4.9 Till Death Do Us Part That kicks off a pretty good firefight between Tom and the gang and the evil Nazi summer camp counselors, in which Tom finally toughs up and shoots some kids, albeit kids who were actively trying to kill them. That’s all well and good, and after shooting a half-dozen teenagers in masks, Tom and company are alive, but sans the concussion grenades they need to make Tom’s latest crazy plan work: The Second Mass is going to the moon! That’s right, apparently the Espheni power plant is hidden somewhere on the surface of the moon, and Tom wants to travel up there to find it and blow it up in true Tom Mason fashion. I have to give a lot of credit to both Noah Wyle and Doug Jones for pulling this off. It’s probably pretty difficult for Doug Jones to make an incredulous expression behind whatever alien gear they put on his face to help make him look like a Volm, but when Tom starts talking about going to the moon and Noah Wylie starts talking in his best Kennedy impression, I can’t help but laugh. It’s the right touch of both goofy and completely in character—Tom Mason has more than enough kids and more than enough nerd to make such a Kennedy comparison and to ask to finish the speech off when interrupted—and it helps re-establish that, at his core, Tom is still kind of a goofball. It’s a fun moment of levity on a show that has lately been too busy plucking at heartstrings or staging explosions to have any real fun (see also Maggie accidentally hurling a chunk of rebar across the camp and nearly smashing Sarah). Despite the emotional stuff falling a little flat, the action works very well this week. Greg Beeman is a solid action director, and both the traditional Falling Skies walk-and-talks and the various gun fights both look great this week, particularly the combat scenes. Maggie and Ben working together to explore their powers, and their lust for one another, worked well too. It was a fun little break, even if it ended in the expected way. The footage of the beamer rising from the rubble was a very impressive shot, and good use of the special effects. If Falling Skies does go to the moon to some sort of Espheni moon base, I think all this will be worth it. I’d love to see some of the special effects budget go to building a giant bio-mechanical moon base akin to the flesh-like engineering that powers the beamers and the other alien technology, kind of like a Giger-style nightmare. If they were willing to spend the money and willing to get creative with the alien base, and it seems like they are with the way they’ve been showing bits and pieces of Espheni tech over the years, I’m definitely interested in seeing it. The show can be very creative when it wants to be, it just tends to focus on alien stuff and less on getting creative with its earthlings. US Correspondent Ron Hogan crawled out of an alien birthing pod, flew his bio-mechanical beamer, and settled in to write this review on a keyboard made of bone fragments and gooey flesh bits. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
