Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Falling Skies, Season 5, Episode 2: Hunger Pains



We have more rabid, feral skitters running around fighting and eating each other and completely shredding every pretence of canon this show has ever had. Now a horde of feral skitters is trying to attack the human base. Firefight time and, for some damn reason, Anthiny almost climbs over the barricade to fight them in close combat (SERIOUSLY?!) This is a belated attempt to make someone care for Denny (did Anthony even speak to Denny before this?)

In the fight they lose all their food supplies which they decided to store in one place. Next to some explosives. Of course they do.

A quick strategy meeting confirms that all the militia groups (which randomly appeared last week) are all facing lots of resistance and feral Skitters, the odd annoying Overlord and a complete break down of anything resembling canon or coherence.

They need more supplies which means they need transport – which they don’t have which has Tom yelling at Weaver for not being able to pull working cars out of thin air. Tom focuses on what he wants to do while Weaver focuses on what they have and need.

Meanwhile Anne has find an insect which bit Tom which they suspect is an evil Espheni bug. Tom continues to ask for things they don’t have and throws in a hallucination of his dead wife for good measure who informs him people need to eat. Well, that’s helpful.

We move forwards 8 days where everyone is still disposing of skitter bodies (and skitter attacks are happening constantly) and all exhausted. Dingaan is also trying to reverse engineer Espheni technology to create a weapon which Tom is pushing for (and demanding miracles). We’re also introduced to Evelyn who tries to make friends with Mat and is the next step in Denny’s T-dog chain. Matt doesn’t trust her so she’s clearly Matt’s love interest. She’s also used to exposition Matt’s angst because he’s afraid to make any friends because everyone is going to die. Dingaan decides to tell him about fishing for some reason but the end line seems to be “take a chance.”

Food is desperately rationed and people are very hungry. Pope and Sara decide to cook skitter. Random extra eats it and, unsurprisingly, dies. REALLY horribly. Skitters are not edible (creatures evolved on a different planet are not a good food source).

Tom doesn’t actually blame it on Pope even though it’s actually his fault.

Evelyn ends up in the medical bay as one of those suffering from hunger-related lurginess. Matt denies being her friend. Definitely love interest. Tom continues to tell Anne about the message from his hallucinations, she seems to be ok with that and wants to discuss having another baby.


So time for a supply run – Pope, Sara, Maggie and Ben, moving through tunnels to a hopeful stash. And Anthony and a group of friends have taken to bating skitters to death for fun. Tom watches and is ok with this – Weaver, not so much because it’s a damn waste of time and energy. Weaver tries to talk to tom about this but he’s all “yay, rage is wonderful!” even though Weaver points out that going berserker is terrible tactically.

Tom is all pouty and silent treatment with Weaver for not following his mindless rage-because-hallucinations-tell-me-too.

On the supply run they do find food. Including “ding-dongs” which I assume are American snack food. Pope decides it’s time to talk to Ben about the love triangle – and so does Sara. Oh gods do not do this. Please, I’ll accept at least 3 other alien species and 9 nonsensical plot twists without a single word of complaint if you’ll just drop this. Please.

Thankfully, the spikes light up and a human woman holds them at gun point. She’s protecting her people’s food and she’s locked them in with her brother – who is an espheni mutated thing and she’s convinced she can bring him back. The girl is Caitlin and Maggie offers them the chance to change Brian back (which they can’t do – but hey who knows what random plot point will happen next week?).

It convinces Caitlin and they manage to drive back in a truck load of supplies in the middle of a huge skitter attack. Just as Dingaan manages to get his new toy working – a remote controlled super bomb that wastes skitters but doesn’t even scratch the truck. What, you expect me to snark this? This is Falling Skies a skitter-attuned bomb barely even causes a ripple.

So they have lots of good – oh and Caitlin’s boxed up Brian. Before we can debate this, Hal faints (all these people are fainting from hunger but there’s been no attempt to make them look think and hungry)

He survives which means he and Maggie can have more romance moments.

Anne points out to Ben that there’s really nothing they can do for Brian. And Ben gets to tell Caitlin.

Pope and Sara are romantic

Matt cobbles together a microscope for Anne and he and Evelyn begin their oh-so-predictable romance train. The insect is confirmed to be a nasty mutant thing – with human eyes. Oh and it’s not dead.

All the skitter attacks have stopped, allowing Anne and tom to follow the fly to where there’s a huge mass of skitters and skitter creatures.




Anthony has been fighting this war from the beginning. He has been on most of the battlefields. He was a cop before the dystopia hit. Yet without Tom he’d just throw himself over the barricade to be slaughtered? What the hell is this? So not only is Denny killed off without thinking but she it looks like we’re getting both a T-dog chain and her death being used to turn Anthony into an Angry Black Man who is completely out of control.

Why is Tom still in control? Why are people putting up with him? Why does Anne accept their leader is hallucinating his dead wife and seems quite ok with this?

I just have to marvel how NOT SUBTLE we are about Evelyn being Matt’s love interest. He’s seen her exactly once and both Dingaan and Anne are already linking them together.


The whole starvation thing seemed to have involved zero effort to actually see it through or actually portray starvation – we just have all of these apparently healthy, well fed people collapsing and saying how hungry they are.