Falling Skies - S3E8 - Strange Brew
Previously on Falling Skies, ‘The Pickett Line’
In which I begin to invent my own plotlines, because these are getting seriously boring.
We left Tom being captured by the Espheni. In an entirely unexpected turn of events, we find him waking up in a comfy bed, to his dead wife! In Boston! At Christmas! With no beard!!!
Aaaand, predictably, it’s time to play The Matrix. We proceed through a storyline that revolves around Tom supposedly leaving his family for Anne, however, it doesn’t take long before the glitches start to show, in the form of cameos by the entire Charleston crew; Pope, Anthony, and Marina as fellow professors, Jeanne as Tom’s secretary, Maggie and Lourdes as students, and Weaver as a bedraggled doomsayer who keeps getting dragged off by a cop who looks like (gasp) Karen!
Karen is convinced the Volm target is one of four cities, New York, Boston, Jacksonville, or Chicago (the Espheni have obviously never watched Sesame Street, because one of those things is not like the other). She has her constructs continually asking Tom to pick between the four in various unsubtle ways. After the first ploy fails, Tom wakes up screaming. A harnessed child is pulling some kind of mechanical facehugger off of his face, in what looks like a half-destroyed factory, weirdly lit in only flashing yellow lights. Tom refuses her questions again, and gunfire erupts as the Mason boys mount a rescue mission with Weaver, Pope, and Crazy Lee in tow… hold on a second, this isn’t The Matrix, it’s Inception!
Tom finds himself back in Charleston, in a bed in the infirmary. He races into the war room to inform everyone about Karen, but is subverted by the already-in-progress final planning meeting for the attack. Tom is taken in by the deception until he is asked to grab a map, and the only ones available are maps of Karen’s quaternary of cities. Tom shoots Weaver, and successfully kicks himself out of the second level of Inception. He again wakes up screaming to the removal of the facehugger, and this time, begins to laugh madly at Karen, accusing her of being afraid. Karen angrily begins choking him and threatens torture on Anne and Alexis if he does not comply.
Meanwhile, in Charleston, Maggie and Pope are on watch. Pope is spending his time badmouthing Hal, continuing his confusing harassment of Maggie. Berserker #1 relieves him before Maggie can punch him.
Weaver and Anthony interrogate Marina in regards to her whereabouts at the time of Hathaway’s murder. She (strangely, since we know Lourdes did it) is the only person whom they cannot account for. Marina claims she was in her quarters, but has no witnesses, leading them to strongly suspect her. Weaver crosses his arms and teleports to Popetown. Pope is convinced beyond all doubt that Marina is the mole. He suggests to Weaver that Marina is keeping them from attempting to contact Hathaway’s people for nefarious reasons. He asserts that now that Weaver has challenged her, there is a target on his back.
Weaver beelines for the radio room, but is intercepted by Maggie, who is requesting to be on the front line of the upcoming attack. She posits that Karen will be there, and she wants revenge for Karen’s ruining of her perfect life with Hal. Weaver stops just short of the radio room to deny her request, and as she argues, the office explodes!
Back in Karen’s industrial yellow discotheque, which turns out to be one of the Espheni grid towers, Karen convinces Tom that she has killed Anne and Alexis, showing Tom their faces beneath the membrane of a weird fleshy pod. This drives him mad, and he attacks her, but is held back by her skitter guard.
Cut back to Charleston, and Lourdes is picking shrapnel from Weaver’s neck. Weaver credits Maggie with saving his life, and grants her earlier request. Anthony, who is apparently an expert on Espheni residues, claims that the explosive left Espheni residue. Weaver orders beefed up security on the President and the Volm complex.
Karen leads Tom outside onto a ledge to show him the grid tower powering up, attempting to convince him that as it’s obviously too late to resist, he should just go ahead and pony up the info. While Karen is distracted watching the tower charge up, Tom jumps the skitter guard, taking it over the edge of the ledge, and in no way defies the laws of physics by using it as a parachute/pillow to survive a several story fall.
Lourdes and Maggie are watching the grid from Charleston, alternately comparing it to “a neon spider web” and “bars on a cage”. Weaver tells everyone to stop gawking at the pretty lights, and get back to work. Marina then pulls him aside to try to assuage his concerns about her. She acknowledges his suspicions, is worried that he plans a military coup, and encourages him not to, “in the name of democracy”. Weaver seems to be somewhat swayed by her earnestness, and immediately informs Pope that they will not be moving to depose her, though they will keep all tactical decisions regarding the attack on the grid a secret from her.
Maggie and Berserker #1 (whose name is Lyle, I know) are back on watch, when a call to please not shoot rings out from the darkness. It’s the Mason boys, who apparently gave up on finding Anne and Alexis (or Tom, for that matter), and have returned to assist in the attack.
Cut back to Tom, walking down a ruined street, apparently in Boston, as with no warning, he comes upon his old house. He enters, and has a tender, full-on hallucination of his wife, asking that he let go of her once and for all. Tom marches out of the house and off into the night, either with a renewed sense of purpose or a complete lack of sanity.
Join me next week, when Tom learns to control his telekinesis under the tutelage of a midget tattoo artist from Baltimore, and DevilBaby rises from the dead to raze a city to ash with her eyelasers! (crosses fingers)
