'Falling Skies' Season 2, Episodes 1 & 2 Recap - 'Shall We Gather at the River' (Part 2)

Back to Part 1 - "Worlds Apart"

The second part of the premiere manages to stay in one time period, which means less jumping around for us. But Tom's health is still in question: we open with him having a nightmare about Ol' One-Eye, which makes Tom wonder if the aliens might have done something to his mind while he was their prisoner.

Pope obviously agrees, but Weaver, for all his lack of trust last season, has absolutely no doubts about Tom now... at a point when he actually should. Weaver's judgment seems suspect at times.

Any worrying on Tom's part is confirmed when he starts crying blood. Is he a vampire? Nope, he just has a creepy parasite in his eyeball, which Dr. Glass ever-so-gently yanks out with tweezers. Remember that bit in The Matrix when they pull the bug out through Neo's bellybutton? It's like that, only with AN EYEBALL.

They put it in a glass jar, where it waits patiently until the company goes on the move. At that point, it burrows out of its jar and flies off to meet up with... Ol' One-Eye. That sneaky bastard. Presumably the bug is some kind of recon device, so that's not good.

The company solves yet another conveniently created problem this episode, as they often do. In the first part, it was masking heat from the engines. This time, they need to cross a bridge, but the bridge is accidentally destroyed when the recon squad blows up an alien ship above it. That stalls 2nd Mass long enough for some character development.

Ben steps up and offers to cross the river alone to scout the area ahead, since he's superhuman and all. He learns that the ships are controlled by some kind of gelatinous psychic mass, and that there's a structure ahead controlling them. He also reveals to Tom that the spikes in his back are getting worse, and the two have a philosophical debate about whether love is more powerful than hate, because that's what fathers and sons do.

Ultimately, Hal and company bust the tower and allow 2nd Mass to cross the bridge, but not before the wheel conveniently follows off the medical bus. More manufactured tension! That leads Tom to go head off the pursuing mechs and skitters at the end of the bridge, which then leads to the classic (read: cliche) running across the bridge that's about to blow.

Pope does us the favor of just detonating the thing early, but Tom survives anyway (of course).

Other than that, not much of note in this episode: just a lot of migration. We do see, however, that Lourdes and the tech guy are now an item (why not, neither of them matter), and through a very heavy-handed conversation about animals mating for life between Maggie and Hal, we can see that there's something going on there too. Poor Karen.