Falling Skies - Season 3 Episode 7 - Recap - The Pickett Line
Falling Skies - Season 3 Episode 7 - Recap - The Pickett Line
This week's installment of TNT's Falling Skies has us following two groups of human survivors. In one group, we've got ex-President Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) and his three sons (youngest to oldest: Matt, Ben, Hal). In the other, we have the new leadership of the Charleston settlement. Both encounter dissimilar difficulties, but as we've come to expect, all the problems ultimately boil down to one: living on an alien-occupied Earth isn't the best thing to do.
On the path towards Anne and freak-baby Alexis, Tom and Ben are caught out on... patrol? I guess? They seemed to be in the woods for no reason when a rebel Skitter falls injured to warn them of impending enemy attack. They warn the camp (which is just his other two sons, Hal and Matt). As the family heads out on horseback, they're interrupted on the road by a truck rolling in their path. Masked men come out, demanding the horses and supplies. The Masons hand it over, but follow after and discover the house these people, the Pickett family, are staying. The boys go a bit Metal Gear Solid and subdue the family, but Hal's guy that he's supposed to take pulls a big knife on him, and Matt shoots this knife guy during the scuffle. While Ben tends to the wounded dude, Tom and Hal and Matt guard the family, tying them up and pointing guns at them. Despite the incredible hostility, Tom connects with this guy. They're both fathers, just looking out for their families. Tom tries to convince Angry Hillbilly Dad to bring his family to Charleston, but the man just insists on staying in his really crappy three-generations-old woods shack. Upstairs, the bullet wound guy is dying (though I'm pretty sure his ultimate fate isn't revealed), and when Tom shows some mercy, the redneck patriarch grabs a gun and gets ready to execute. Luckily, Tom's protagonist invincibility kicks in and he's spared a bullety death, thanks in no small part to the family's daughter, who tugs at papa's leg to get him to not straight up murder a dude right in front of her. The Masons grab their stuff and leave, but later on the rode, when they spot some robots and Skitters heading towards the Pickett's terrible house, Tom doubles back to help. He's set upon by all manner of weirdo alien bad guy and captured.
Back at the settlement, the new president is ordering John Pope's shantytown, including the bar he runs, be moved to make room for more settlers. Pope objects, of course, but before the matter can be settled, a very shaky Cochise shows up, requesting medical assistance for the man cradled in his arms: President Hathaway! Later, as a means to quell a bit of civil disobedience Pope started over his bar, Colonel Weaver arrests him. Later, after some disagreements with Charleston's new leadership, Weaver releases Pop, saying that he may need him when the time comes, which is just the most cryptic thing he could have said.
Despite being twice presumed dead, President Hathaway still has not lost or faltered in his predilection towards taking charge; he begins issuing orders right from his hospital bed, primarily regarding the Volm weapon with suspiciously high power requirements. Weaver objects to the President's insistence on continuing the weapon's development without knowing what Cochise is hiding, so Hathaway asks to see the weapon. When he's showing the construction site to Weaver, Peralta, and President Hathaway, our blue alien pal reveals the weapon's secret: a self-destruct is built in to prevent the weapon's radiation from harming the environment, but the self-destruct could backfire and ruin life on Earth forever. So you know. Just a little secret. Back in his hospital bed, President Hathaway has a bit of a heart-to-heart with the timid medic Lourdes. Lourdes leaves the room during some suspicious music, and makes her way down some suspicious halls via some suspicious camerawork. Eventually, a floor below, she enters a disused hospital room. She positions a gurney on a specific spot on the floor, lies down on it, pulls out an alien laser gun, points it straight up, and fires through the ceiling, the floor, the bed above, and President Hathaway's soft, laser-susceptible body. Turns out, the real mole is Lourdes! She doesn't get caught, which adds a nice bit of tension in the form of dramatic irony.
This week's episode is the season's best so far. The political drama back in Charleston is intriguing, and the Masons vs. the Picketts gives us a nice source of action (though at the cost of delaying the search for Anne and Alexis). The reveal of Lourdes as an alien-infested spy was genuinely surprising, but it lacks the narrative punch it could've had, since we know the little worm robots are a curable illness. With only three episode left in the season, Falling Skies has got a lot to wrap up. Come back here next week for another recap, and watch a preview for this week's episode below!