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Falling Skies


Gerard Daver
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It's helped that they keep expanding the alien frontiers in later seasons. It's still not as varied as Star Trek, but it's also not been four seasons of the same two kinds of angry Skitters and mechs over and over again like cookie-cutter video game minions. We've gotten to see new faces, some more interesting than others. (Doug Jones! :heart: )

 

Meanwhile, over on The Walking Dead: new zombie colors! New missing zombie parts! New differently skewered zombies! New zombie hats! New zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I agree with you on WD, it IS getting to the point where I need more than the characters simply surviving (or not) and going from one crisis to the next, with no real goal other than survival. There needs to be more of a purpose to the show.

 

Perhaps I will give FS another look, when I get around to it.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Well I was gonna say you're making a lot of judgments based upon 2-3 episodes. For instance in this kinda show characterization takes a back seat to world building the first couple eps

That's a fair statement. But in my defense, a show still has to have a hook to pull me in, and if it can't do it in the pilot and first couple episodes, I drop it. FS just didn't do it for me at the time. Now, WD DID pull me in with the very first episode and though it is starting to flounder, it still has me hooked just enough to keep coming back.

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Yeah, I've said this before-- this is the new golden age of television. At this point, showrunners should come out swinging at the Mad Mens, Breakings Bads, Justifieds and Walking Deads of the world. There's zero excuse for a by the numbers pilot.

 

If a pilot doesn't floor me, I'm out.

 

I hadn't seen the FS pilot until last weekend, and it snagged me. Honestly, it was the father/sons in the apocalypse dynamic that hit me. The idea of learning to let your kids go early because the world has ended struck a chord with me.

 

Case in point, 12 Monkeys was not strong enough for me to hang. Despite kind of clever plot and good production value, the lead actress was prety meh and the lead dude's face looked like a butthole.

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That courage to be able to not return to the status quo is a double edged sword, as seasons 3 and 4 demonstrated. It's very tricky to change plot goals and relationships, but not the theme-- that's the trick.

 

With season 3 being set in the underground city they lost it I think. It stopped being about a family fighting a war and turned into a political show. I think season 4 got it back on track though-- once they got past the hippie space love cult and space Hitler youth, (it's like they knew it was a bad idea too and ditched it after a few episode). I wished they'd spent more time in the concentration camps-- that was an interesting set up, even if giving Tom a superhero alter ego was a little lame.

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I was kind of on board for season 3, but I may just have been overly excited to have so many all-star additions around -- Terry O'Quinn, Doug Jones, Robert Sean Leonard, Matt Frewer. It was a fun parade of new people I've liked in other things. The Charleston arc wasn't my favorite, and Dark Hal made ma laugh when I wasn't supposed to, but they got it over with well enough.

 

To me season 4 was a total chore. I was so close to giving up. The second half was less bad, but overall it's my least favorite for a few reasons, #1 being I absolutely couldn't stand Lexi. I get that she was family and that's important, but she'd been around for all of ten minutes before growing old, and then she was so solidly, unambiguously on the Espheni side that I never bought the idea that Tom and company, after all they death and betrayals they've suffered, would be conflicted for one second over what to do about her. Episode after episode of giving her One Last Chance roughly 700 times got old and more unbelievable as they kept it up. While they're all desperately brainstorming justifications for not taking her out and instead letting her arc drag on because Won't Someone Think of Just the One Children, I wanted to see any family member pull a Scott Evil and offer to end her then and there. ("I have a gun! In my room!...")

 

I was also seriously ticked off that they took Lourdes, written since season 1 as a rare faith-driven TV character who wasn't an idiot, contrived to turn her into Dark Lourdes and then offed her. I'm sure the constant changes in showrunners spurred that abrupt about-face, but it was a disappointing waste that I thought pushed the show two steps backward to ordinary average TV.

 

And I'd agree Tom's alter-ego "the Ghost" was dumb. Reminded me of the Marauder from Marvel's Team America. :no:

 

In the way of good things about season 4, Pope and Mira Sorvino are a fun couple (even during her moments of doubt), and, though I don't buy Ben and Maggie together, Maggie with superpowers was awesome and I kind of wanted to see her in her own spinoff. Without Ben. So there's that.

 

With only the one season left to go, I figure I might as well see it through, but in general, season 4 and I are not friends.

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Yeah, Lourdes took a criminal turn. I THINK they're idea was that was spiritual, so she was the most likely to want to believe in something, especially after her crisis of faith in season 2... but you're correct, she had also shown she was very smart so it was hard to buy.

 

What struck me most, and this is probably why I like the show-- but it borrows heavily from both the original V and Robotech. Lexi is Elizabeth the star child and Marlene of the Invid rolled into one.

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I've been watching since the start and I feel like I have to stick with this last season to see it through.

 

The first and second seasons were so good. 3 and 4... not so much. Now, it's not Heroes level of drop off, but it's noticeable. There are enough good elements still to keep me from throwing in the towel. Interested to see how they decide to wrap it up.

 

I never really compared Falling Skies to Walking Dead before.

 

 

The key thing that separates them to me is that Walking Dead seems to have a real tangible weight to it. Anybody could die and at any time. Whether that is actually true or not, I don't know. But they've done a good enough job selling it that I believe it.

 

Falling Skies doesn't have that weight. You know Tom and his family are going to be fine. I never once thought any of them was in real danger.

 

If I sat down and thought about it I'm sure I could think of some other key differences, but to me. Walking Deads weight give it a sense of realism, whereas Falling Skies lack of it, make it feel like a cable tv show.

 

Edit: The thing that pissed me off most about the last season of Falling Skies was Anne. For 3 seasons she was the goddamn doctor. Season 4 she is some sort of commando all of a sudden? It was laughable whenever they tried to make it work and completely took me out of it. You are the doctor. Do doctor things.

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I was okay with her going commando-- but not at the expense of forgetting she was a doctor-- like when SHE went to the scientist dude with medical problems. And speaking of him-- I liked the actor-- but every week what type of scientist he was (physicist? engineer? geneticist?) seemed to change, along with his dysfunction (agoraphobe? social anxiety? sadz0rz?).

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Feels like the added Lexi to get rid of her. I'd be really curious to know if the plan from day one was to have her age fast and be traitor then die. Imagine how powerful the show would be if Ben was in Karen's place.

 

(minus Karen making Hal come to the woods to bone... though that would be pretty messed up too)

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like when SHE went to the scientist dude with medical problems. And speaking of him-- I liked the actor-- but every week what type of scientist he was (physicist? engineer? geneticist?) seemed to change, along with his dysfunction (agoraphobe? social anxiety? sadz0rz?).

 

 

That part was by far the apex of her stupidity. The way it was done was in such a way that she seemed to have almost no medical knowledge at all at that point.

 

I liked the scientist guy too. Set him up well in Season 3 and then promptly destroyed it by using him as the Exposition Scientist in season 4.

 

Shadow, a death of one of the Masons would have went super far in establishing some credibility with the audience.

 

FIVE of them are captured at different points in the series and the other one was taken over by an alien worm. And all of them are fine. That tells you all you need to know about how serious the stakes are in this show.

 

(FYI Tom, Ben, Matt, Anne, Lexi all captured. Hal of course with the worm)

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  • 5 months later...

The show originally had a more optimistic, hopeful tone, regardless of whether or not they were killing anyone off.

From season four onward, not so much. Especially after killing off the single most positive character on the show.

...

So! Who's on board for the death march to the series finale? Show of hands? Last week's premiere was better than most of season 4, but the show clearly wishes it were anything other than what used to differentiate it from all the other post-apocalypses.

Also, I think I've pretty much guessed how the rest of the season plays out, at least for Tom:

In a recent interview, current showrunner David Eick said this final season will be about the characters going to darkest places to win the war, but then figuring out if they can regain their humanity after the battle is over and after committing atrocious acts to win. In so many words.

At the end of last week, an overlord takes over Ben's brain and makes empty threats. POW. Tom empties a clip in his head. Ben seems fine. He has only one other line for the rest of the episode, and it's a very non-specific, general response to someone else's specific question.

So I'm thinking at the last second the overlord's consciousness abandoned ship and jumped into Ben's brain with the intent to infiltrate and destroy Our Heroes from within and whatnot. Eventually it'll be up to Tom to face down the hard choice: can he murder his own son to save the human race?



I'd rather be surprised and wrong than counting down to my grand "TOLD YOU SO!" moment six episodes from now, but that's my take. I guess we'll see.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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