*There be aliens and spoilers aplenty ahead!*
Falling Skies may have belatedly embraced its inner apocalyptic child this season but that didn’t stop it from coming over all Maria von Trapp (Julie Andrews) this week in 4th episode “Evolve or Die”.
Or should that be all Rolfe the messenger boy?
Granted thoughts of an overly earnest, if well-meaning and spirited, singing nun with a penchant for making clothes from ugly curtains and singing atop mountains, may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you’re watching a show about the beleaguered remnants of humanity fighting to reclaim Earth from capricious and cruel alien invaders but obvious invasion comparisons aside, I couldn’t help but thinking about the 1965 musical every single damn time team leader Kent Matthews (Dakota Daulby) came into view.
Here is a man who, apart from possessing an iron of exceptionally crease-erasing capabilities, embodied Rolfe the turncoat messenger boy like no one else, a young man who embraced the Nazi occupation of Austria with nary a hesitation, his eyes only on what it could mean for him, and not on the truth staring him right in the face.
Similarly team leader Kent, who kept repeating to Matt Mason (Maxim Knight) that he saw “potential” in him like it was some sort of weird new mantra from what Weaver fittingly referred to as “the Hitler Youth playbook”, had swallowed the party line that the Espheni were the unwitting victims of the piece, galactic do-gooders from the twinkly far reaches of space who instead of being welcomed with open arms by a grateful humanity, were instead attacked without provocation or remorse.
Matt, held in isolation in a cell, and repeatedly threatened by his team leader who it must be said needs to work on his anger management issues, finally called him on his uncritical and wholehearted ignorance of the truth on the ground, asking him how he could have turned on his own race, becoming a collaborator in charge of creating yet more legions of whistle-blowing collaborators?
Kent as you can imagine did not take to kindly to being served the home grown, unvarnished truth with a bristling teenage side order of “f**k you!” and was about to choke some repentance out of Matt when in burst Tom Mason (Noah Wylie), closely followed by Matt’s situational girlfriend Mira (Desiree Ross) and showed Kent how its actually done.
Quite apart from seeing one of the most coldly obnoxious villains of the season get his comeuppance, it was actually touching to see Tom and Matt embrace, a rare Spielberg-ian family moment in a season that has rather refreshingly cut down on their intensity, sentimentality and frequency in favour of the sort of creepy totalitarian mind games that so effectively came to the fore tonight (even if they yielded suspect, and for Kent, head-thumping, results).
The Rescue of Matt Mason, playing for one week only – idea by Cochise, execution by Tom Mason and Captain Weaver (Will Patton), was notable for a number of things.
The chilling mass blowing of the tin whistles by all the kids in the dorm when Tom burst in looking for Matt was chilling in the extreme, a clear sign that whatever the longterm viability of the Espheni’s brainwashing techniques that were working just fine thank you very much in the here and now.
There was no doubting whose side these kids were now on, nor later on, how committed they are to conforming humanity to not just their will but their own image, or at least the one they want us to have, when Captain Weaver finally came face to face with the creatures shadowing him, only to find that one of them was his daughter Jeanne (Laci J Mailey) transformed into what he rightly termed an “abomination”.
Clear evidence that Tom had been on the money about the Skitter-ising of humanity, these scaly biped creatures’ only resemblance to their home sapiens baseline DNA was the fact that somewhere in the midst of all the encrusted skin, black blood and heavy brows beat the heart of Weaver’s daughter, a dynamic so strong it overrode her service to the Espheni in favour of saving her dad’s life.
And she died doing it, which naturally broke her dad’s heart but in the process gave Weaver and Tom some hope that however cosmetically challenged these monsters may be, that somewhere deep inside a kernel of humanity survived, a fatal flaw in the Espheni’s grand master plan (which frankly keeps changing with such frequency that god help the underlings who miss a memo or two).
While Tom and Matt, and Weaver and Jeanne played happy families and not so happy families respectively, and Cochise got beat up yet again in the service of humanity (he’s got to be wondering what kind of planet he’s helping to save honestly), Anne (Moon Bloodgood) was grappling with a creepy family dynamic of a whole other kind over at the Compound of Peace, Love and Hidden Espheni Dressed as Monks.
Like Ben (Connor Jessup) before her, Anne had a hard time getting her head and heart around the idea that Lexi (Scarlett Byrne) was her little girl of old.
And an even harder time dealing with her mercurial temperament, her kinetic energy, storm-summoning tantrums that frankly make the efforts of most two year olds look rather lacklustre and lacking in dummy-spitting commitment.
What truly left her reeling though was Lexi’s burgeoning friendship with the hooded Espheni overlord, the one, it turned out, who had played genetic Doctors and Nurses with Anne and her child, the Josef Mengle of the invading alien set, another well-chosen and well-used Third reich allusion in a season swarming with them.
As you might well understand, a clearly rattled and angry Anne didn’t really want to sit down and be served a heapin’ helpin’ steamin’ plateful of lies by the Espheni overlord, who after taking over Ben as a mouthpiece (and releasing him) was found to be lying his ever-loving fishface off like there was no tomorrow and taken into custody.
Lexi, of course, who reacts to pretty much everything with passive-aggressive behaviour on a monumentally large scale, was none too happy about this, feeling like her control had been usurped which, um, yes in fact it had been.
Deal it with young lady.
But as with all things Espheni, who never met a conniving ploy they didn’t like, invite in to dinner and make one of the family, there is way more going on that anyone realised, something we were made privy to by a conversation between Lexi’s Espheni “friend” and another overlord called Geminus, who met in an appropriately virtual hell-like setting with darkness and brilliant flaming fires.
It gave us a rare insight into what the Espheni are thinking from their point of view, and was notable for demonstrating how they can fashion a glowing, quite powerful communication device just by scooping up some dirt and crushing it still it becomes a diamond-like stone.
(If there was still any semblance of old time civilisation left, this would be a gift from the gods to prospective brides; alas now all it gives them is a chance for an otherworldly conversation with an Espheni overlord, none of whom seem to like each other very much. PASS)
It’s value lay not so much in what they said – they confirmed that Lexi is close to “transforming” into something and that she is, as suspected, a puppet of the Espheni – but in the sense that Falling Skies is developing into a much richer, nuanced show that isn’t just showing things from the survivors’ point of view but from the invaders also, a dynamic that likely comes from new showrunner David Eick’s time on Battlestar Galactica, which gave just as much time to the Cylons as to the humans.
And finally while Tom was off saving Matt, Hal (Drew Roy) with the help of Tector (Ryan Robbins) and Dingaan (Treva Etienne) , whose funky shortwave radio picked up Lourdes’ (Seychelle Gabriel) broadcast to anyone listening that they are offering a safe place to all comers (don’t believe it – looks at The Walking Dead‘s Terminus trap!), was taking on the mantle of leadership.
It didn’t sit easily at first with Pope (Colin Cunningham) openly defying Hal when he forbade the notorious lone operator from going out to get fuel at a nearby organic farm – he ended getting the fuel and after a near run-in with a bold as brass, loads of fun, ex-graphics designer Sara (Mira Sovino) who is his equal and more in the sassy stakes, a possible partner worthy of Cunningham’s scene-stealing brio – and the Volm pressuring him to leave the safe sanctuary they’d found with the Espheni closing in.
The fate of all the ghetto escapees lay with Hal, and after some sage advice from Dingaan, Hal stepped up to the plate – well Dingaan’s advice didn’t take the form of a sporting metaphor so a sports reference is quite appropos – he had the confidence to move on out, after leaving Tom, Matt and Weaver a cryptic clue as to their intended whereabouts. (Hint they’re off to join Lexi’s weird little cult/education camp in disguise which should largely have the 2nd Mass. back together.)
It was a well-executed set of scenes that showed Hal, who is finally stepping out from his father’s shadow, exercising some of the leadership skills his dad has been rightly saying he possesses, while underscoring once again that leaving the ghetto could be a case out of the Espheni frying pan into their ever-changing fire.
All in all, “Evolve or Die” while not as spectacular as “Exodus” nonetheless had some lovely characters gems, some creepy scenes that underscored how devious and ruthless the Espheni really are, and some insight into the invaders’ view of the universe, along with the new darker, grittier edge that is suiting Falling Skies so well in season 4.
Behold the promo for the next episode “Mind Wars” …