Falling Skies Second Watch

Quick review of Falling Skies Second Watch

I’ve now watched two episodes of the TNT web series Falling Skies Second Watch.  Wil Wheaton is the host of the show, which is following the format of Chris Hardwick’s Talking Dead show.  Wil and a studio audience watches the show live, then has a chat with stars from the show.  The premier episode was 45 minutes long and featured the whole cast.  The first shock to me was finding out that Jessy Schram plays the character of Karen, and not Brittany Snow.  I watched the entire first season assuming the girl from American Dreams was on this show, but she is a different girl.  Check these pictures out:

Jessy Schram

 Brittany Snow

The second episode featured Peter Shinkoda, Colin Cunningham, and Mpho Koaho along with the writer and is only 15 minutes long.  I would assume this is going to be the format from now on.  

Wil is a great host.  He is conversational and friendly throughout, rarely fawning.  As an actor himself, he can talk to the other actors and get real conversation from them, not just the basic platitudes and moronic quotes.  Having the secondary actors rather than the main cast, gives the show a much breezier feel.  They are open to talk, and not jaded by the talk show format.  Everyone seems excited to be there and share their excitement of the show with Wil,each other, and the live audience.  

The questions from the audience are hit and miss, as live audience members are want to be.  I think I like the Talking Dead format a little better where it is just fans geeking out over the show.  But if you are a Falling Skies fan, or a fan of Wil’s, you should check out the show here.             

Falling Skies SEason 2 Ep 3 Recap and Review

Falling Skies S2 Ep3: Compass

The story so far:  

Last season Tom was taken on the spaceship.  When he returned not everyone trusted him, including himself.  His boys have grown up and grown apart in his absence.  Tom brought back a parasite from the spaceship, but it escaped and disappeared into the eye socket of a Skitter, Red-eye.

Recap:

Ben and Jimmy are out sniping Skitters.   Tom and Captain Weaver discuss their next move.  Weaver wants to hide out in the Catskills for the winter; Tom wants to continue the fight. 

Leave or die

                Pope and the Berserkers (minus Anthony) kidnap Tom and take him out in the woods.  Pope tells Tom he needs to leave or die.  Ben and Jimmy attack and disarm Pope and the Berserkers.  Weaver wants to kick out Pope but Tom argues for them to stay, and is assigned to the Berserker group.  Somehow I doubt this will end with a show of mutual respect.

Bad day for Jimmy

                Ben and Jimmy are out sniping again.  The first two go down with no trouble, but the third is Red-eye.  He smashes Jimmy into a tree, and then paralyzes Ben somehow with the remnants of the harness on his back.  Red-eye leaves rather than killing Ben, but Jimmy is impaled on the tree.  That is not good.  Ben gets Jimmy to the Doc and she goes to work on him.  With the fit that Weaver throws in his tent, I was reminded how close he and Jimmy were in the first few episodes of the show. 

                The Berserkers go to the kill site and Tom finds Jimmy’s compass.  Tom also overrides Pope’s authority, and he’s right, of course.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.  Ben is acting all surly and talks back to Hal.  Tom gives Ben Jimmy’s compass.  An airplane arrives, and with an overdramatic reveal…the pilot is a girl!  J    Avery Churchill tells the 2nd Mass about the new government and resistance that has formed in Charleston.  Tom wants to head that way, but Weaver thinks it might be a pipe dream. 

                In a truly shocking moment, Jimmy dies.  Quietly, with no big dramatic moment.  I kept waiting for a hero save, but none came.  Weaver digs Jimmy’s grave by himself.  As Ben dresses Jimmy’s body for a funeral, he notices that his compass is missing.  Tom finds Jimmy’s compass around Pope’s neck.  When Pope refuses to take it off, Tom beats the holy hell out of him.  I did not expect the alpha dog problem to be solved so quickly and so definitively.  Pope is thrown out of the 2^nd Mass, when the rest of the crew refuses to leave with him, Anthony leaves with Pope—ostensibly to keep an eye on him.

                Tom meets with Doc in the medic bus and they share a little smooch.  All 176 members of the 2^nd Mass come to Jimmy’s funeral.  Weaver gives a very stirring speech.  He and Ben remain at the gravesite and Ben finally breaks down, showing Weaver his grief.  It’s good to see Ben acting like a human, and a kid, rather than a cold, alien-killing machine.  Weaver decides to take the 2^nd Mass to Charleston, as if there was any other real choice to be made.  Ben is still at the gravesite when he is again paralyzed by Red-eye, but Hal interrupts before he can do much more than look at him.  Again, Ben refuses to admit that it is happening.

Red-eye and Ben

Opinions:

I’m really upset about the misuse of the Jimmy character.  I really liked the dynamic of a child soldier that Jimmy presented in the first few episodes of the show, especially since he was of the age that he should have been harnessed by the Skitters.  However the soldiers of the 2^nd Mass treated him like an equal and he was.  His dynamic with Weaver was really interesting too.  Weaver treated him like a soldier, but also a little like a son.  By the middle of the season Jimmy had been relegated to hostage and “child in peril” duty, which really weakened his character.  I wish instead of being killed, Jimmy would just have been badly wounded and had to be taken out of active duty, like have him lose an arm or something.  Then he could have been used as a drill sergeant or something.  It would have been funny to see him training the kids of the 2^nd Mass, like a tired old drill instructor, even though he was only 15 years old.  RIP Jimmy, you deserve better.

The other interesting plot turn was Avery Churchill and the Charleston government.  Mymissy thinks that she is a double agent, sent to bring people to the camps.  I suggested that she was being controlled by the Skitters, but she thinks she speaks too plainly to be being controlled.  However, I would think that ANYONE who shows up on the door of the 2^nd Mass would at least be inspected for a harness.  With all of her long hair and bulky jacket, she could easily be wearing one.  I hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t expect any good luck for the people of the 2^nd Mass anytime soon.  The Charleston plot at least gives them a sense of purpose.

The Hero Reveal of Avery Churchill

Grade:  The episode itself was pretty good.  I’m excited about the Charleston plot.  I’m sad about the death of the Jimmy character that never was.  I hope eventually Ben stops being a surly shit, but I’m not counting on it.  B-

Thanks to Three if by Space and Seriable for the pictures!

Falling Skies Season 2 Ep. 1&2 Recap and Review

Falling Skies S2 Ep1&2 Review

Last summer I started watching Falling Skies on TNT, and it quickly became one of my favorite new shows.  I thought this summer I would write recap/reviews of every episode.

The story so far:

The Mason Men

Falling Skies takes place in the aftermath of an alien invasion.  A small band of militia, called the Second Massachusetts, a group of about 100 men, women, and children, carry on the fight.  The main character is Tom Mason, played by Noah Wyle.  He has three sons, 20-year-old Hal, teenager Ben, and child Matt.  Ben, along with most teens, was at one time “harnessed“ by the aliens (called “Skitters” by the Second Mass).  Ben was freed from the alien mind control, but he has been given super-human abilities from his time with the aliens.   In last season’s finale, Tom was taken aboard the Skitter craft.

Episode 1: Worlds Apart

Recap:

Three months have passed since Tom got on the alien craft.  The Second Mass sets up an ambush for the Skitters and their Mechs.   We see Ben with a little super-human hand-to-hand combat with a Skitter, and then he accidentally shoots his long lost father.  Whoops!  Doctor Glass begins the patch up job on their mobile surgery bus.  While under anesthesia, we see flashbacks to Tom’s time in the ship.  We see him being tortured by a red-eyed alien; then he is rescued by Karen, Hal’s former girlfriend, now a harnessed Skitter psychic translator.  She takes him to the Tall Alien, presumably the leader.  TA offers Tom the opportunity for humanity to surrender and go to a concentration camp. 

Back to the future, Ben promises to show Matt a thing or two about fighting, then gets snotty with Hal about who is in charge.  On the next raid, the aliens blow up the truck and Pope’s Harley before they can begin.  They realize that the alien airships (beamers) are targeting the heat of the trucks.  Enter a new character, Jamil, who has convenient engineering skills, useful to camouflage the heat of the vehicles.

                Back on the ship, and Tom has a debate with the TA.  He refuses the offer of the camps, grabs Red-eye’s shock stick, and zaps TA with it.  He is quickly subdued and dropped off in a field with a dozen other survivors.  The Skidders then proceed to massacre the lot of them, except Tom, who is allowed to go free by Red-eye. 

                 Back home Ben baits Hal into a fight by teaching Matt to shoot and mentioning Karen in front of Hal’s new love interest, Margret.  When Hal takes a swing at him, Ben demonstrates just how physically dominant he is over his big brother.

                 

Karen?

or Margret?

                 Flashback to Tom, walking back to the Second Mass from Michigan.  He rescues a young girl from attack.  The girl’s mother is dead nearby.  Tom and the girl escape on her motorcycle.  I figured she would be another new character, but she dumps Tom and heads to the mountains once he gets to Boston.  This is good.  She was annoying and had green teeth.

                Back at camp, the Skitters are closing in, but they can’t move the bus because Doc Glass is still doing surgery on Tom.  Hal, Ben, Margret, and Dai stay behind to guard the bus.  The mechs pass by without incident, and Doc finishes her surgery.   There is a final flashback showing Tom getting shot, then he wakes up to the loving sight of Doc Glass, aw how sweet.  Their hand-holding is cockblocked when Ben and the other boys enter and we get our typical happy ending.  Tom is welcomed back by everyone, save Pope, who is suspicious as usual.  He plants the seed in Captain Weaver’s mind as well as the episode ends. 

Opinions:

The effects and CGI in this show is really well done.  I don’t know what kind of budget the show has, but compared to say, Terra Nova, which I know was a very expensive show, this looks much better.  I also want to mention the scene on the bus where the Skitters pass by.  There is no CGI in this scene, only lights and sound effects, but the tension is played out wonderfully.  They did a great job doing a scene like this on the cheap.

I like Jamil, the new engineer character.  He’s got great dreads.  He brings a slight comedic touch to the show.  This show needs a break or two in the despair. 

The fighting Mason brothers’ subplot is going to problematic this season.  None of the three of them are good enough actors to make this interesting.

Grade:  I thought this was a good re-introduction to the series.  The CGI scene with Tom and TA was a highlight, as was the scene with no CGI on the bus.  Great acting and tense plotting will continue to make this show great.  My major complaint with this show is that every episode last season ended with a drawn out, calm ending.  I would like to see some of those moments of calm and levity throughout the episode, not exclusively at the end of EVERY one.  A-

Episode 2:

Shall We Gather at the River.

Recap:

                The show opens with Tom having a nightmare about the red-eyed alien.  He goes to see the Doc, worried that the Skitters might have messed with his mind.  Doc thinks he is being paranoid.  Jamil finds a bridge the Second Mass might be able to use to cross the river, where they’ve been trapped.  Dai shoots down a Skidder ship which falls to the other side, but not after slicing the bridge in half.   Tom reveals to Captain Weaver that he doesn’t think he should be trusted.  Weaver also thinks he’s being paranoid.  I know a foreshadow when I see one.

                Weaver tells Jamil to rebuild the bridge, while Ben swims across the river on a scouting mission.  Hal and Tom discuss Ben’s changes and start to reconnect.  Tom makes Hal promise to “keep an eye on” him.  Hal also thinks Tom is being paranoid.  Matt overhears; then Tom collapses.  Matt is not convinced Tom is being paranoid, as the sledgehammer of plot drops hard.

                Doc Glass looks in Tom’s eye and finds something.  In the scene of the week, she finds a worm in his eye and pulls it out with forceps.  

ARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

 Even the second time, it is really hard to watch.  Tom insists that Weaver zip tie him to the bus until they get across the river, just in case. 

                Ben swims across the river and finds the Skitter ship.  Inside the wreckage is a live creature, who is making a noise only Ben can hear.  He stomps the small creature to death then follows the noise in his head until he finds the control tower for the beamer ships. 

                Back at camp, Matt won’t have anything to do with Tom, and Pope shows up to gripe and complain about Tom being allowed to stay in camp.  Pope is a cool character when he is fighting, but the rest of his whining and complaining is getting old already.  Even his fellow Berserker, Anthony, pulls his gun to prevent Pope from killing Tom.  

                Ben and Tom have a discussion about mind control.  Ben says that he uses hate to keep the Skidders from taking over.  Tom, predictably, argues that love is more powerful than hate.   Ben doesn’t want to hear that though.  Ben lies to Weaver, Jamil, Hal, and Anthony about being able to hear the Skitters, but Weaver suspects he is lying. 

The summer's cutest new couple

As the 2^nd Mass prepares to bug out, we have a lighter moment between Pope and his Berzerkers, then Jamil and Lourdes where she kisses him, then Margret and Hal.   

As they prepare to cross the bridge, the worm taken from Tom’s eye burrows its way out of the container.  It starts to crawl up Lourdes, but instead of infecting her, it turns into a moth thing and flies off.  Good fake out, Falling Skies!

As Ben, Hal, Margret, and Dai move in to blow up the beamer tower, the 2^nd Mass bugs out across the repaired bridge.  Dai blows the tower before the beamers can re-blow the bridge.  As the vehicles cross, Pope and the Berzerkers retreat from the oncoming Mechs and Skitters.  The bus breaks through the bridge stranding Doc, Tom and Matt.  In the big drama moment of the night, Matt decides to trust his father, freeing him to fight while the others push the bus across the bridge.  All that foreshadowing is for naught, as Tom is fine and climbs a 50 cal, helping to hold off the Skitters while they push the bus across the bridge.  A Skitter climbs the 50 cal and is threatening Tom when Matt grabs a gun bigger than he is and kills the Skitter.  I don’t know enough about firepower to know if that is feasible or not.  It seems not.

Tom waits too long killing Skitters, and Pope grabs the detonator from Jamil blowing the bridge with Tom still on it.  I bet he dies here.  As Hal comforts Matt, Pope comes over to apologize.  Hal punches him just as Tom comes walking out of the river.  Ben pulls his gun, but Tom says, “Once is enough I think.”  I’m shocked.  I thought for sure he was dead. 

Lourdes notices the empty specimen jar as the moth flies to Red Eye the Skitter, and crawls into his other eye socket.  Yuck.  Cool, but yuck.

Opinion: 

                The eye scene is an early contender for summer gross out of the year.  Time to step it up True Blood!

                I thought we’d seen the red-eyed Skitter too many times.  I really like the idea of creating specific Skitters with specific personalities.  It’s hard to do when the characters don’t talk.  He (She?) is officially a character now.

                I appreciated that they put the moment of Zen in the middle of the episode, rather than at the end.  A good change of pace.

Opinion:

This episode was fairly typical of the show.  It was fairly predictable, but very well done.  If you didn’t like this one, you don’t like Falling Skies.  This is pretty much all you get from it on a week-to week basis.  The eye scene and the dawning of the Red Eye era push this to a little better than average.  B+

RED EYE!!!!!!!!!!

MCO podcast: Missy and Drew review Brave

Missy and I did a podcast reviewing Brave!  Check it out here.

The Lego Death Star

                As I tossed the last piece of my Lego Death Star into the box, I am filled with a series of memories.  That 3803 pieces of plastic could be imbued with such emotion shocks even me.   I’m typing this with a sore thumb, and a heart filled with joy and sadness.

                The saga of the Death Star begins and ends with my oldest daughter, Lilly.  When Lilly was five years old, she begged me to tell her stories as we drove in the car.  Quickly she tired of ones that started “There once was a five year-old girl named Lilly, and she had a mommy and a daddy and a sister named Katie…”  So I started burning through every one I could think of that began “When I was a little boy…”   After those were exhausted, I had a breakthrough.  The next time Lilly said, “Tell me a story Daddy.”  I began with, “Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away…”  It took me three car rides to get to the climax of the story, and as I pulled up to the curb, shut off the car and helped Lilly out of her seat belt, I told her, “I guess if you want to see the end of the story, you’ll just have to watch the movie.”   Lilly’s eyes bugged out of her head and she squealed and clapped with delight.  “There’s a MOVIE daddy!?”  Needless to say, dinner and bedtime was a little late that night.

    What could make a dad more proud than having his five-year-old daughter become a Star Wars nut in front of his eyes?  We tore through all three movies by the weekend, and soon got the Lego Star Wars game for Playstation 2.  Around the same time we started receiving a Lego catalog which I threw in the backseat of the car to amuse the girls along with the other junk mail.  Lilly was amazed by the Lego Death Star.  A $400 piece of Danish craftsmanship, it really was a thing of beauty.  Literally, the most expensive item in a very expensive catalog.  Lilly wanted it with the passion that only a five-year-old can muster; I figured it would be out of favor within a few weeks.  However, months went by and the Death Star was all she talked about.  Gone were the Disney Princess movies, and Barbie dolls.  Lilly was all Star Wars all the time, and about 50% of the time was focused on the Death Star.

                At Christmastime she was just sure that she would be receiving it.  My wife and I had fallen into a bad habit of referring to ourselves as “Santa” when we were talking amonst ourselves and our friends about buying gifts for the kids, and Lilly caught me off guard one afternoon, again as I was pulling up to the curb. 

                “I think I’m going to ask Santa for the Death Star,” she said from behind the now-battered catalog.

                As I gathered my briefcase and the girls’ lunch boxes I replied casually, “I don’t think Santa can afford the Death Star for you honey.”

                The trap snapped shut.  “Daddy, Santa doesn’t need money.  He makes all the toys.”

                Thinking quickly, I turned around and looked at Lilly in her car seat.  I used the most mocking and disdainful voice I could muster without laughing, “Lilly, are you serious?  Do you really think Santa has a Lego factory at the North Pole?  Of course he has to buy the toys.  Sure, he makes the wooden ones and stuff, but he’s got to buy the rest.  I’m sure Lego cuts him a deal, but come on.”

                This was enough to chew on that it shut her down long enough for me to escape the car and escape into the house.  But the seed had been planted, not with her, but with me.

                That summer my buddies took me to the casino for my birthday.  I won a poker tournament for $500, I used some of the winnings to fix the transmission in my van.  I went back again in the Fall and won another $300, I spent some that money on a fire pit my wife wanted.  The third time I went back I told myself that if I had a really good trip, I would use some of the winnings to buy the Death Star for Lilly.  Almost a year after she had seen if for the first time, it was still her heart’s desire.  I left the poker table up $1200, so excited that I could make my daughter’s dream come true.  I mean, how often does that happen?  Think about the object you want more than ANYTHING in the world.  A house, a car, a piece of art, whatever.  Will you ever have the money to make that happen?  Probably not.  But here, this one time, I could make my daughter’s greatest dream come true.

                When I got home and ordered the toy, it was backordered and took several months to arrive.  In the meantime, I lost all of my bankroll, about $1000, in my final casino trip.  Shortly after that, my wife and I divorced.  Money was very tight of course, and I considered cancelling the order several times.  I had never told Lilly I was getting it for her, and she would never know how close she came.  But every time I tried, I just couldn’t do it.  Lilly was handling the divorce very well, better than I was for sure, and knowing how happy this would make her feel, I just couldn’t cancel the order.  It was connected to those happier, hopeful, times and I suppose I needed that as much as she did.

                When the package arrived, the hugs, kisses, and screams were appropriately ecstatic.   But once the packages were opened, and the mini-figs put together, the magnitude of the project started to wear us down.  Online sources said that it was a 25-30 hour assembly.  Lilly’s “help” and my own stupidity (I didn’t realize that each bag represented a specific step, so I ripped them all open at once to get the mini figs and weapons out and had to resort all 3803 pieces.) added at least 10-15 more hours.  Since Lilly was only with me every other week, and we could only really work on it in the time after her younger sister went to bed, we only got a third of it done in a month.  I finally started doing it myself on the weeks when she wasn’t with me before I went to bed.  I made quicker progress that way, and it was a great way to focus and relax, but I was so melancholy during those months.  As I was tearing it apart today, the tactile sensations in my fingers made me really sad.  At one point I thought I might take up Lego building as a relaxing pastime, but after today, I don’t really think I’ll be able to do a major project without dredging up those feelings.

                Even after it was done, and the initial feelings of accomplishment wore off, the thing only had a few months of play value.  Lilly still loved it and played with it a lot, but her little sister was just too young and reckless…even now she has a penchant for throwing things when she is upset.  So I had to keep it on a high shelf and would only get it down for her if her sister were napping or otherwise occupied.   The Death Star sat in my bedroom getting regular, if sporadic, play for about a year.  But by the time I was ready to move in with my new fiancée, Lilly had moved on to other things.  She was now hooked on Harry Potter.  The Death Star still has a lot of monetary value; Legos don’t really depreciate, so I asked Lilly if she would be upset if I sold it.  She said, “Can we buy Hogwarts with the money?”  I told her no way, because she would want to play with it all the time and I didn’t want her to lose any pieces for such an expensive set.  I was meticulous with the Death Star and 2 years later I’m pretty sure all 3803 pieces are accounted for.

                However, last weekend, my friends Tim and Tony made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.  They are both huge Lego fans, and had been trying to buy the Death Star from me for a while.  We were at the Lego Store in Castleton, and Lilly was ogling the Hogwarts Castle.  They were wanting to buy it for her as a gift, but I was balking, saying it was way too generous.  Tim said, well sell me that Death Star for $200, and let me buy the Castle for Lilly.  That way you can say that part of the castle came out of the sale of Death Star.  While the logic is weird, it made perfect sense to me.  Lilly gets an amazing gift that she absolutely adores (she built the whole thing in less than 24 hours) and my friend gets an amazing toy that he and his family will enjoy a lot.

 As I was finishing deconstructing the final layer this morning, I got a message from my new wife.  She said, “Are you sad to see it go?”  I replied, “A little.  It served its purpose though.  It’s time to move on.”