That's intelligent on his part.  The Mexican cartels are powerful and have co-opted large portions of the police through bribery and intimidation, but they don't operate with impunity.  Lots of their leaders have been captured or killed by the Mexican government, often the army or marines.  In the short-term, that…

With all of the debate and discussion amongst the human characters about the Volms' intentions, do we have any evidence that they've ever asked the rebel Skitters, "Hey, can you guys tell us what these Volm are all about?"

I noticed the same on the closed captioning.  I agree that ricin would be easier to obtain and extract, and I think it's also easier to handle safely than sarin.

I don't think Linder is "the" killer, though it certainly seems possible that he is "a" killer.  If Linder is "the killer", he's the biggest idiot ever to the point that it's implausible he could be masterminding this scheme.  The killer could have chosen any number of places to place the poisoned water, and the…

Good points. I'll preface my thoughts by saying that I've never lived in El Paso, but used to visit there frequently, so I have some knowledge of the place but less than a local.

Agree, any cell signal in a lot of the unpopulated areas near El Paso would surprise me, especially once you got away from major highways.

I concur, and part of my frustration is that Falling Skies introduced some potentially interesting new players - the Volm and President Hathaway - but hasn't done much with them at all.

This season has felt like about 6 episodes worth of plot stretched to fill a full season, and we got more of that in this episode. I will differ with Les and say that I'm glad that the dream sequence didn't go for the full episode, because it was clear what was going on after about 5 minutes.

Actually, thinking about it a bit more, the initial law enforcement reaction to finding an American judge's body dumped in the middle of an international bridge in El Paso would be, "Holy crap, did one of the cartels from Juarez cross the line and murder a U.S. judge in retaliation for one of her rulings?"  So there'd…

Agreed, there'd be massive resources devoted to it in short order from the federal, state, and local level.  For one thing, I'd expect a systematic review of the cases that the judge heard - especially any that resulted in heavy prison sentences - looking for threats and motive, which would require a lot of…

So, are we going to get some additional law enforcement agencies involved next week?  Maybe the task force that's been mentioned a couple times?  Because the writers have now brought into play the murder of 9 people outside of the city of El Paso, so they're going to have to explain how this remains an El Paso PD case.

Because she looks like Diane Kruger so finding a random guy for a one-night stand isn't exactly a challenge

I agree with mattepntr. I'm enjoying the show, and her character is interesting. Hope they cut down on the scenes where she's completely clueless about how most people behave, though, because it doesn't ring true for an experienced investigator. She may not follow those norms herself, but she should understand that…

Yes, El Paso to San Diego is approximately the same distance as El Paso to Houston.

I disagree with that premise. The episode made clear that the Picketts knew about the aliens, they just hadn't seen any personally.

One problem that I - and I think a lot of people - have with the character so far that she's a police detective who apparently lacks the social graces to question people without pissing them off to the point that they refuse to talk to her.I think the show has promise, but I'm struggling with how she has managed to be…

I agree with Willoughby, Sonya's surprise about the lack of investigative resources for murders in Juarez struck me as very clumsy exposition for the viewers' benefit. If nothing else, everyone in law enforcement in El Paso is keenly aware of what's going on in Juarez because they want to keep the violence from…

Fair point, and I think that border crossing has enough traffic that dumping a body would be pretty tough just due to the number of vehicles and light from their headlights. Even the episode showed a huge line of traffic that night after the body was found.

I agree with you on Marina - unfortunately, it also disappoints me. I think that was set up a couple episodes ago when she commented to Weaver about how everyone has lost someone in the war.

I agree. I think that the math was off, that the house would actually lose money if there were equal bets on each possible outcome.