Falling Skies: Making Escape Look Easy

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I’m having a hard time with “Sanctuary (Part 2)”. On the one hand, it was a fine conclusion to what was set up last week. I especially loved seeing Clayton’s crew surrounded by Weaver’s men and Tom shooting down Clayton without a second thought. But throughout the episode everything was predictable, and choices were made that made no sense given the circumstances.

It was good that Lourdes and Hal figured out something is wrong almost immediately, and it made sense that Mike wouldn’t initially believe their concerns. When Mike stumbled upon discarded piles of children’s clothing, Clayton came clean about everything. And then, for whatever reason, Clayton lets Mike walk away to consider the offer to join him. Just lets him go without any kind of surveillance. So naturally what does Mike do? He gathers the kids, and they leave. Even more amazingly they just walk out of a supposedly guarded exit. Mike must have felt the writers were making the escape too easy, so he volunteered to needlessly sacrifice himself so the kids could run into the woods with only Hal as their protection.

That whole chunk was very–I would describe it as bleh. After that things seemed to return to normal, with the only lucky coincidence being Ben happening to stumble upon Tom. Thankfully, Pope was fantastically himself the entire episode. He made his escape from Clayton’s weird village in typical Pope style and returned to try and kill Clayton and his men simply because he “hates anyone who gets in bed with the Skitters.”

With such a solid set-up last week, I expected more from this episode and was pretty disappointed. This isn’t garbage, but it’s pretty formulaic. The promo for next week promised bigger and crazier things to come. I’ll be crossing my fingers that the show finishes its first season with its best material.