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If you are reading this, you are a faithful fan and we applaud your resilience! This is Berserker Cast Episode 22 covering Falling Skies season 5 episode 7 entitled “Everybody Has Their Reasons.” This episode originally aired on August 9, 2015. Only three episodes remain in the final season of this post-apocalyptic alien drama and many fans are wondering why we are where we are.
It is not our custom to bash Falling Skies. Both Darrell and I (Emilee) repeat very often that an episode of Falling Skies is better than no episode of Falling Skies, but even that mantra is challenged with this seemingly ill-timed episode. There’s nothing wrong with the episode from a production or direction standpoint, it’s extremely well produced and the drama is tight, but it’s events within the larger story is puzzling.
During our discussion, I draw out all the similarities this episode has to when the 2nd Mass first arrived in Charleston, back in season 2. Looking back, that model worked nicely for where the story was at that time. The 2nd Mass essentially hadn’t encountered any other humans who’d survived in the numbers they had, when they were brought into Charleston, and witnessing what the settlement was attempting was like a breath of fresh air. Slightly polluted fresh air, as it turns out, but the drama played out nicely and moved them cleanly into a new plot for the third season.
As we near the end of the final season, now, we don’t have that same luxury. It’s hard to see the same obstacles, wearing different masks, crop up again and again as the 2nd Mass slowly makes its way to the final battle.
Since hindsight is 20/20, I expect our post-finale discussion will provide some much-needed perspective on this episode and several preceding it. Until that time, it pains me to say that an episode is a waste of time because I really don’t want that to be the case. But looking at the reality of television, of the history of this show, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that all of the Masons will die in the next episode. Even though they’ve been sentenced to death, I am fairly confident that at least one of them (and most likely all of them) will survive. And because of that, the closing “cliffhanger” isn’t much of a cliffhanger; all it does is make me frustrated that the next episode will continue to devote time to this stalag of a naval base.
But, there’s always hope. If we know anything about Falling Skies, an episode can strike us all differently at any given time. It still has the opportunity to surprise us. (And by surprise, I don’t mean killing off all the Masons….. just so we’re clear.)
Next Week
Season 5 Episode 8: “Stalag 14th Virginia”
Feedback
The series is winding down! Very little time left to throw out theories, BUT we still want them!! Send your reactions, theories, or general comments directly to us by using our feedback form. You can type out an email, upload an audio file, or record a voicemail, all from the same page.
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