Falling Skies is a soap opera about a small group of amateur soldiers, along with 200+ civilians, that have taken up residence in a High School in the aftermath of an alien invasion. They sometimes eat gourmet meals served up by a convicted murderer, or stare at a wall of photos of loved ones complete with candles (the same one seen in Battlestar Galactica, actually). At all other times they just talk endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. Yet they say nothing I want to hear. I find it helpful to gaze at my feet when this happens...
Anyway... let's talk about the 'show' shall we? The set up...
Imagine taking your average alien invasion movie; remove the invasion complete with edge-of-seat action and terrible but exciting, mind-blowing scenes of utter destruction. Remove any character building, or any characters of interest. Populate with life-size mannequins with the capacity for mindless vocalization. Smatter said dialog with essential exposition of plot points. Tell - don't show. For goodness sake, limit the action to 2 to 3 minutes per episode (action costs money!) And whatever you do, do not explain anything until the Season 1 Finale. If there's to be a cliff-hanger we need it to be at the end of the last episode. After that, the network can cancel and you can snicker at all the poor saps who watch through to the end in restless expectation of anything remotely resembling a succinct story. Better to go out with a laundry list of unanswered questions than to actually tell a good story. Who does that these days? You need to populate this world with second-rate Battlestar Galactica personnel, but give them shallow, utterly uninteresting back stories. Hint at the life they once enjoyed so they can relentlessly whine about what they lost. We have to hint at a soul; then we can pretend there are multiple dimensions to our listless 'characters'.
Lastly, throw in some under-the-top, unimpressive, lame, (and almost seemingly non-present) aliens, along with their devastatingly clichéd robot/cyborg/alien in suit counterparts. For goodness sake, do not waste any money on effects. Cheap is best. In fact, make the whole show look 10 - 15 years out of date. That'll help to disguise the fact that the audience are watching rehashed ideas from several older movies, shows and books. It all helps to reinforce that feeling of witnessing old friends.
There's more in the mix. I forgot to mention the other elements that should make up Falling Skies. I failed to mention pointless plot points, constant 'emotional' scenes filled with mindless, uninteresting dialog. I also didn't raise the fact that, 4 episodes in, almost nothing of worth should happen. And let's not forget that at this stage in the game, we certainly don't want to explain what it is the aliens want (or anything about the aliens at all for that matter).
Oh my...
One can only presume that all the really interesting stuff is being done by another group of individuals who actually do things that any sane person would really do in this situation.
No, the thing to do when you take a prisoner, apparently, is to put them in a cage for two episodes, and then kill them having learned nothing at all. Oh, when they communicate we can hear static on a radio. Fabulously useful. So how do you know when you're not just hearing... um... static? Apparently, when the alien apocalypse comes, the thing to do is to talk it out until the bitter end. Attacking the enemy is quite out of the question. In this show, there is a leader of men, an Iraqi vet old enough to have fought in Korea (or so it seems), that issues orders one at a time to his team of four or five people! No sense in rushing things since we have an entire season to fill with the usual network television blah.
I'm pretty much done with television now, as this is the latest show to disappoint in new and interesting ways. I think the goal now is to destroy the notion of dramatic TV by showing us how bad it will be from this point on. You don't honestly believe they don't know how bad this is? It has to be deliberate. There is no sense in engaging an audience any longer. We just need to have 5 - 10 minutes of dialog to see us through to the next commercial break. Why not just jam the commercials completely inside the show? We may as well have the lead extolling the virtues of some automobile or washing machine than sending me to sleep with inanity. At least that way there would be a point to this drivel.
Anyway... let's talk about the 'show' shall we? The set up...
Imagine taking your average alien invasion movie; remove the invasion complete with edge-of-seat action and terrible but exciting, mind-blowing scenes of utter destruction. Remove any character building, or any characters of interest. Populate with life-size mannequins with the capacity for mindless vocalization. Smatter said dialog with essential exposition of plot points. Tell - don't show. For goodness sake, limit the action to 2 to 3 minutes per episode (action costs money!) And whatever you do, do not explain anything until the Season 1 Finale. If there's to be a cliff-hanger we need it to be at the end of the last episode. After that, the network can cancel and you can snicker at all the poor saps who watch through to the end in restless expectation of anything remotely resembling a succinct story. Better to go out with a laundry list of unanswered questions than to actually tell a good story. Who does that these days? You need to populate this world with second-rate Battlestar Galactica personnel, but give them shallow, utterly uninteresting back stories. Hint at the life they once enjoyed so they can relentlessly whine about what they lost. We have to hint at a soul; then we can pretend there are multiple dimensions to our listless 'characters'.
Lastly, throw in some under-the-top, unimpressive, lame, (and almost seemingly non-present) aliens, along with their devastatingly clichéd robot/cyborg/alien in suit counterparts. For goodness sake, do not waste any money on effects. Cheap is best. In fact, make the whole show look 10 - 15 years out of date. That'll help to disguise the fact that the audience are watching rehashed ideas from several older movies, shows and books. It all helps to reinforce that feeling of witnessing old friends.
There's more in the mix. I forgot to mention the other elements that should make up Falling Skies. I failed to mention pointless plot points, constant 'emotional' scenes filled with mindless, uninteresting dialog. I also didn't raise the fact that, 4 episodes in, almost nothing of worth should happen. And let's not forget that at this stage in the game, we certainly don't want to explain what it is the aliens want (or anything about the aliens at all for that matter).
Oh my...
One can only presume that all the really interesting stuff is being done by another group of individuals who actually do things that any sane person would really do in this situation.
No, the thing to do when you take a prisoner, apparently, is to put them in a cage for two episodes, and then kill them having learned nothing at all. Oh, when they communicate we can hear static on a radio. Fabulously useful. So how do you know when you're not just hearing... um... static? Apparently, when the alien apocalypse comes, the thing to do is to talk it out until the bitter end. Attacking the enemy is quite out of the question. In this show, there is a leader of men, an Iraqi vet old enough to have fought in Korea (or so it seems), that issues orders one at a time to his team of four or five people! No sense in rushing things since we have an entire season to fill with the usual network television blah.
I'm pretty much done with television now, as this is the latest show to disappoint in new and interesting ways. I think the goal now is to destroy the notion of dramatic TV by showing us how bad it will be from this point on. You don't honestly believe they don't know how bad this is? It has to be deliberate. There is no sense in engaging an audience any longer. We just need to have 5 - 10 minutes of dialog to see us through to the next commercial break. Why not just jam the commercials completely inside the show? We may as well have the lead extolling the virtues of some automobile or washing machine than sending me to sleep with inanity. At least that way there would be a point to this drivel.
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