I really got into this series during its first season. I heard about it because Scalzi talked about it on the whatever, and how he’s a creative consultant for the show. What an awesome gig.

I watch it entirely on Hulu, and loved the first season. Second season is shaping up to be just as cool and well done. One thing about this episode though, bugged me a little.

Massive spoiler. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, do not read on.

I think they may have made a huge mistake by killing Reilly. Reilly was a run-of-the-mill air force soldier. He didn’t have a special history. He wasn’t tougher than anyone else. He wasn’t smarter than anyone else. He wasn’t one of the required social or racial minorities. He was just a dude who did the right thing. He was nice to people, and when the chips were down he did what he believed was right as best he could. I related to him because of all that.

He never played a really huge part in any of the shows. He was just in the background most of the time, standing upright. I didn’t need him to do more. It was enough that he was there, providing a baseline for the show. Acting as the everyman, at least for me.

And there’s no one left like that on the show. Everyone that’s left has some sort of tic or past or super-special attribute that breaks their congruency with me. And how he died made me think that the writers never really got him. Or rather, they didn’t do what he did for me on purpose. It was an accident.

He finds himself trapped and bleeding out. He’s in pain. He’s going to die. His solution is to ask Colonel Young to kill him, and the Colonel does.

It didn’t surprise me that the colonel did it. He lets his whiny emotions rule him when he shouldn’t all the time.

It surprised me that Reilly asked him too. If he’s going to die anyway, why not risk an all out attempt to get him free? Killing him in an attempt to get him out of the wreckage would have been clean. Committing suicide by commanding officer was not. It was just a bad call all around, and not the kind of bad call Reilly had ever seemed he was likely to make. I could more easily have bought it if he had simply sent them on their way and then quietly expired, alone with his thoughts, in the wreckage.

It may not wreck the show for me, but if they keep blowing it like that going forward, it might. I hope not.