The show revolves around a group of survivors living in the post apocalyptic Earth where Aliens have invaded and they are fighting for their survival. It got my interest immediately and I watched it as soon as it premiered because I love apocalypses and Aliens above all else. Yes, I lead a sad life. The show started off intriguing, following the Mason family and their group which is named the Second Mass. Aliens were capturing and enslaving human children that had survived the initial invasion, one of those children being a Mason. Of course the family gets their child back, and frees plenty of others which is fine, I can deal with that. I like an ambiguous and depressing ending, but I know that i'm one of a few that do so the show isn't going to cater to me, it's going to give the masses what they want. I'm used to that and I would've been fine with that if the show had ended after that plot. It didn't.
What followed was a bunch of romantic entanglements and confrontations with the Aliens that didn't seem all that menacing once it became evident that none of the main characters lives would actually ever be at stake. The characters seem to have become bigger than the show and theres no panic coming from me (and a quick browse around the internet shows me that other audience members feel as I do) and i'm not panicking about whether one of the Mason's or their friends will get killed because they won't. Being part of the Second Mass pretty much guarantees their survival so why am I watching? It's not really a show about their survival anymore, I mean the Aliens have had plenty of opportunities to wipe them out but they never did. This shows me that they are not at all a threatening force. The show needs to have balls to kill off major characters like The Game Of Thrones or The Walking Dead or whats the point? How does it really progress? The storylines may get bigger but the characters stay the same.
Speaking of the characters, I wouldn't actually mind them surviving if they were bearable. Like I said before, they seem to get an easy time of it from the Aliens and don't really seem to lose much. From what I can tell they don't seem to struggle and because of that they don't seem to have grown as characters. I don't think I can say they've grown if they're just getting more and more irritating. They say they've had a tough time of it when really they've gotten off lightly, they still have their loved ones around them and the only struggles they've really gone through is getting their love interests in their beds. When I imagine an apocalyptic setting I imagine people that have lost EVERYTHING, their homes, their families and their friends and it gives me a reason to root for them, I want to see them win and kick some Alien ass. In Falling Skies their family just seems to have grown and they seem to find new homes quite easily so why do I need to root for them? I'd rather just kill them all and follow another bunch of survivors.
The characters aren't my only issue with this show, I could ignore that if the storylines weren't getting more and more ridiculous by the week. It started off ok, I quite enjoyed the storyline that they started with, with the harnessed kids (Alien technology that was placed on humans backs to enslave them) and attempting to remove them without killing them. However, since about the second season the writers seem to have watched every science fiction film/TV show and probably read fan fiction about it and have extracted the most clichéd parts of the genre and placed it in the show. Right now theres a miracle hybrid baby that has aged AND changed race, has special powers and no one knows which side she's on. Seriously. It has become abysmal. So now, i'm happy to say that I've freed up 40-43 minutes of my life per week by giving up on this show and I can't be the only one to have jumped ship as it's been announced that the next season will be the last. It is a shame because the show did initially have potential, at this point it is too far gone so even though theres only a handful of episodes left I won't put myself through any bother by attempting to sit through it.
Live Long and Blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment