
them by. The kids don’t even know the war is happening because YAY DENIAL! That
includes the 15 year old. Tom declares it not to be his business right before
passive aggressively judging the hell out of them. He calls out Alicia for
basically raising her kids to be so sheltered that when the war eventually
reaches them they’ll have no chance. Of course she angrily declares that she
doesn’t need advice on how to let everyone else do the fighting while she lives
in denial land and raises kids to be complete victims because she can’t face
reality, of course she does
Which then leads to Tom going snooping (despite hardly
being able to walk) and catching the 15 year old Kyle drinking and smoking
*gasp* (what they stockpiled booze as well? And cigarettes?) Kyle realises
something off is happening
Later Alicia is happy to recruit Tom to teach her kids
now-completely-irrelevant history but then Kyle goes missing trying to find out
the truth. Tom finds him by the ruin of a mech and, of course, tells hi, all.
Did anyone, for one second, think Tom wasn’t going to tell this kid the truth?
Kyle demands to be a soldier and returns home to pout and
tantrum and Alicia, of course, asking Tom’s advice. She agrees to let him take
Kyle back to the 2nd Mass to fight. And she kisses him.
Over to Hal who is still with Isabella and they share
stories of their history teacher dads and her dad being a diplomat and how, in
war they have to do naughty bad things. And they kiss – so this is how the love
triangle will be resolved – a random love interest dropped in! Hey it took Hal,
what, 3 days to move on from Maggie?
Anyway they arrive at the sanctuary (SERIOUSLY? Two
Masons just stumbled upon this damn place!) They decide to go back to the war.
About damn time. But they decide to leave Kyle behind for reasons I don’t even
slightly care about but chose to interpret as “we don’t need dead weight.”
Weaver is still leading the rest of the
troops/people/whatever to DC, stopping on the way. Anne tells Maggie and Ben
what has happened with Hal, Pope and Tom and they naturally want to run to the
rescue but Anne, alone among them all, keeps her eyes on the goal. Whatever
they face in DC, she needs the spikey ones. Also Tom is defending by epic
amounts of plot armour so why should she worry?
Maggie also wants rid of her spikes because love triangle
even though it may kill her. Anne would rather not perform surgery when on the
way to a secret mission and when basically camping but Maggies takes this as “you
just want me for my spikes”. Please strangle everyone on this show. At least
when Anne says “oh hell no” Maggie walks it back and instead makes a plea for
her own independence rather than have spikes control her.
When Anne refuses again Maggie snaps art Ben and Cochise volunteers to poke around in the body of a species he knows little about! After all, Anne did it to him! He performs the operation and it all goes wrong and Anne has to come and finish it up with tweezers (Cochise couldn’t have done that). Maggie is now de-spiked.
Weaver also has a personal servant in the guy they
rescued last week, Marty, who is now hanging around like a bad smell or another
pointless side plot. He does find some glowy Espheni-stuff. It’s a
communication hub thingy – presumably something that connects the glowing
rocks.
When Weaver touches it he can almost listen in to the
Overlord communication but he gets a migraine for it.
Maggie does seem to make a recovery – and is able to
walk. But Anne is not amused by amateur surgery hour. Ben is also not happy she
didn’t tell him - he views it as him giving part of himself to her which she
just threw away. And he’s super sad because he loves her
The Masons return to the 2nd Mass with much
hugging between Maggie and Hal (Isabella looking on and being super awkward)
Can we PLEASE focus on the alien invasion. PLEASE for all
that is sensible, please! But no we have the silly sanctuary and Maggie and her
spikes and Marty and Hal and Isabella WHYYYYYYYYYYY?! The war can someone
please focus on the war?! Humanity dying! Can someone care!
Even worse it completely makes Pope right. He complained that Tom let Sarah die because he was focused on the war but that would never happen if it were a Mason in danger – and this proves it. After all this “we’ve got to act quickly!” we have spent THREE EPISODES on Mason drama with the war hardly being touched on.
I know Tom’s sanctuary is supposed to bring up all the
contrasts and debates of how to live and maybe, just maybe, it would have
worked in season 1. But after 5 seasons of aliens, air strikes, feral skitters
and who knows what else I cannot cannot cannot believe this place is this damn
untouched (supplies? Really?) and Tom stumbles on it. Any debate about this is also past the point
of ridiculous – it would be impossible to maintain this delusion (how do you
tell 21st century kids that ALL infrastructure is down, all
communication but it’s totally fine?!), impossible for them to be unscathed and
the sheer ridiculousness of it makes Alicia crying out for a normal life not
only seem selfish and whiny, but even comical.
Also, the last time we saw a sanctuary like this it was
because of Lexi, the evil alien daughter. Yet not once, not for one millisecond,
does Tom worry about this mysterious safe place.
I would actually like to see a development of Ben and his
spikes – viewing them as part of himself and something he gave up as an almost
sacrifice to Maggie. Except this may only be seen through the lens of love
interest
