Falling Skies – The ‘sanctuary’ arc reveals much

Beyond weary with 4 1/2 days of Comic-Con loaded in my mind and in my backpack, it’s nice to return to the business of review here on CliqueClack, folks.

And my first assignment is helping out my brother from another mother Ivey with Falling Skies. As with all of us who attend The Con, he needs to reinvigorate himself for the coming week just as much as any of us. *yawn*

There were a few interesting points in this episode. First, if you’ve been living under a rock and have missed the fact Pope is a rogue with an agenda (his own), then you’re sleeping through this series. And that certainly seemed to be the case with some of the members of the 2nd and 3rd Mass. They just don’t seem to catch the clue the dude is wily, conniving, self-absorbed and obstinate. Translation: He’s trouble. But as my partner in crime stated previously he’s one perturbed dude with the potential to be useful beyond his cookery skills. It’s just controlling him that’s at issue. And that’s a big, big problem 2nd Mass doesn’t need to be dealing with at this point.

Another intriguing item is the little nuggets of knowledge thrown at us from Rick. His refusal to eat during dinner … his glazed half question, half statement about not understanding how Ben could eat the food before him … his foggy understanding of how people can kill each other and his telling admission Skitters “would never kill their own.” All these things are setting up some basic knowledge about the alien presence the humans are resisting and I have no doubt his will come into play down the line.

Did we see some humanity peeking out the windows of Weaver’s mind in his willingness to step in and assist in Sarah’s breech birth? That was a refreshing turn for me in his otherwise gnarly demeanor. (Weaver has exhibited some tender sides before, but not quite to the extent he did here.) Nice touch, FS writers.

For me, this episode was filled with a lot of giddy moments to occupy my tired mind, forcing me to stay focused and not miss anything. (Well … mostly. Because I missed something “important” you’ll note below.)

I posed the question way back when whether Falling Skies could set a proper table and deliver for us. Thus far I think it’s doing a pretty spiffy job. Don’t you?

Notes & Quotes

• “First rule of combat is survive.” — Tom
• “We would never kill one of our own. You should understand that.” — Rick to Ben
• The CliqueClack Official Episodes Without Karen Count: I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention on this front and I might have nodded off at a point or two from weariness. Someone help me out here. I might be in big, huge trouble for screwing this up.

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Jul 25, 2011 @ 12:30 EST5EDT