Falling Skies: Grace

SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!

Well, jeez, our heroes are a bunch of morons, aren't they? I mean, where to begin?

I completely understand the need for there to be conflict, challenges and surprises for the characters to deal with. That's writing, plot and entertainment. However, when nearly all of the conflict and development is brought along by the stupidity of those characters, that's something else.

In this week's episode, stupidity ran rampant. It was exceptionally bad, where the previous episodes it has only been mildly bad (in my opinion). Here's a few highlights:

• Let's trust the word of Pope, the ex-con murderer/rapist, and let him lead a scout mission to get some motorbikes. Of course he wouldn't be trying to use this to escape, would he? I mean, there's any number of ways he could use this opportunity against the good guys, but let's just trust him to be a nice guy.
• Restrain Pope in anyway during said mission? No need!
• Send Pope and one other guy to look around in the back room? Sure, nothing could happen. He definitely won't knock him out and escape!
• Oh no, Pope's escaping! Let's just watch him ride away! I'm sure he will never do anything to put us in danger in the future. He's just misunderstood!
• Hey, that big alien that we know nothing about? Let's bring it into the same room with its former mind-controlled zombie boy. And leave it unguarded!
• Oh, here's a good idea - the attractive pediatrician? Let's leave her in the room with the alien creature - all by themselves!
• Ok, if you don't like that one, how about we leave the angry father of zombie boy in the room with the alien? I'm sure he won't do anything rash...

I could go on, but you get the picture. It's just lazy writing. There's enough going on in the setting that they shouldn't need to have mistakes, stupidity and so on drive all of the conflict and drama in the show. Beyond that, it serves to damage the characters they've worked to build up. They're acting like a bunch of idiots, and it's hard to root for idiots. There are a few characters who haven't come across as total morons yet, but that's because they're peripheral characters at this point. Finally, it's frustrating to watch - you can see the turns and developments coming a mile away.

So, here's hoping that the writing quality and intelligence level of the heroes picks up over the next few weeks. This show has a lot of potential, even with the idiot characters.

Oh, it looks like TNT has launched a snazzy microsite for Falling Skies, complete with a game of some kind.