The writers of Falling Skies continue to slather on the pathos as much as possible, always giving us a scene of Tom hugging one of his sons every time after returning from fighting the aliens. In small doses, this sort of thing could work. Instead, each scene goes on too long and with sufficient repetition it just gets tedious. I get that this is a post-apocalyptic situation in which you have to cling to what you have left, but do we really have to see that every time?
That said, alien invasions are awesome no matter the circumstance and Falling Skies has done very well on that front. The skitters remain an enigma, but we're slowly learning more about them. They seem to be rather cruel, allowing Hal to see an execution after Mike retrieves his son. There was also progress on the harness, with the arrival of Dr. Michael Harris whose procedure to inject Mike's son with morphine before cutting the harness off seems to be working so far. But at the end of the episode, the skitter POW wakes up and so does Mike's son.
The dynamic between the survivors is still interesting with several developments as well. Pope is actually a chef and for now proves to be useful in the kitchen. Michael Harris, in a big coincidence, was actually the last person with Tom's wife, and after some cajoling, admits that he ran off. His justification, though, is that him running away was actually good because Ben can be saved. I guess he has a point, but his original intention is far from admirable.
Score: 8.6/10
