Falling Skies: Season 2, Episode 9 “The Price of Greatness” (C+)
The idea of what’s happening here is terrific stuff, but the execution is still awful. The dialogue is cringe-worthy, and characters like Maggie and Pope are becoming unbearable. I’m thrilled by the introduction of Terry O’Quinn’s Arthur Manchester, who quickly went from a fabulous ally for Tom to an enemy unwilling to consider the possibility of picking a fight for fear of disrupting a peaceful society. What wasn’t quite as coherent was the notion of such an established military system, functioning at an enormously high level and serving lavish portions of food to a horde of Massachusetts wanderers coming in from off the street. It’s such a small world that these characters live in where Tom is always the center of attention, and Weaver manages to get reunited with his daughter, who also gets center stage to debate in a public forum about Manchester’s leadership capabilities. It didn’t take long for Manchester to get unseated, and especially for a slow-moving show, his is one plotline that would have been well-served to be embellished. Now we’re back to square one, which is just about getting cryptic messages from the rebel aliens and inexplicably keeping Pope and his terrible lines in the middle of the action. The fact that Maggie got herself arrested by the wasted military in Charleston was silly, and the number of times that power shifts back to Tom and Weaver is just preposterous. Martial law is always a thrilling cinematic concept, but I suspect that, like much else on this show, the results will prove wildly underwhelming.
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