Falling Skies Season 3 Episode 6
It’s time to deal with some subplots and make them the primary focus for a bit.
What They Say:
Be Silent and Come Out – Hal reveals his internal struggle while Charleston’s government sees a shift in leadership when a group breaks away on a search and rescue mission.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While there was some decent little nuggets tossed into the previous episode or two, the majority of it was the whole stupid buddy trip event with Tom and Pope moving right along. That was just a low point in the series in general and in this season in particular, which was just starting to move to some big picture things. Where things just got plain weird was the way that Anne started to handle the problem with Alexis and the way she was coming up with all sorts of things that just proved her alien nature, having the two of them head off onto the road themselves definitely was the kind of turn that works within the series but just makes you roll your eyes in general. With Tom back now and finding out what’s going on, he’s on the warpath himself to find out what’s going on and where she is, but it’s splintering things in a big way, particularly since there’s a lot of things going on and some that haven’t surfaced to Tom’s knowledge yet, such as what’s going on with Hal.
That comes blazing into Tom’s face early on here though while he’s trying to get himself moving towards finding his wife and daughter and Hal just comes up along him in the dark, smacks down the vice president hard, and takes Tom for a drive. One that will take him to where Tom wants to go, which is to find Karen and give him the answers that he thinks he wants. This sets off an amusing chain of events since the reveal goes further as Maggie has to reveal what Hal has believed for so long and the fact that she didn’t think it could be true based on her knowledge of him. That puts her in a tough spot in admitting she was basically harboring a spy, but for those like Pope, he just gets intense since he’s lost friends because of what Hal may have revealed. The fun twist comes with how Ben talks about how Hal may not be in control of himself because of his own experience with the spikes and implants, but that’s almost a bit more damning in that way.
With Hal and Tom holed up in a blown out building, there’s some decent father/son tension that’s used here to get things dealt with while the colonel tries to simmer things down on the outside, which is hard when you have Pope in the group. But with the long history the colonel has with the Mason family, it’s no surprise he’s trying to deal with it in a better way than Pope, almost quite logically, suggests, though he overlooks a lot of the ramifications of just taking out both Hal and Tom to get the job done. You do have to laugh in a darkly comical way with how Pope handles it once he’s out of the immediate situation as he heads back to his bar where he starts taking bets on what will happen. There’s a gallows humor that would naturally come from situations like this, but what he does could set off a separate chain of events as well, which we see brewing just a bit since the betting could incite actual action.
The show spends a lot of time going in circles in a way until it can get to the point where some resolutions are actually achieved. There’s a lot of tension until Hal is finally stopped from his insanity, but that kind of insanity is contagious in a way, and seeing just how into it the people at the bar are getting is just driving that narrative more, enough so that Pope starts to become the voice of reason, and a bit of shame, as it goes on. Considering what Hal is being put through, his change in tone is pretty much a good thing since Tom is forcing some seriously twisted things on his son to find out the truth about Anne, Alexis and what’s really going on with Hal himself in the only way that makes sense in this newly screwed up world. While Lourdes is sure that the process will keep him alive and eliminate the threat, there’s always that chance that it won’t. But, sadly, Falling Skies is not a series that will really take chances and will play things safely, removing pretty muhc any real tension that could come of things.
In Summary:
With some of the less interesting aspects of the season dealt with here when it comes to Hal and what he’s been involved in, it causes a radical change with how Tom handles it by effectively resigning so he can go after what he needs to deal with. Tom’s arc has naturally been all over the map and inconsistent and this is no exception. The show has an even darker visual tone this time around than it has before and that just makes the whole thing more oppressive, but not in a way that really serves it well. There’s just not much to root for here and even less to care about, leaving you just watching the people move around trying to do something without any truly clear cut and solid objectives that really engage. While the smaller and more personal stories are what bind us to the characters, the show continues to fall down on the bigger picture after the first episode or two and it’s now back to the low budget approach to get by. Though there are some good possibilities and potential with this series, they continue to be squandered.
Grade: C