Rating: 6.7/10
So Falling Skies has been a heavily advertised and anticipated post alien-invasion series on TNT. Basically, aliens come and completely wipe out the majority of the human population. The aliens are hard to kill and come with superior weaponry. We don't really know why the aliens are on earth other than they like to strap on harasses to children which then enables the aliens to control them. The main character is a former college history professor, Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) who, along with his 2 sons, fights among the resisting humans named the 2nd Massachusetts. Mason ends up as second-in-command leader and is not highly thought of amongst the other more experienced military commanders. Mason and his eldest son continually get caught up in trying to save Mason's 3rd and harnessed son from the aliens. As Mason leads small missions in alien territory something always doesn't go as planned, which then introduces a new set of characters and/or adds problems to the already enormous fiasco of an alien invasion.
Negatives:
Even though this series is high quality as far as production goes, I feel it gets much too boring much too often. When there is a very rare scene of intensity or action it is very short lived. It lacks that sci-fi action and creativity that everyone wants.When I am watching the action scenes I don't feel as engrossed as I should. I just don't think the mood that is trying to be set quite comes off the way it should. In addition, the majority of the plot seems to be just a bunch of dialogue that is often not very engaging, so I find it gets very dull at some points.
Another thing that I feel isn't very well done is the character relationships. I don't quite feel as emotionally invested in them and their problems as I would like to be, but based on the previews for upcoming episodes relationships may evolve into something more interesting.
My own personal opinion is that the soundtrack and the whole mood of the show should be more mysterious and darker.
Positives:
Even if the action fails to enthrall you as much as it should, the cg is pretty good as far as tv goes and production is top quality. I haven't seen shows that have pulled off the special effects that this one has. The aliens are well animated and come off as scary. The environment feels real and accurate. The aliens are really interesting and you get excited when they get their small little part in every episode.
This show seems to accurately display some of the likely problems humanity would encounter in a post-apocalyptic setting. I think they do a good job with setting up all the roles within the nomadic community. The acting up to this point has also been pretty solid and believable besides a "cheeze-ball line" every once in a while.
After only 2 episodes there are a lot of questions that are unanswered, and I am interested in the show enough to want to continue watching and find out.
Overview:
I think Falling Skies has a lot of potential and places it could go. There isn't another show out their right now on basic cable that matches the production of this one. Right now I would say The Walking Dead is hands down better than this. I am still going to continue to watch Falling Skies, but I really hope they can incorporate more into every episode and pick up the intensity and character relationships. It has a lot of things about that you want to like but sometimes it is hard for you to get into it as much as you want. It needs to be a better job of bringing together all the stuff we want and getting rid of the rest.
