They could’ve even made it out to be non-vindinctive. They could’ve given a speech like “You’re collaborators. You’ve already crossed that line. If the skitters find you, the first thing you’ll do is grovel before them and try to give them anything they want. And this includes what you know about the resistance. We can’t let that happen” and then execute them. That would both be colder, and yet more logical, and would certainly not be violence for violence’s sake, so it’s really dissapointing they don’t go that route. Quite frankly an end of the world show with network TV sensibilities is just boring when you compare it to better, darker stuff we’ve had over the last decade.
Out of boredom, I watched an episode of this series the other day. I think I’d rather be bored.
More dumbassery:
OK, we’ve got a kid who still has alien hardware inside him, who’s acting really odd, and who seems strangely sympathetic to the skitters. On top of that, he seems to be displaying some telepathic abilities.
I know! Let’s bring him into the room when we are discussing our plans for attacking the aliens! Because it makes perfect sense for him to be present, right? Also, let’s give him a good look at the new ammunition we’ve developed!
Sure, he’s acting really weird, but that’s probably just hormones, right? You know how teenagers are!
Besides, it’s best if we keep all our military plans right out in the open for everyone to hear and see. After all, there’s no chance any human could ever cooperate with the aliens, am I right? I mean, that’s never happened in this very series one episode ago, right?
Fortunately, the aliens don’t seem to be any less inept at military tactics than the humans are. They send one random Mech to take out the the Prof and Co., when simply having a second one on hand would have pretty much guaranteed success. No backup at all? And what about crazy lady talkiing to the harnessed girl through the door? Didn’t that kind of give away the game a bit as well?
At this point the only thing the series seems to be doing well at all effectively is making the aliens creepy. I’ll still confess to enjoying this show, but it’s now gone well into guilty pleasure territory.
This is the same group who spent most of episodes 2,3, and 4 having in-depth strategy sessions and personal heart-to-hearts right in front of the alien prisoner who was clearly studying them.
They left it alone with Ricky, even after it demonstrated that it could control him.
They never even posted a guard on the thing which allowed it to kill the surgeon.
Operational security and basic common sense do not seem to be SOP for the 2nd. Mass.
I presume they’ve beaten us over the head with the harnessed kid thing enough that communicating with the aliens will be an important plot thingie next week.
Someone here already guessed that the skitters were themselves harnesses by another group?
Have tried to watch it but its too "Soapy " for me.
Sucking more than ever.
Mech sound still freaking me out.
Just the other day I watched the movie adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender (and it sucked as much as I had heard) and I realized the actress who played the blonde, blue-eyed Princess Yue (of the Northern Water tribe) is the religious girl in Falling Skies.
So, in this latest episode, are they saying that the harnesses physically turn other types of beings into the skitters? So that, over time, a human could end up looking like a skitter?
That seems to be a “popular theory among viewers”, but I’m not sure I’m buying it. It would appear the harnesses are instrumental in assimilating another life-form’s mind (cf. Rick), but physically morphing the body as well? It would be more believable to posit the skitters began as some other life form not too dissimilar from what they are now (the last race conquered by our new bipedal overlords maybe), and humanity’s future is to be similarly assimilated into slaves/underlings.
Yeah, I think still looked roughly the same, but the harness slowly gave them the hard exoskeleton.
Well, they are doing something right. 
Yeah the harness was DEEP inside the skitter, whatever they are now grew over what they were before.
I assumed when I first saw the harness they meant the Skitters were a race the third party aliens harnessed and just as much victims as the humans were and but realized quickly they meant what you just wrote which is less interesting IMO.
That was my take, too, and I agree it would be more interesting (and logical) if the skitters were just another enslaved race.
As the original OP of this thread, I am glad to see all the comments, but also glad to see this show wrapping up next Sunday. There have been a few interesting moments, but for the most part I think it is chock full of “duh” moments. Apparently the aliens were pretty clever and killed off all the smart people when they landed, leaving only the dolts to survive:
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They finally capture a live skitter and pretty much don’t do anything with it; no attempt to discover physical weakness, likes/dislikes/ability to communicate, pain threshold, mental abilities, etc. And once dead, it takes weeks to think about doing an autopsy.
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Needless to say, the kids who have returned are a bit odd to say the least, but they allow them to sullenly sit in the corner and/or co-mingle with the group without any real discussion of what happened, or doing any physical/mental testing of them. A kid who fell down in gym class would have had better follow up than a kid who was captured by aliens?
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They hold up in a school that presumably has a library, but none of the masses go in there to learn how to cook, how to assist with simple medical procedures, how to plan military strategy and, I donno, maybe a thousand other skills and knowledge sets that might be of use?
Maybe they should have named this show the Darwin Theory and simply have the survivors drool in the corner and watch re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond until the skitters come and kill them all.
Any word if this show has been picked up for another season?
Yes, it was announced a few weeks ago that it was picked up for a season 2 with 10 episodes.
I’m having a seriously hard time liking this show. I say that with the fact that I LOVE alien take over the world movies/shows.
Or maybe this is the tipping point of my fascination. It seems to have been done before, and better. Although I haven’t seen last Sunday’s show (DVR’d), I gather from the comments here that it is revealed that the skitters are skittered, so-to-speak. Which reminds me of Skyline.
I’m thoroughly at the ‘meh’ stage and I’m hoping that it turns around.
At least the lucky hit on the landing flying machine didn’t cause a chain reaction that brought the whole alien structure down.
Will probably watch it when it comes back next summer - but apparently there is no longer any military to speak of in MA, so that story line has come to an end.
Seems odd that this is apparently the strongest resistance the aliens have come up against - it was pretty weak tea, from what we saw - maybe this is the first post iron-age civilization they’ve come up against? Although, I guess maybe they were surprised their first assualt worked so well, and thought there would be no resistance at all.
My major complaint is that the skitters (skidders?) were apparently shuffling their frequencies for no particular reason prior to the attack, but didn’t think to change once radio jamming was being used against them?