Falling Skies 3.05 Search And Recovery **** SPOILERS ****

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Episode Summary from Falling Skies Wiki:

[i]Tom Mason and his antagonistic ally Pope having just survived a plane crash into a forest crawling with the series’ main bad guy aliens, lovingly nicknamed skitters. Despite some clashing demeanor Odd Couple difficulties, the two eventually connect on a new level: as fathers. The movement on their relationship is good, sold by the actors’ performances. Unfortunately, the tender moment is ruined by a fast cut to the next morning, with Pope playing a prank on Mason, Mason overreacting, and the two getting in a serious fist fight over it. Their stupid macho nonsense luckily gets interrupted by a small battalion of skitters coming out of the deeper woods. The dynamic duo escapes into river rapids, but Mason twists his ankle. Mason berates Pope for not just leaving, which seems like a bad plan, because Pope then leaves. Tom has some hallucinations, and when he’s ambushed by skitters, Pope comes back. Mason and Pope make it back to civilization, and when Tom wakes up two days later, there’s a real awkward moment of Tom saying “Where’s Anne?” and the people around his bed just kind of staring at him. He’s caught up by Weaver.

Meanwhile, Alt-Hal is awoken (he wasn’t sleeping) to the leaders of the human settlement, Charleston, discovering the disappearance of Anne and her baby Alexis. Colonel Weaver wants to lead a search team, but not everyone agrees; the fear is that the population in town won’t react well to the knowledge that Anne’s baby is an alien hybrid (a fun fact revealed by this season’s recurring mad scientist, Dr. Roger Kadar). Regardless, Weaver takes a team that includes all five thousand Mason sons, some nameless allies, and Maggie. They come across a body of a woman who is dramatically revealed to be not Anne, and they take some time to dig her a proper grave. The crew speculates on who this woman might’ve been, going hard into melodrama in their imaginings. The Mason boys except for Alt-Hal have some sad mom remembrance, but the search party ultimately comes up empty-handed.

While the search crew is out, Dr. Kadar examines some pictures of a large device that she’s been tasked with identifying. The device is the Volm weapon Mason has been hiding from everyone, but Dr. Kadar theorizes that it’s drawing more power than it needs, more power than it could possibly use.[/i]

Please use this thread to discuss the series’ twenty-fifth overall and third season fifth episode Search And Recover. Rule: Please keep spoilers limited to those revealed during the series up to this episode only.

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I’m certainly going to miss General Bressler. Since he was the only one who could fly the plane I understand that he left Keystone with Mason but I have a hunch he would have preferred to join up with the President’s crew upon leaving Keystone.

Kadar continues throughout the episode about the testing of all the new babies born in Charlottesville. It turns out that Alexis was the only one who had altered DNA. However, did anyone else think it was interesting that Marina Peralta never thought this was a main concern? I did.

At the beginning of the episode Weaver explains to Peralta that the 2nd Mass is a family that would do anything for each other. So why is it that Maggie keeps Hal’s condition a secret from everyone?

Does Marina have a thing for Weaver as Jeanne thinks? I don’t think so. I think her coming out to tell Weaver to come back safely was self-serving. Without Mason and Bressler around Weaver is the second most experienced military commander in town. She doesn’t want to lose that asset.

Mason’s continual dialog throughout the episode about how they were tracked at Keystone is interesting. He concludes that there was a tracking device on the plane since Lt Fisher didn’t give them the coordinates until they were up in the air. I wouldn’t put it past Cochise or Pope for being involved either.

Peralta’s possession of the Volm weapon’s pictures was interesting too. That coupled with her apparent disinterest in the DNA testing makes me very suspicious of her as well.

The Mason’s family obsession about their mom Rebecca and that they didn’t want to die alone or Jeanne Weaver’s request to her father to kill her before the Espheni could experiment on her were all conversations that I’m sure will come back in the story at some point.

Pope’s admission to Mason about killing the man who almost ran over his son was interesting. In fact I suspect that is why Pope really wants an airplane - to go search for his kids.

While Pope and Mason has a fighting relationship I really don’t think Pope is intentionally doing anything like spying or aiding the Espheni. I think Pope really does hate the aliens and want to try to find his kids.

The Volm are definitely hiding something. I suspect that after Kadar’s discovery that the humans will be attempting to find out exactly what’s going on in their secret batcave.

Looking forward to catching up with the next episode!

~Shooter Out