Falling Skies finally came to a long awaited end. How was it? Find out here.
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| "Dude. Jeff Fahey? Couldn't you have showed up a little earlier?" |
Sadly, I was in the woods far away from the internet and the final moments of Falling Skies when it aired. While I contemplated this series finale, I had almost no real ambition for coming home to review this last episode. Much like season four, this last ten episodes was a sad science fiction affair that destroyed any hope for a proper sendoff for the undying Tom Mason and his un-showered, grime covered crew of gun wielding militia members. Comparatively, the show's final season was the exact opposite of the first two years. What started out extremely strong took a decisive turn into epitome of non-linear writing, god awful special effects, and a highly dysfunctional form of melodrama that got more annoying episode by episode. As a sucker for sci-fi, I was drawn into the first few episodes and for some reason never stopped watching.
Last night viewers were given what is said to be the end of Falling Skies, its various alien invaders, and a laundry list of unanswered questions. When finally sitting down this evening to watch Reborn it was hard not to imagine a much better version of Falling Skies where the writing was actually fluid, character arcs were properly completed, and actors actually gave two shits about what was happening to their respective stories. With a writing staff that kept putting the main characters in corners they couldn't get them out of, this last season was just a painful mess of constant motivational monologues from Tom Mason, short winded battle sequences, and misaligned themes continuously borrowed from greater genre entries.
Why on Earth did the finale come up short with elements ripped right from Aliens, another groveled speech from Wyle, and a standard run time? This would have been the perfect shot for the producers and writers to band together by handing audiences a ninety minute episode that gave us a righteous final dual between Pope and Mason, an extended battle between human and Espheni, and a real ending that didn't look to the skies giving us the feeling this could happen again? Instead (once again) we were granted too much talk and too little action while things wrapped up nice and pretty for this Noah Wyle passion project. Sidestepping a huge war scene between the two factions, we were begrudgingly handed a needless cameo by Jeff Fahey. What? Why would they introduce new characters during the final standoff? Stupidity, that's why. TNT unabashedly failed its viewers with what is possibly the most ham-fisted final episode in the history of television.
When Sunday comes next week, it will be a relief because this show is finally over. How on earth I continued to watch, I don't know. But you'll hear the same sob story from almost everyone that watched the entire series. We loved to hate Falling Skies. We're not sure why. And we can't give you answers. All we can tell you is that it started out really strong at the beginning and lost its way somewhere near the end of season three. We stuck through the stupid human/alien hybrid stuff. We listened to Noah Wyle's weird angry voice every week. We even gave it a pass when they introduced a star-child story that was a blatant rip-off of the original V.
Now it's over and we can all stop bitching about Falling Skies. That is, until they try to pull an event series. Lord, help us.
-CG
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