Falling Skies Season 1 Episode 2 The Armory

The new US hit TV show Falling Skies continued last night on FX, the latest episode saw the 2nd Massachusetts group going to a near by armory, in order to get supplies, or guns more importantly.  They ran across some problems on their way one alien to note and then another group of survivors lead by an ex con John Pope (Colin Cunningham), the biker gang don't want to be affiliated in anyway with other survivors and are simply out for their own interests.  They take Tom and his fighters hostage until they agree to hand over the supplies they have back at their camp.  Last week we saw how Tom and his oldest so Hal are doing their best to go rescue Ben, Toms other son who has been captured by the aliens.  Tom has been told by 2nd Massachusetts leader, Commander Weaver he can't go to look for his other son until the armoury has been fully checked for guns.

I'll start with Commander Weaver (Will Patton), a hard ass mutha he really is who's presence on screen is over powering.  He is kind of like a ruthless dictator in a world without rules, his main aim is to keep his Army of 100 fighters cosy and warm with them all getting houses and beds as apposed to the 200 civilians he has under him who all sleep in tents, aren't soldiers trained to sleep in fields and tents?  When Weaver and Tom (Noah Wyle) come together there can be some real tense moments where your eyes are drawn only to them and not what's happening in the background.  The two work really well together on screen but no doubt the hero of the story is going to be Tom.

Back to the ruthless biker gang now, you know?  The ones I mentioned before who took Tom and the other fighters hostage.  This threw a whole new perspective on the story which you initially think is just 600 Humans verses a bunch of aliens, this leads to another interweaving story that now incorporates warring groups of survivors.  All be it the biker gang were killed off at the end of this episode, well all except the leader John Pope.  There is now the possibility that the main characters will encounter more rebel fighters along their travels.  Pope survived as I mentioned and also surviving and joining the 2nd Mass was a girl who's name I cant remember, but she was captured by the rouge gang of bikers also and initially went along with their charade until she seized her opportunity to kill the bikers and free hostages.

I really liked the John Pope character, he has been thrown into a make shift jail at the high school 2nd Mass are using as base.  I get a feeling that his character is really going to grow and become an integral part of the story line in the weeks to come.  He is clearly an intelligent guy who obviously went down the wrong path somewhat, if I was going to match him to someone I would say he is like Lost's Sawyer (he was in jail to remember?).  The lovable rouge who always mucks in when your up the creek without a paddle.  Maybe he and Tom will take over as leaders of the 2nd Mass in time to come, what do you think?

There were a couple of times in the latest episode where I though, come on get on with it.  Just then though the story kicked back into life.  You are going to get that with any TV show as we have discussed here plenty times before, Lost that I mentioned above was like that at times but as all good TV shows do, it had a knack of leaving you wanting more after 50 minutes.  Bearing in mind that this episode was the second hour of the show, Spielberg would normally be wrapping up his motion picture during that time, so they need something else to get you through the series.  One thing to note, you could really tell the budget limits here I didn't notice it last week but the aliens this week are not as good as they were in War Of The Worlds but, still for TV the effects are pretty good.