Episode Reviewed: Falling Skies: Love and Other Acts of Courage

After this episode, I couldn't help but remember season 1 when they killed the black guy first. Why does that always happen?


In A Nutshell:
Rick's back. He and Ben are connected the Red-Eyed Skitter (which we'll refer to as RES for the sake of time), which apparently wants to share something with the second Mass, leading to them taking it as a POW. You read that right, BEN wants to cooperate with a Skitter. At the same time, Hal and Maggie go all Mulder and Scully on us while on a recon mission in which we learn what Maggie meant by "the bad kind of cancer", among other things.


The Good:
I'll start by saying this is a step-up from last week. Granted, that's not saying much, but that's how it is. The best part of the episode for me personally was the beginning with Ben (spoilers!). You're left thinking "...da hell?", and you figure it out when Tom interrogate RES, another good part of the episode. We get some answers during the Q&A while still more questions are posed, which is always a good combination, and it was just interesting to watch the two interact. It could've been a larger part of the story, but it was still interesting while it was on screen. As far as the Hal-Maggie part of the story went, it was tad cliched, but the actors have good chemistry, so it wasn't painful to watch or anything. It was actually fairly enjoyable, mostly because these are characters that I usually feel don't get quite enough screen time. And, brace yourself, we get another major character death! That's two so far in a season that's only half over, and three in total, for those of you who are keeping score at home. And yes, I did feel something when (spoilers!) ate it. RIP (Spoilers!).


The Bad:
Like I said before, parts of the Hal-Maggie side of the story were a bit cliched (never a good thing). There was also an interaction between Tom and Weaver at the end of the episode that felt incredibly forced and tacked on for the sake of making the episode over 39 minutes long (also never a good thing). This is a complaint I have with the show as a whole right, but I feel like there's not enough action as there should be. I'm shallow or anything, but I just want more gunfights and stuff like in the season premier. If the Walking Dead has proven anything, it's that you can, for the most part, have a balance between action and character drama (and that you can get away with a lot gore on cable).


Final Rating: 87%