On this week's episode: what part of "hold your position" did you not understand?
It's problematic if you're repeating the same beats by your third episode. Case in point: in the second half of the series premiere--"The Armory"--the episode starts with a young member of the 2nd Mass breaking ranks to save his dog, almost getting everyone killed. In "Prisoner of War," during a mission to retrieve Tom's son Ben from the aliens' slave labor scrap metal business, a squadmate (I can't for the life of me remember his name and the actor is not credited anywhere on IMDB or the show's page) sees his own son, Ricky (Daniyah Ysrayl), breaks cover, almost gets everyone killed and leads to just a general mess of things.
The whole sequence is part of an idiot plot, mitigated by a little bit of "yeah, I can kind of understand." Yeah, I can kind of understand, this guy is flipping out about finding his son, but man was he an idiot to jump up screaming the boy's name and putting a big target on the rest of his squad. It really defuses any sense of drama or tension in the show when you feel like many of the characters surrounding Tom are, on occasion, do things that maybe create action in the story but also require them to be completely and totally mentally deficient.
The worst part is, it feels like the nature of this week's plot made it obvious that something incredibly dumb like this would happen. As I noted above, the mission is to get Ben back because kind of sleazy/occasionally drunk/mostly cocky Dr. Steven Weber (I'm relying on the former Wings actor's real name because, again, I forgot and my IMDB crutch isn't helping) has an experimental method of removing the harnesses from the enslaved children that might work or might totally be fatal. Given that it's just the third episode, it probably wouldn't work for the major season-long motivation for lead character Tom Mason if he was able to get his son back.
This allows a couple of things to happen: it puts Ricky on the table for the procedure and it leads to a set of circumstances where Tom is able to capture a skitter single-handed. But in an ironic twist to the title, Hal's girlfriend gets nabbed by the aliens. Also, I just remembered that this is the second week in a row his character's been taken prisoner and forced to take the long walk back to camp to deliver a message.
If I keep harping on the show, why the hell am I still watching it? Because each episode seems to have the seed of a solid apocalyptic survival drama, and in theory the ideas behind the episodes are really solid. This one involves the group attempting to rescue Ben with complications ensuing. Straightforward and clear. Unfortunately, we get tripped up by the redundant nature of the obstacles for the characters as well as their profound stupidity and it trips up what could be a strong summer series.
Next week's episode is "Grace," where we learn a little more about the harnesses and the 2nd Mass attempts to interrogate their new prisoner.
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