TNT's Falling Skies Live Blog

Falling Skies is a new show airing in the summer season on TNT. My initial reaction was that I don’t really go to TNT looking for great science fiction dramas. They are the station you go to for reruns of Charmed. Regardless of my expectations for TNT as a network Falling Skies drew me in. I can’t ignore a show with Steven Spielberg attached to it.

The basic premise of the show is that aliens have invaded earth. The show doesn’t bother with the nitty gritty details of how the invasion happened or try to show us flashy graphics of alien space ships fighting the human military. We lost that’s it. End of Story. Except that is isn’t.

We follow a band of rebels. The 2nd Massachusetts to be more specific. Our liaison into this chaotic broken world is Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) a former history professor. When the show starts he becomes the second in command of his group of rebels when the larger group is forced to break up because the alien scanners are getting better at finding them. He has two sons, the young Max (Maxim Knight) and his oldest Hal (Drew Roy).

Falling Skies premiered June 19th at 9pm. The first hour of the two part series premiere focused more on the aliens. Leading a scouting party to find food Tom, his son Hal, and a band of rebels go out to collect food for their group of rebels and civilians. On this trip they encounter not only all of the types of aliens that we need to know about to understand the situation they are in but also Tom’s third son Ben (Connor Jessup) who was lost and believed dead. They make it out of the food expedition alive and decide they need to go and save Ben.

The second hour of Falling Skies takes a different turn. Here we see Tom and his group scouting an building that they believe to be an arms stock house. Tom wants to go search for his son right away but he realizes that he needs to play ball with the rest of the military command if he wants to stay alive. At the arms stock house they encounter John Pope the more than slightly psychopathic leader of a group of marauders who enjoy killing the “Skitters” for fun and don’t really want to interact with other people. The rest of the episode focuses around Tom and his son escaping Pope. Through his conversation with Tom, Pope reveals himself to be a much more thought provoking character than one might expect from a man who for all intents and purposes sounds like a murderer and a criminal. After a daring escape Tom gets his people home and prepares to go out to find his son.

The following is a live blog transcript that I wrote during the commercials. You’ll have to excuse any confusion, I wasn’t intending to write a plot summary here only my initial reactions to everything that happened. I’ve marked where the commercials were and the break between hours. I hope you enjoy.

LIVE BLOG

During the first commercial.

I’m liking Falling Skies so far. We’ve gotten a really rough idea of what the situation in the world is like. I really dug the kids explaining the history. It gave a really interesting and slightly innocent perspective of the horrors that must have happened.

Then we get right into the action. I didn’t have to wait very long to see what the aliens were like. They are called skitters and they are kind of like lizard spiders. They key here slipping information without making it sound like intentional monologuing. Particular little touches, like
the use of action figures sitting on the war table obviously being used as markers for troops was a nice little touch. Already the world feels like a war torn place. But people are hanging together.

During the second commercial

First commercial down and now we get to see a little civilian life. The main character, who’s name I still haven’t caught, is a professor and now the second in command of the troops and a group of civilians. They are ordered to split up and move out. Apparently the reason the rebellion has been able to work so far is because the “skitters” scanners can only get groups of people that are big. But that number is getting smaller, so the people need to break into smaller groups.

During the third commercial

Alright we’re only two commercials in and I’m already a little tired of the “Hey this guys a professor he talks about history all the time” gag. Maybe its just me but that is specifically the kind of characterization that I dislike. Its almost as bad as if he’d just kept saying “I’m a professor” over and over again. The show was doing a really good job not jumping the shark in its first episode, a frequent problem with heavily sci fi theme’d TV shows. I get that its hard to build characters quickly and that in television you need to get your characterization across quick to hook people but I’m a little disappointed. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and move on.

During the fourth commercial

A quick note between commercials so that I can get this on the record. I think they are setting up the arrogant military leader, the guy in charge of the group we’re following, not the white haired guy in command, to die. They are setting up the non military main character to be the leader of everyone.

Alright. So this looks like the group that will be the main characters. It’s a little stereotypical; the rebellious son of the main character, one Asian guy, one black guy, a Hispanic guy, a kid who looks a little too young to really be a fighter, and the girl who will inevitably become the love interest of the main characters son. The father is learning how to let his son go out into battle. It looks like we’re really trying to hit every militant apocalypse archetype ever.

During the fifth commercial

So the main character’s son is alive. His third son. Although he’s been captured by one of those neck slugs. The ones that don’t come off without killing the person “wearing” it. Here’s the seed of another story arch. I don’t hate that the story is a little predictable so far. I’m kind of being sucked in anyway. I like that they just called the robot things “mechs” when film and tv shows shy away from popular science fiction terminology to avoid seeming cheesy it doesn’t always work. This seems like some kid who played too many video games called them that one time and it just caught on. I think it works. I like when genre shows don’t shun their own genre. Same reason I think people in zombie movies should reference zombie movies.

During the sixth commercial

The getting the food from the store part pretty much went exactly the way I expected it would. There was no way they were going to get in and out without a fight.

I liked the way the alien died. I kept thinking, I hope that they don’t take the easy way out and have them suddenly relate to the alien because he’s in pain and dying. They didn’t and that was a good move. It regained my hope for the show.

We’re halfway through now. On the to the second half.

During the seventh commercial and the end of the first hour of the show

Now the show is starting to hit its stride. I’m definitely enjoy it more now. I think every show gets to have an awkward first hour. Especially a show with so much sci fi in it. You have to really sell aliens and robots hard or it just comes off as cheesy 90’s television. I think we’re past that point.

Interesting talk with the bio teacher. I really hope that we’re working toward the captured humans being kidnapped and turned in to the mechs. Not that I really think that would be nice of the aliens, but it would be an interesting plot twist.

Speaking of sci fi archetypes I don’t think you’re allowed to make a post-apocalyptic genre piece without a little in human fighting. In the case of an alien attack and invasion we will be our own worst enemies.

During the eighth commercial

Man this guy is a dick. Good sign though. I can respect a show that can create a character that I hate on a very basic level. It’s really not as easy as you think. They get a lot of credit for that. I’m not sure why he had a sword though. I guess a lot of psychotics are into showmanship. I like how even he recognized the stereotypes of the characters. It’s a little silly when even characters in the show are pointing how you’re playing into typical archetypes.

I wasn’t really clear on how they got captured really. Seemed to me like they could have just walked away. But I’ll bite and go along.

During the ninth commercial

First off I want to ask, where do people get those kidnappers head sacks? I’ve never seen them in my daily life but every crazy terrorist seems to have a bunch of them.

I take back everything bad I said about the psychopath. All of the stuff about creating characters that you can hate still applies. The leader of the military forces is still plenty hate-able. If he doesn’t die before the end of this episode I’ll be confused. They are really building that up.

Getting back to the psychopath, he’s not my favorite character so far. He’s really pessimistic but it’s important to show not everyone will just sacrifice and blindly follow the military resistance. I hope he sticks around. He’s a little too crazy to really fit in, but he’d make a great second in command for when the main character, who’s name I still haven’t caught, becomes the head of the resistance group.

During the tenth commercial

The psychopath is really showing off that he’s not too bad of a guy. He’s still really evil, but he’s redeeming himself enough that he is probably going to stick around. I was kind of hoping that the military guy would do something stupid, save all the main characters but get himself killed in the process. I know it’s coming. They need to just get it over with.

End of the show. These are my initial reactions to the show after it ended.

Wow, the main characters got out of captivity fast. So fast that I missed it actually happening. It was nice to see them not lose their big gun and all their food though. That was a really great final battle. Unfortunately my prediction that the main military guy would die didn’t happen, so now I just look like a mean and spiteful person. In fact from the preview for next week it looks like he’ll probably be sticking around for a while. Where is my hat, I think I need to eat it.

The flip side of that is that it looks like the psychopath will also be sticking around too. He had some of the best lines in the entire show. I didn’t get back to my computer in time to remember it correctly, but his line about how being the leader of post-apocalyptic marauders was tiring was fantastic. I don’t want to say that he single handedly saved the show, but well, he single handedly saved the show. Personally for me he made the difference between me thinking it was worth the two hours and actually being excited to see what happens next week.

Overall I liked the show a lot. I think it had a weak first hour, but as I mentioned before that is a problem suffered by many science fiction shows. As a show runner you need to balance getting out the information about what is going on, what are the rules of the show universe, and give a rough idea of the extent of the science fiction all without really showing your hand or over doing the cheesiness that tends to come with science fiction television. Its a hard medium to do good science fiction in and I certainly give them a lot of credit for doing it.

The second half of the show really brought it all together and sucked me in. The addition of the non-rebellion militants was a good way to balance out the really alien-heavy science fiction of the first half. Here Falling Skies can learn a lot from The Walking Dead. Ultimately the show has to be about the characters and their interactions. Yes there are aliens/zombies, but that is only the foundation upon which the characters will build the show. That is the difference between most 90’s alien shows and truly great science fiction.