Take Three: Falling Skies

Falling Skies: Season 1, Episode 4 “Grace” (B-)

This episode certainly doesn’t contain nearly as much action as the others so far, mainly because it doesn’t contain any action aside from a bit of excitement infused by a rather aggressive Pope. I do think that the two medical characters are a bit too starkly defined, that Anne is actually trying to think creatively and be nice to it while the uncreative brute Dr. Harris refuses to acknowledge any other course than to provoke it by angering it. The notion that it’s controlling Rick even without the harness on is intriguing, but it’s spelled out quite obviously rather than left up in the air to be figured out more gradually. All I know is that ripping a harness out of a kid’s back like Mike did is definitely not a safe or smart idea. The harness curing Rick’s cystic fibrosis is very interesting as well. There’s an awful lot of science in this episode, and this show could do well to remember the things that made it so intriguing and enthralling in its first initial outings. It seems that Pope is going to be the provider of most of that, blowing up sleeping Skitters since he just can’t stand to see them continuing to live while he could be destroying them. I’m amused by the continued Boston references, which in this episode include laughing off an address in Wellesley as constituting Boston, which apparently makes someone a “617 snob.” The Boston humor is fine, but let’s get this show on the road and back onto the battlefield soon.