Falling Skies ‘Mutiny/Eight Hours’ – Review

Season one is now officially over for Falling Skies, after 10 episodes how did they close it out? With a major WTF moment.

Seriously, I pressed stop right at the end, and said in the lonely dark room. “What. The. Fuck.” Yes, it was kinda cool in ways, I’m getting too far ahead of myself here if I just start from the ending, this would be my shortest review yet. Somehow I wish I was good at Haiku though.

Alright, I’ll keep this brief for you slackers that still haven’t watched the episode, yes, its Tuesday night. Yes, I watched it along with the other 5,623,000 viewers (official numbers of total viewers of the finale). It just took me some time to digest it all.

First part of the Finale, we had ‘Mutiny’ and if you watched the previous episode (as you should Weaver seems to pretty much dived off the deep end of sanity, and is ready to just kill them all off in one big fight against the aliens. We get a lot of shots of Weaver looking paranoid and just strung out, standing in ways that just make you uncomfortable watching him for some reason. It’s obvious he’s messed up in the head and he doesn’t like Tom anymore. Probably because Tom lays on the historical references really thick this episode. By thick, I mean more than once, which is already one too many.

One of the other things that annoyed me about this episode was the beginning, of all the people sitting in the big audiorium or gyn, wherever they were, watching old movie reels. Everyone is laughing their asses off. Everyone. To black and white cartoons it looked like. Seriously, it would have been one guy probably chuckling to themselves, not nearly everyone falling out of their seat with gut-busters from old 1950’s cartoons.

Basically, Weaver is a dick, puts Tom in the boiler room for ‘insubordination’. Toms gets broken out by Jimmy the 13 year old resistance fighter. Tom talks Weaver out of not telling anybody the reality of his plan, pretty much end episode.

I’ll have to give the show credit though, the two episodes were practically seamless. Even though it’s split up, I’m having a hard time remembering which part was during what episode. It blended perfectly.

I don’t want to give too much away, but ah, screw it. I’ve spoiled enough already.

Ben apparently is turning into a skitter, that much we’re starting to figure out. Especially when we see that crazy chick again that was dealing with that one group of humans that was trading kids for safety. Her skin is turning all green and scaly. Why do we see her again? Rick is an asshole. He steals a part for the transmitter that old guy and Ben were using to find the frequency that the skitters and aliens use to communicate. Rick spills the beans on everything, and the skitter chick leaves him. All weepy and sad, because the aliens don’t love him. The part I didn’t get, NOW all of a sudden Rick misses his dad and starts crying? Because the aliens don’t love you? Get your shit together kid.

So yeah, they figure out the frequency that keeps the alien skitters and mechs from wanting to attack by jamming the frequency. Yes, currently, our military has technology that can keep jumping frequencies to you know. Keep that from happening, these aliens apparently never thought of that, and use one frequency for everything. So, the humans stop a big Mech assault because they jammed the single frequency that is used for alien combat troops. People celebrate, and Tom wants it hooked up to a car so he can go see how Weaver and the volunteers are doing against their most likely failed assault on the giant platform.

Oh man did Weaver fail.

Now comes the start of my WTF moment. So, because the 2nd Mass is the only group on the entire planet to actually figure out that you can melt down the metal of a mech and turn it into bullets that can be used against them and that the aliens have only one communications frequency to jam and ruin entire battle plans. The aliens appear to pull back EVERY SINGLE TROOP UNIT IN THE AREA to the platform. Not like, just nuke the city from orbit, but pull back everyone. Tom has a rocket launcher that is somehow made by Mech metal too, because Pope is awesome, and made something like 500 mech piercing bullets, 4 bombs, and a mech metal rocket launcher in a span of 12 hours.

Tom asks Weaver so nonchalantly “Can I try?”, Weaver gives him a nod, Tom shoots the rocket at a ship coming to the platform. Hits it, and then the ship explodes into the platform and takes it down. Not bad for a history professor.

That’s not even the WTF moment. THEN, on the way back to the school, we see old whats her face, Hals former girlfriend now harnessed monkey. She tells them that the aliens are curious about how Tom was able to you know, mount a resistance. Since it’s not like the millions of kids and people they’ve been picking for information gave the aliens any indication that humans are well, fighters to the end when it comes to survival. We get some BS about how Ben can be taken back just as easily, even though they discarded Rick like a pile of crap, and he WANTED to go back to being harnessed.

So, what does Tom do? He goes with the weird alien overlord guy, and the chick, onto a ship to go aboard the Mothership or something. What? Why? You fight so hard to protect your sons, get Ben back, and then decide to go have some tea with the aliens because they say that they’ll take Ben back with no proof whatsoever? Maybe next season they just want to have Ben waltzing around the mother-ship, in his underwear and bathrobe giving aliens the shooting fingers as they talk about American History and how they should stop killing off the human race.

I don’t know, it’s like the whole thing that was building up for this season, my complete and utter love for the show was dashed in the final 15 minutes.

Season two better explain shit better, and not start with Tom sitting by the side of the road with a confused look on his face and having no memory of what the aliens did to him. Too bad we have to wait until next summer to find out.