FALLING SKIES Delivers a Grace Note
FALLING SKIES
Season 1, episode 4: “Grace”
[all photos: TNT]
This week, we got a little more Pope action, we learned more about the Skitters, and Matt got a job.
WARNING! HERE BE (small) SPOILERS!
So, in last week’s episode – “Prisoner of War” – Pope the criminal became Pope the chef, and Tom & Co. made a raid on the Skitter crew that was holding a group of harnessed kids, managing to rescue Mike’s son Ricky, but losing Karen in the process.
This week, in the aftermath of getting the harness off Ricky, the 2nd Massachusetts is now trying to figure out if they can communicate with their alien prisoner.
Dr. Harris (Steven Weber) and Dr. Glass (Moon Bloodgood) work to figure out if they can communicate with the Skitter captive, while Tom (Noah Wyle) leads a squad to recover more motorcycles for scouts. Reluctantly taking along Pope (Colin Cunningham), the group make it to a cycle dealership. But along the way they discover a “nest” of Skitters, sleeping like bats under a bridge. Pope, of course, wants to make them go “boom”, but Tom’s all about the mission.
Meanwhile, little Matt (Maxim Knight) gets a job helping Uncle Scott (Bruce Gray) monitor a newly-assembled ham radio for Captain Weaver (Will Patton). The radio seems to be reacting to some kind of signal, but they don’t know where it’s coming from.
The Skitter, of course, is still connected with Rick (Daniyah Ysrayl), who tries to put the harness back on. This actually allows the Skitter to communicate with the humans.
Tom and Company get the bikes, and Hal (Drew Roy) gets his moment to tell his dad about the kids that were killed in the raid, an example. Hal was released to take back the message, and Professor Tom recognizes the psychological warfare tactic for what it is.
Pope gets loose, and the squad is surrounded by harnessed kids with automatic weapons. The Skitters are learning. Tom and his people won’t dare fire on the kids they’re trying to rescue.
Over on the other side of the ridge, Pope re-visits the sleeping Skitters, and leaves them a present. (And the production team seem to have gotten right the fact that grenades have four or seven-second fuses, although the grenades Pope uses appear to be M67 frags, which would go off in about 5.)
So this week we learn that the Skitters have some kind of biological radio capability, they can telepathically control the harnessed kids, Hal feels guilty that Karen got snatched, and Pope makes good bread.
Throughout the show, we get glimpses of the episode’s theme: grace. Weaver gets irritated at Tom’s ability to see the silver lining in every cloud. Harris thinks Anne is crazy for wanting to understand the Skitter and communicate with it. And Weaver also seems to feel disdain for Lourdes’ tenacity of faith.
I like that Lourdes isn’t treated as the kook Christian on the show, and the final scene at dinner earns the show some points for treating faith like something real for some people. Hollywood tends to portray Christians as extreme or crazy or misguided, but “Falling Skies” treats Lourdes (and the others who have faith but may not be willing to admit it) like real people with more than one dimension.
“Falling Skies” airs on TNT Sunday at 10p/9p.
