A friend pointed out a major weak spot to me

Ha ha. that's funny. My favourite blunder is at the very end when they blow up the factory. The group are standing in the ditch with a wide expanse of terrain behind them when the debris starts to fall on them, and only them - no where else in the background. Would have worked if the view had been from the front and not the side!

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I agree this is an interesting debate. Part of the explanation, IMHO, involves development of the Graboid creatures as the movies and the series progressed through time.

I'm willing to grant them a little lee way here, since this is a phenomenon common to most movie/tv series. Facts are never quite the same as things move forward, and many debates brew about a given series in it's nth season vs the original season or movie.

In the case of the Tremors saga, by the time the series came out, there was an ep called, "Night of the Shriekers," in which some shriekers were in similar cages, (specially made by the military and probably even stronger), and the shriekers had electronic controller chips in their collars which kept them dossile. An electrical storm fries the electronics, away goes the control, and the shriekers rip out of their cages like they were made of chewing gum and kill everyone at the camp.

You could argue that, in this case, the shriekers had been forced to be dossile for so long that they had a lot of pent up rage and hunger, (they were only fed enough to keep them functional for the experiment but not enougy to reproduce, and certainly not the ravagingly large amount they were used to devouring), and it was for this reason that they escaped so quickly.

Other eps in the series had Burt telling people how they could rip through sheet metal, etc.

My two cents at tieing continuity together from Aftershocks and the series: Remember that pretty soon after they had the shrieker in the cage and it reproduced in Aftershocks, he!! pretty much broke loose when one of many shriekers that had eaten Burt's "super food" broke a window and Earl drove it away with a hammer chisel and they all had to get out of the area fast and deal with the whole horde that had grown.

So, bottom line: The shrieker on Aftershocks wasn't caged that long, was fed a little to keep it happy, was almost about to give birth anyway, and was understandably preoccupied with that, and would have probably broken out pretty soon, (and almost certainly did so to join the others).

Kinda like the shriekers in the shed as everyone runs for the ditch with the explosion about to go off. They were pushing against the sheet metal walls, and perhaps after everyone got in the ditch, may have even started biting though the sheet metal and escaping, but to late and too close to the explosion to survive.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! :^)

As Burt says in the movie, "Basically they bite anything that's warm"

I wouldn't take that too literally; Burt's not a professional zoologist. He probably just meant that they attack anything that's warm, since they're attracted to body heat. As I said before, surely the Shrieker was aware of the bars' presence- it bumped into them when lunging at Burt. If it wanted to get out, it would certainly bite them.

One thing I've been thinking of is that maybe the Shrieker just couldn't get a good grip on the bars. It could try to hook its upper jaws onto them and then to twist and pull, but that wouldn't have too much effect, I think.

Help! I lost some weight and I can't find it anymore!