Falling Skies Recap: “Badlands”

by Merrill Barr:

Falling Skies Recap: “Badlands”
Original Air Date (TNT): June 16, 2013
Season 3 Episode 3

When an event occurs that leads to a massive loss of life we’re all affected in different ways, but unless one of the lost lives is someone you know, the grief comes with a sense of detachment. Something Falling Skies has never done well is explore the effect death has not on the collective, but on the individual. They tried and failed last season with the death of Jimmy which, while fine for the sake of plot development, didn’t have much impact, so when it became clear the writers were going to try again, this time with a character even less known to the audience, there was cause for concern… and apparently that concern was misguided.

Where the writers succeeded with the death of Crazy Lee is in its prolonged execution. Jimmy’s death in season two was very quick and came with more of a shock value effect; by the time we learned he was dead, we didn’t care. However Crazy Lee’s death moved more like a high octane roller coaster: she’s been shot, but the bullet hit her vest, but she fell on some rebar, but they have a saw, but the rebar went through her head, but they got her back to home base, but there’s nothing the doctors can do… just when you think she’s gonna be fine, another complication popped up that eventually cemented the fact that she wasn’t going to survive.

As we watch her death ripple through The Berserkers, we become more invested in the loss of life on a personal level, and by the time Pope’s tearful goodbye to Lee comes around we’re so invested in her character’s suffering that it didn’t matter we haven’t learned much about her over the last one and a quarter season. Falling Skies, for the first time, forced us to look at war time death and understand its repercussions… understand that the soldiers fighting aren’t brainless robots, they are indeed people.

Then of course there’s the attack that led to Lee’s death in the first place, an attack at the hands of a new group of humans, a group of human supposedly under the command someone whose name we’ve never known till now, the former (or current) President of The United States, Benjamin Hathaway. How Hathaway’s team discovered the existence of The Second Mass’ home base in the first place might forever remain a mystery, but this encounter of Tom and the President is one I’m truly looking forward too, especially if at some point during it we get the classic “I didn’t vote for you” line.

Of course you can’t bring up one Mason without talking about at least two more, the first of which being Anne who now has a new dilemma… getting people to believe her about the new baby. Of course there’s a new question to be raised, should we believe her? Should we believe what we’re seeing is the truth, or could it be her psychosis (possibly caused by Karen) at work? And speaking of Karen brings us to Hal who was one lack of a girlfriend away from revealing everything about his mind control to the Second Mass leadership. Clearly he’s aware he’s been under the control of Karen for a while now, and because of this, he believes he’s the mole. I of course pose the same question I posed last week, if he is the mole then why was his identity kept secret to the audience when Manchester was murdered?

None of this mattered by the end however when the Espheni attack we were warned about in the season premiere seems to be coming to a head.

I’m glad episodes of Falling Skies are finally starting to move, and plot is actually being evolved with every new episode. But I’m also glad the writers were finally able to strike a balance between personal, deeper moments in the midst of all the plot evolution, if they keep this up then there’s no doubt season three will go down as the show’s finest.