3.6 Be Silent and Come Out What starts out as a chase through Charleston becomes a siege situation, with Hal and Tom holed up in an old building and various interests – Tector, Pope, Weaver, the other Masons, Maggie -trying to get Hal to not shoot the President of the New United States. Some folks pick negotiations; other folks try to simply pump Hal full of lead and leave him to his fate. You can pretty much tell who is who in this debate, and if you missed last week’s episode where they tried to repeatedly kill one another, Pope is generally the ‘shoot first and not ask questions later’ guy in the camp. Bad Hal is both good and bad in terms of a performance from Drew Roy. In some scenes, particularly where Bad Hal gets to beg for his life, thrash around while tied down, or otherwise is given to trying to both wheedle and rage to get his way, Roy’s quite good. It’s not always easy to sell pain, but he does a great job of getting that across in his performance. However, he’s not quite as good as the megalomaniac villain. He’s a little too over the top (or maybe he’s just trying to do his Jessy Schram impression as he’s obviously under Karen’s control). He’s better at conflicted or manipulative, not so much at straight-up evil. The script turned out to be much stronger for other members of the ensemble cast, especially Weaver and Pope. Weaver gets one of his best moments of the season, and it takes place in Popetown under the watchful eye of the Berzerkers. Literally, when Weaver walks into the scene, every extra turns to stare at him as he parts the crowd like the Red Sea on his way to get a drink. It’s really well done, and Will Patton crushes it (better than some of his dialogue this week). He’s a good non-verbal actor anyway, but he puts in some great character work simply with how he holds himself while walking through the crowd or when drinking his whiskey. Popetown has become the most interesting setting in Falling Skies. The bar seems to be the centre of the actions, and it’s the place to be if you want a drink, rock and roll, gambling, and to watch Colin Cunningham channel Al Swearingen crossed with a carnival barker smeared with Greek chorus. Even when Pope gets to lampshade the audience or provide exposition, he gets cool exposition and a funny meta comment to make. It’s pretty clear that the writers (Bradley Thompson, David Weddle, and John Wirth) enjoy writing for Pope, and can you blame them? Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Search and Recover, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan would give Popetown a good grade on Yelp for entertainment purposes. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Please, if you can, support our charity horror stories ebook, Den Of Eek!, raising money for Geeks Vs Cancer. Details here.
