The 2nd mass has been on the road heading back to Charleston hoping to reassemble its life after the events of last season. As a reminder, the 2nd mass used the help of the Volm to destroy the Espheni grid only to find that the Volm mothership wanted to relocate all of them to Brazil against their will. After some convincing Tom convinced Cochises father to let them go on their own. While on the road, Karen comes with a white flag talking about not trusting the Volm and that Tom doesn’t know everything about Lexi and Anne that he should. But before Karen could do any more harm (or good?) Maggie shoots and kills her.
Season 4 starts 22 days after the end of last season as the 2nd mass makes its way back to Charleston and safety. However, things are not so simple, as the Espheni attack heavy and hard with new weapons never before seen. Just before the attack Lexi makes an ominous comment that they don’t all have to die there. The Espheni beamers drop large obelisks that create a grid that keeps everyone grouped together. Lyle is killed when he runs through a newly formed side of the green grid and is vaporized instantly. Tom and Weaver are separated from the rest of the group, as Anthony pulls Anne away from the dropping bombs. Ben grabs Lexi and runs off with her, Lourdes and Maggie to safety. Matt who almost makes it back to his father is stopped by another grid and is told to run.
4 months pass after those events and we find Tom and Weaver in a ghetto prison setup within Charleston. Outside we see a massive ship that is hovering over the camp, keeping a watchful eye. We see Tector and Hal attempt to overload the fence in order to escape but have no luck doing it with a simple car battery.
Anne and Anthony press on as they look for Lexi and the others but Anne is pushing everyone to their limits. They have intel on trucks bringing supplies to the camps. They plan to ambush the coming trucks and take the ammo.
Elsewhere, we see Ben wake up from bed, with a saline solution attached to his arm. Unaware of where he is, Maggie helps him as he wakes up and explains that during the attack he was hit protecting Lexi and has been in a coma for the past 4 months. Maggie shows them ‘chinatown’. Lourdes is back to her super-culty religious self. The town is idealistic and is acting as though the war won’t touch this town. Ben won’t accept that.
Ben sees Lexi and she is all grown up now, with white hair. Her rapid aging throughs him for a loop. She talks about unity for ‘all three of them’. She doesn’t get into details but the assumption is hybrid, half-alien and human kind.
Back in Charleston, the aliens do a food drop to which everyone scrambles for what little food is given. Pope shows up to make sure he gets the lion share of the food and hordes it. A hooded figure on a dirt bike shows up to stop Pope and to draw out the skitters. The ‘ghost’ as he is seen to others is in fact Tom Mason. As far as the aliens are concerned he is stuck in a cell with Weaver. Tom is seen back in his cell mapping out the entire camp in an effort to map out all the centuries. Weaver seems to be slowly losing his mind. His daughter is no where to be found.
Matt is in a uniform and stuck in a world war II style nazi camp run by brainwashed Espheni sympathizers who are trying to use propaganda to train the children to side with the Espheni. In order to eat, they must recite the propaganda they have been feed for months. Not everyone believes in what is being said. The girl behind Matt speaks out saying that it is all lies. Matt is chastised for letting her speak out of line.
Tector and Hal try to borrow the generator from Pope in order to break the fence, but he refuses. Hal and Pope get into it and beat the crap out of each other (well mostly Pope beating Hal). So that makes Pope getting into it with 3 mason boys now: Tom, Ben and Hal.
Anne and her group attempt to take over the truck but find that their radio is jammed and they are unable to detonate the bomb. Anne runs out in front of the truck to ambush it. When they open the truck they don’t find ammo, they find a truck load of kids! Apparently they are gathering kids and busing them to these brain washing camps in an effort to take control of the next generation of humans.
Back at the world war II camp, Matt tries to help his friend by keeping her in line while they work to undermine the camp. Matt is playing a dangerous game. Weaver just about loses it and attacks a skitter before Tom settles him down. Anne and the team are still unclear of what the Espheni want with the children.
The ‘ghost’ (Tom) meets Cochise at the edge of the fence for the camp.The Volm have been gone for nearly 4 months. Cochise reveals there are larger battlefronts they are fighting currently which is why they had to leave. Apparently they hide their children and family in another solar system but the Espheni found them so the Volm had to leave to defend them.
The Espheni are building a new power core, details of which they don’t have a lot of details on (or at least information Cochise cannot provide Tom). Tom asks Cochise to look for Lexi, Ben and Matt but he has other missions and cannot guarantee he will find them. The camps are worldwide and the Volm are not sure of their plans.
A new friend from Johannesburg (Treva Etienne) says he knows how to get past the fence, he has done it in other cities and offers to help Hal and Tector. We see how Tom has been getting in and out of his cell. Back in chinatown Ben walks in on Maggie showering and asks for his guns. He wants to leave, there is a war going on. Maggie tries to convince Ben that this place is worth staying in, and that the peace is real. Maggie shows Ben a MegaMech which found the city but a bolt of lightening came down and struck it, knocking it out. It now sits as a monument, one that Lexi predicted they would stop. Now everyone believes Lexi is a god.
Review
The right mix of human drama and alien dominance with a dash of mystery makes the season 4 opener a strong start to a new season.
New season, new showrunner brings a whole new feel to Falling Skies in season 4. Season 4 feels a bit like a reset while still having some overreaching plot points that continue from seasons 1-3. The main arc of the story started in season 1 and ended in season 3, but the popularity of the show, and the fresh new look at its story gave them the material needed to continue it through another arc. David Eick’s touch can be felt heavily throughout the premiere starting with the first fight and ending with the mysteries surrounding Lexi.
What the series continues to do right is the human element mixed (very well) with the alien nature of this post-apocolyptic setting. The show went the route of splitting up its cast, which many shows have done. What was a smart move for the show was adding 2 more episodes so that they don’t have to rush the stories and fit too much into a single episode. The alien tech is much more present in season 4, which is what made the show so appealing in its first and second seasons. The team behind the VFX have gone to more practical aliens than CGI, making even the Espheni characters suit actors, allowing for more screen time, close ups and better effects.
People complain that the aliens simply wiping the floor with the 2nd mass after all their victories is either boring or just not creative, and I disagree. The fact is, I would expect humanity to lose more than win with an advanced alien race invading. The Espheni have under estimated them many times, and they are not going to do that again. Why only now do they use these obelisks? Much like their mega mechs the Espheni have limited resources while they establish operations on earth. The Volm brought more ships after the grid went down, so why would we assume the Espheni did not bring more ships after the fact?
What the series has improved on is its time jumps. The last two seasons people have complained heavily at the massive time jumps at the start of the season, wondering what happen to the characters in between and getting no answers. This time around we start off right were we left them and we see the fight that separates them. 4 months do pass right after, but at least we have the before story this time around.
What the series needs to be careful about is the Lexi story. We come into season 4 with a grown up Lexi and a whole lot of questions. We don’t get much in the way of answers up front, nor do we get to see just how Ben, Maggie and Lourdes ended up in Chinatown. This character plot is the part that feels the most like David Eick to me, bringing back members of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. It’s not the worst thing in the world mind you, the mysteries have peaked my interest and I want to know more.
The over-done is Pope fighting with Masons. I love Colin Cunningham and I love his character but the fighting with every member of the mason family (save Matt) is just getting old. We know Pope gets a love interest later in the season so at least I know they will move away from this moving forward. We also learned from our interview with Drew Roy (Hal) that despite their little fight, Hal and Pope come to an understanding and may end up working together later in the season. This should help flesh out Pope some more.
We give the episode a 10/10 for being an action packed episode that moves the story along and sets up the new battle faced by the 2nd mass and humanity. Tell us what you thought of the episode.
