I started watching Falling Skies when the series premiered, partially because I enjoy good Sci-Fi and partially because TNT brainwashed me into it with the non-stop commercials between other shows and the non-stop advertisements during other shows.  The lead-up advertising for the show was so pervasive, it would not surprise me to find out a TNT representative was beside my bed personally whispering commercials to me while I slept.  So yeah, I have been watching it.

For those of you who may have not seen the show yet, this synopsis should get you pretty much up to date:

  • Some pretty nasty aliens (called Skitters) invade Earth, killing off most of us.  The show revolves around the survivors of that attack.
  • The aliens, instead of killing most of the children (say 7-18 year olds), have “harnessed” them with a sort of weird biological-thingy that attaches to their spinal cord (and God knows what else) to control the children, body and mind.  The upshot of this is that A) the harnesses seem to cure the children of any health problems they had before (in this case cystic-fibrosis) and B) the aliens seem to care about, perhaps even love the harnessed kids.  Awww, isn’t that nice?
  • The survivors are led by military-types (mostly) and kind of look at the civilians in their midst as total pains in the ass.  Ok, maybe not total pains, but pretty much.  (Personally, I think the civilians are unrealistically not bothersome, but maybe that’s just me.)
  • The parents of the harnessed kids obviously want them back, but sans harness, thank you very much.  After a few unfortunate tries (which are only talked about, never shown) the survivors figure out a way to get the harnesses off some of the kids they manage to rescue, but still aren’t sure about potential side effects.

Clearly, there are lots of other things that have happened such as the recent introduction of some sort of new nasty alien.  Well, this one’s not so nasty looking, but they are either in league with or in control of (I vote for the latter) of the Skitters.   Also, based on the last episode, it looks like those wonderful harnesses might have some pretty bad side effects.

So far, the show has done an amazing job of telling the story, developing characters (although I have yet to figure out why they killed off Steven Weber’s character so quickly), and keeping me interested enough to look forward to the next episode.  If you are into Sci-Fi and enjoy a good and (perhaps more importantly) original story you won’t be disappointed with Falling Skies.

The two-hour season finale is this Sunday at 9pm — up an hour from its usual spot at 10pm.  Important:  If you DVR it, it shows up as TWO different shows (at least with my cable company) so you may have to set your DVR to tape both time slots separately to get the whole show.