Episode Title: “Brazil”
Writer: Remi Aubuchon
Director: Greg Beeman
Previously on “Falling Skies”:
Episode 3.09 “Journey to Xibalba”
There’s a teachable lesson for all would-be alien conquerors in “Brazil.” If you happen to be approaching your most prominent human adversary (whom you recently traumatized by making him think that his lover and his child were murdered) and you want to form an alliance… you might want to lead off with the fact that his loved ones aren’t actually dead.
Karen (Jessy Schram) starts negotiating before sharing that critical piece of intel with Tom Mason (Noah Wyle). And for now, let’s just say that it really didn’t work out for her.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Brazil,” so if you missed last night’s season finale of “Falling Skies” then you should probably skip this review or else Lourdes will share her eye worms with you.
Since “Falling Skies” is an action series, it would be cool if the show ever gave us a battle to remember in the season finale. Only the first season finale came close with the attack on the 2nd Mass camp at the high school while barely showing the Boston assault. After weeks of buildup, Tom, Cochise (Doug Jones), Dr. Roger Kadar (Robert Sean Leonard) and a small band of fighters simply sail into Boston and take out the Espheni with a single shot of the Volm superweapon.
The Espheni tower didn’t immediately follow, but after sending only two airships out to attack their boat, the tower went down. That was easy… way too easy for any drama to be had. At least the subsequent arrival of the Volm mothership was suitably epic as it crushed what was left of the alien tower and everything else in Boston. If Blair Brown’s crazy cat lady collaborator from the first season was still alive, she’s dead now. Along with any other human stragglers in the city.
In true Ewok village style, Tom, John Pope (Colin Cunningham), Colonel Daniel Weaver (Will Patton) and the rest of humans hold a premature victory celebration. Because if the Volm are as cool as their buddy Cochise, the war is pretty much over.
Except that it’s not.
Thankfully, “Falling Skies” doesn’t make Cochise or the Volm secretly evil. But the Volm Commander (who is also Cochise’s father) doesn’t see humans as equals. Instead, the Volm Commander orders Tom and the 2nd Mass to lay down their arms and accept relocation to Brazil as the Volm take over the war against the Espheni.
Naturally, Tom objects and ends up in Volm custody for daring to touch the Commander. Pope and the 2nd Mass don’t take the news any better than Tom does, although Pope has a particularly good line about the Volm doing what the Espheni never could: bringing humanity to their knees.
It was refreshing that the Volm Commander wasn’t such an a**hole and that he was willing to be convinced that Tom and the rest of the humanity deserved a chance to fight for their own freedom. With the Volm Commander’s tacit approval, Cochise lets Tom and the rest of the humans leave with their weapons. But the only real consequence of this is that it takes away most of the advance weaponry and technology that the Volm brought to the table. Essentially this sets the 2nd Mass back to their season 1 status quo of life on the road.
Frankly, that backtracking seems like a mistake. Stories should go forward, not backwards. The most intriguing thing about “Falling Skies” Season 3 was that it seemed like the natural progression of the two seasons that came before it. Putting the 2nd Mass in Charleston while partnering them with the Volm was the shakeup that the series needed. This finale basically stripped all of that progress away and reverted the show to its previous form.
On the road out of Boston, Karen is drawn to the 2nd Mass by the presence of Lourdes (Seychelle Gabriel), who seemed just lucid enough to realize that she had a bunch of alien worms in her head. Karen tried to sell Tom on the idea that the Volm are hiding more secrets from him and she suggested that a future alliance between the Espheni and humanity is possible with a common enemy.
Before Karen can share her “gift” and win Tom’s trust, he fatally shot her before his forces wiped out the aliens that came with her. I generally like it when Tom goes hardcore, but in this case it seemed like he didn’t even care that Karen was once one of the 2nd Mass before she was harnessed and enslaved. Tom sure as hell didn’t acknowledge that Karen was a victim or that it was largely Tom and Hal’s fault that Karen was taken in the first place while they were trying to rescue Ben Mason (Connor Jessup) early in season 1.
For his part, Hal shows the appropriate remorse for Karen’s fate. Afterall, she was his girlfriend way back when. However, his current girl, Maggie (Sarah Sanguin Carter) finishes Karen off with a few extra bullets, alienating Hal in the process. That might be it for Hal and Maggie as a couple. Earlier in the episode, Hal was visibly disappointed that his view of the future and Maggie’s perspective may not be compatible for a happy ending together. The hurt and disgust on Hal’s face after Karen’s death seems to have made that point even more clear.
In a happy ending of sorts, Tom learns that Dr. Anne Glass (Moon Bloodgood) is alive and that their creepy, hybrid daughter, Alexis is also alive… and apparently aging rapidly. Alexis hugs her daddy and she frees Lourdes of her alien eye worms, which suggests that Alexis has powers that we’ve never seen before. Except we have seen this before, on “V,” on “The 4400” and dozens of other times in sci-fi. As cliffhangers go, watching Alexis retrieve and squeeze the alien eye worms was a dud.
This was Remi Aubuchon’s last episode as the showrunner of “Falling Skies,” and maybe his exit was far overdue. “Falling Skies” desperately needs someone with vision to take over the reigns. “Falling Skies” has an amazing premise and a very solid cast, but none of the imagination or any of the sharp writing that it needs to become one of the best shows on television. It’s frustrating to watch this series constantly squander its potential. By bringing everything back almost exactly to where things stood prior to the arrival of the Volm, “Falling Skies” feels like it wasted a season and a good deal of our time.
“Falling Skies” is not a show that can go on forever. It desperately needs a sense of purpose and forward momentum so the story can eventually reach its endpoint. Because if this story refuses to go anywhere new, then why are we watching?
