Saturday, July 2, 2011

Watch While You Still Can!

I do not watch a great deal of television. For the most part, I find television shows to be rather pathetic. I don't count having the History Channel on in the background as TV. So, when there is a show on that looks good, it can literally double the time I spend in front of the TV. So it was with a bit of excitement that I looked forward to the TNT network show Falling Skies. Alien invasion has been played out for the most part, with the initially fine, but then staggeringly miserable V. This was the year of alien invasion, with Battle: Los Angeles and Skyline in theaters. If you watched Falling Skies looking for spaceships blasting the weakling humans, you will be disappointed. The story of the invasion is told by children narrating crayon drawings of the aliens devastating humanity, so the action picks up with the resistance fighting back.

Set in the area of Boston, the show follows a resistance group holed up in a high school. They raid the aliens, known as "Skitters", who walk on four spidery legs. The Skitters have bipedal mechs with one arm a wicked claw, the other a wicked missile launcher. After killing the majority of the adults, the aliens enslaved children through means of a harness attached to the back and neck. This turns them into little more than zombies under control of the Skitters. A huge construction is visible over the skyline of Boston, and it is later learned that all the major cities have a similar building in them, as well.

As far as TV sci-fi goes, it is pretty run of the mill. The aliens are ugly, looking like a cross between a spider and a human, the mechs are incongruously sleek. The humans are riven with infighting and personal battles. There is a decided dark tone, however, as the enslavement of children 10-16 years old or so is somewhat disturbing. There is a scene where several are massacred in retaliation for a rescue attempt.

Overall, it remains to be seen just how far the series will go. (I have only seen 2 episodes.) The reviews have been mixed, however, and I am not sure just how tolerant TNT is of struggling shows. If it was on FOX, it would have been killed by now.

P.S. How The States Got Their Shapes is the best show on the History Channel, followed by (don't laugh...) Larry the Cable Guy's show Only in America. The Big Bang Theory has had a cancel worthy season this year.

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