More Fallen Skies

Okay, I held off watching the second installment of ‘Fallen Skies’ until last night for a possible fresh perspective. There’s no doubt in my mind this is an all time classic unintentional comedy. I’ll handle the leftover element from the first episode – a captured cold blooded sociopath, John Pope. The flake should have been executed on the spot. Instead, what did the commander of the resistance do? He made Pope into the camp cook because he had experience in culinary arts from prison. Huh?! My wife, Saint Joyce, asked me why I busted up laughing. I explained there is nothing more ridiculous than putting a proven psycho in charge of making food for people he’s attempted to murder in the prior episode, but it was funny.

Second in command, Tom Mason, then scouts out his ‘captured & harnessed’ son’s whereabouts. The comedy keeps coming here with the aliens using harnessed kids to pile scrap metal. Note here to ET’s Spielberg – before you have a ludicrous scene like this please make an attempt to establish why aliens would conquer earth to become a ‘Scrappers’ reality show. No, Steven, it’s not enough one of the characters voices this very question. Next, the young blonde girl gets up and knocks a brick down, alerting the aliens, who although they have Star Wars weaponry and airships, can’t quite take down a handful of helpless human klutzes. Saint Joyce administered an NCIS head slap to me for laughing so hard she couldn’t hear the show. Dutifully chastened, I moved over to the loveseat out of range.

They all get back safely. Not a single idiot alien thinks to follow the puny humans back to their completely exposed hive where they could have ended this comedy show with one strike. Tom then gets issued orders to only bring back one harnessed kid – his son. Tom leads his fellow comedians out for yet another hilarious alien encounter, where one of his guys runs out when he sees his own son and mucks up an already incredibly unbelievable mission. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and both my hands are clamped over my mouth to keep from getting another Gibbs type admonishment from Saint Joyce as a mech robot alien gets the high ground over the Tom and his Brady bunch. With blasters capable of vaporizing everything in sight, what does the alien robot do? It stomps around on the roof until Tom Terrific gets away in an old truck with his comedic ‘Expendables’.

Meanwhile, Tom’s other son and bricklaying blonde girlfriend get captured - a goofy subplot so stupid the humor fled the scene along with all traces of believability. Tom Terrific fights an alien ‘Skitter’ in hand to hand combat, wins dramatically, and drags it back to human hive central in as my friend Charles Gramlich pointed out is a direct rip-off of Independence Day. Although these things are supremely telepathic and tech savvy, this ET didn’t bring along a tracer or send out a beam to his other telepathic brothers. TT again journeys into alien ‘Scrapper’ central with two of his sons now in alien hands. The kid who had just been captured with the blonde bricklayer wakes up unharnessed even though the ET’s had been harnessing everyone immediately. The bricklayer gets dragged off. The aliens execute a bunch of kids as a lesson not to mess with them in front of the kid and send him back to tell his Dad and the ‘Wild Bunch’ resistance. No tracer on the kid. No sneaky ‘Skitters’ following him to the human hive. In other words, no comprehensible reason for this mess. I’ll skip the other subplot with the rescued harnessed kid getting his rider cut off with the captured alien of course due to mind control him in the next episode of let’s rip-off some more ‘Independence Day’.

I confess I’m hooked. I haven’t laughed that hard since ‘Married With Children’ was on TV. I do have a suggestion for Spielberg. He needs Charlie Sheen to join the cast as newly arrived Supreme Commander of the resistance. I think I’ll have to do a first viewing of ‘Skies’ away from Saint Joyce though for my own safety. :)