awkward…

First off, congrats to Falling Skies for getting picked up for Season 3! Honestly, I was surprised when it got a Season 2 pick-up, so this is cool. I haven’t really watched any of the other Comic-Con Falling Skies coverage; I don’t know if the full panel will be uploaded somewhere or not, but if it is I’ll try to link that in the next recap. There is this cute interview of my 3 favorites (Colin Cunningham, Jessy Schram and Moon Bloodgood). Now, on to the episode!

Guess who’s backkkkk? Neither return was particularly surprising, since Karen was in the promos, and it was obviously that Pope (and Anthony) would be back at some point too, but still.

Actually, I think Karen and Pope might just be my favorite characters on this show. They’re at least the most interesting. (Dr. Glass gets 3^rd place because she is just so awesome). Everyone else kinda just pissed me off this episode. Even Weaver, who was unconscious for most of the hour, was being unnecessarily stupid by not sharing the fuel situation with Tom, and for being such a prick about people, you know, daring to relax.

Tom proved that he is basically a terrible leader on his own, Hal dicked around back and forth between Maggie and Karen, and Maggie went annoyingly crazy.

Mostly I just want to talk about how Jessy Schram made this episode her bitch.

The whole premise of this episode would have failed in the hands of a lesser actress. It’s too bad she isn’t more well known, because just watching her go from being Cinderella to this is incredible. She was able to make you genuinely question her trustworthiness until the end (and even with the look she gave Hal at the end I still wasn’t convinced she was really still Team Aliens until the promo). Those shots lingering on her face when no one else was watching were just ambiguous and subtle enough to make you wonder; it would have been too easy to make those moments more obvious and give it away, but man, Schram.

Her talk with Ben about how awful it was to be harnessed? And the other scene where she’s geeking out over their super ninja powers? Perfectly played, both as a human, a teenage girl and as a way to manipulate the shit out of Ben. I’m still hoping that there is still some Karen left in there.

As for the scene with Maggie? I was just thinking back to what we saw of Karen in Season 1 and how blunt she was (remember when Fucking Lourdes was all up on Hal’s jock and Karen shut that shit down?). So I can see how, with Maggie pointing guns at her, she would call it exactly how she saw it, and clearly she was pretty on point, since Maggie did try to freaking shoot her. Summary execution is not how we do things is the 2^nd Mass, Maggie! That is some seriously Pope Gang shit. And do you really think Hal would’ve still wanted to mack on you after you gunned down his old girlfriend? Come on.

Finally, that awesome “you jump, I jump, Jack” Ninja jump off the roof was amazing.

Okay, I’ll stop waving my Team Karen pennant. Sometimes I just get a little tired of the dumbasses in the 2nd Mass and I start to root for the aliens.

There weren’t really any good quotes this episode, except for Hal  and Ben’s totally brother-esque, “god, you can be such a-“ “Freak?” “I was going to say tool, but if you like freak, sure, we’ll stick with that.”

Bullet Points!

• Like father, like son: why is it that the Mason’s have such a hard time not talking about their exes in front of their current (or desired) post-apocalyptic fuck buddies? And I guess that is sort of confirmation that Dr. Glass and Tom are hooking up? I have to admit, they were kind of cute, though.
• Speaking of that scene, Tom’s Weaver impression was gold.
• Does someone on this show hate children? Seriously, what the fuck is up with this shit? First Jimmy, then Rick and now we’re just stumbling across a clearing of children’s corpses? I was practically raised on CSI (I think it counts as my first official fandom), and I’ve watched shows much worse (e.g. Dexter, Spartacus, Rome, Harper’s Island); the point is, I’m mostly not squicked out by dead stuff, but the theme of kids this season is  getting to the point of uncomfortable.
• I did laugh at the power going out during Weaver’s blood transfusion thing, just because it was so ridiculous and so Murphy’s Law.
• Go Dr. Glass for putting her foot down against Tom’s stupid idea to drive Weaver straight to Charleston.
• I’ll leave you with this fun fact: during the Spine Meld scene between Ben and Karen, the director told Jessy Schram to kiss him, but didn’t tell Connor Jessup (Ben) because he wanted his genuine surprised reaction. I’m sure it wasn’t at all awkward for 26-year-old Schram and 18-year-old Jessup…

So what do y’all think? Has Karen really gone over to the Dark Side? Is she going to lead the Fishheads to the Skitter rebellion forces? What the fuck are those spider-y looking things in the promos and what is the likelihood that they will give me nightmares (A: very high)?