Falling Skies 5.07: "Everybody Has Their Reasons"

“Loyalty was always your strength. And your weakness.”
- Captain Katie Marshall

So this episode felt kind of like a rehash almost of plots a few seasons back when the 2nd Mass ended up with those weird Patriots. Tom, Hal and Weaver are out scouting an active military base while Cochise and the awesome tech guy are back at camp trying to figure out the Espheni hub device. For the record, they aren’t having much luck with it and they manage to blow out some of the windows of the building. Oops! But they eventually get it loose and head off to join the rest of the 2nd Mass. More importantly though, just as Tom, Hal and Weaver start approaching the base, they get ambushed by soldiers led by Captain Katie Marshall. She and Weaver have history back when wars were just fought between people.

The rest of the 2nd Mass shows up and much like past episodes where they’ve run into other groups of humans, they seem to be welcomed at first. It must be something about the military structure that makes people kind of extra jumpy. Sure at first it seems people are getting along during meal time. Weaver and Marshall chat about old times and it is implied they were maybe romantic despite having spouses stateside. And Hal is kind of defensive of Isabella toward one of the soldiers. Honestly, and I know I’ve said it many times before, I’m tired of the Hal love triangle mess. Enough already. Let him be with Isabella. Hell, at this point I think Maggie just needs to be by herself without a man in the mix. She needs to figure out who she is sans spikes now and she doesn’t need Hal interfering. Also, we get a sweet little moment with Tom and Matt where Matt shows his dad the polling he’s been doing about what they want to keep after the war.

Unfortunately, things take a bad turn very quickly. Some of the 2nd Mass and the soldiers get together and are drinking and inevitably Ben’s spikes get brought up. At the time, the soldiers act like it’s funny but later, while he’s in the bathroom, a bunch of them jump him. He fights them off pretty well (I was worried he might have killed one or two) when he gets a Taser to the neck and when he wakes up he finds himself chained up. I’m tired of Ben being put through the ringer, too. He didn’t ask to be enslaved and set free. But this is just another manifestation of Marshall’s paranoia. Tom and Hal learn that she’s been having her troops go after what they call human collaborators. I’m pretty sure she’s not going to be happy with how much the 2nd Mass has been dealing with the Volm. Also, I’m not really sure exactly what the point of this little side plot is but Anne is dealing with an injured soldier which involves using maggots to eat away necrotic tissue. Gross!

Things are not looking good for Ben. As I mentioned he wakes up strapped down to a table and one of the soldiers (sadistic prick) yanks out one of Ben’s spikes. Just because Maggie survived, doesn’t mean that Ben will! I know we’ve heard that a Mason is supposed to die this season but I was really hoping it would be Hal and not Ben or Matt. Don’t kill the kids, guys! Tom gets into an argument with Marshall when he’s trying to find Ben. Seriously, they can’t go around torturing teenagers! He and Hal get locked in the brig for being suspected of collaboration. This smacks horribly of locking American citizens up in Guantanamo for being suspected terrorists. If the 14th Virginia is claiming to be military, shouldn’t they not be complete assholes?

Before long, a bunch of other members of the 2nd Mass are being rounded up. Weaver goes to have a word with Marshall where she says that she has to do this because they are military and that’s what they do. She claims they’ve been fighting on all sides and rounding up human collaborators is just a part of it. So Weaver sends Matt on a mission back to their prior location to get reinforcements. At least the youngest Mason is out of harm’s way. Though, Anne (having filled the soldier’s belly with maggots) gets threatened with being locked up, too when she finds out her husband and son have been caged. It just disgusts me with what the gang is being put through!

Before the court martial gets called (seriously they need to chill out with all the military crap), Maggie and Isabella have a bit of a bonding experience. Maggie is evading capture when she hears Isabella screaming. One of the soldiers (the one who tortured Ben) is trying to rape her (because we needed yet another reason to hate this bastard) and Maggie gusts in. He’s okay with that because he wants to hurt her too for having had spikes (even if they’re gone now). Luckily, Maggie is still kind of a badass and she and Isabella work together to take the guy out. I do hope they find a way to restore the Mason clan. Speaking of, they’re facing that court martial and all of their accomplishments against the Volm are being thrown back at them as lies and Espheni tricks. These people are so paranoid it is really disgusting. It also makes me question where they are getting all of this information. I mean we haven’t seen Pope in a bit and we know he’s not dead. Maybe they ran across the 14th Virginia and gave them all the intelligence? Weaver isn’t even doing much to defend his people which also bugged me (but hey, he finally cut off that nasty scraggly ponytail!). When Tom admits he has no idea how he got back to Earth after the whole going to the moon thing (I’m thinking not mentioning Lexi being a human/Espheni hybrid was a good move on everyone’s part), Marshall pronounces that Tom, Hal and Ben are guilty of collaborating and the sentence is death. I swear the 2nd Mass better not let their leaders down next week!