Friday, April 9, 2021

Falling Skies S1 E5: Silent Kill

"Studying them is our best chance at figuring out how to stop them."


The fifth entry in the series makes good use of suspense in what might be best remembered as the rescue of Ben episode.

Falling Skies, Season One, Episode 5, Silent Kill is another solid entry in the series ongoing alien invasion versus humanity story and it's once again a pleasure to watch it slowly and sometimes silently unfold.

It's worth noting that much of the suspense written for the entry was generated by scriptwriter Joe Weisberg. This would be the first of just three entries by Weisberg who would exit after a story for Season Two. Weisberg would become the king of television suspense when he departed Falling Skies to create, write and produce six exceptional seasons of The Americans (2013-2018), a truly underrated gem of television exploring the tensions of the cold war through two Russian spies and their family during the Reagan years and the 1980s when technology surely had its limitations.

Falling Skies, is replete with technological prowess, and was all the better for Weisberg's input too. The series is built upon actual, tangible monsters as much as it may rely upon some still solid CGI.
The resulting effort, Silent Kill, is a quality installment in the impressive science fiction drama.

For all of my complaining over the years about the CGI and special effects work in things like the Marvel franchise, Falling Skies offers some relatively spectacular production work on a TV budget. All of it is ultimately well-grounded by the human dynamics of the series something Weisberg would demonstrate to great effect on The Americans.

Director: Fred Toye. Writer: Joe Weisberg.

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