r/FallingSkies

Alright. Most of the tv I watch is with my wife. So there are one or two shows I have on the side for when she is out and I'm watching TV alone. Falling Skies is one of them, and the thing that annoys me the most about this show is the ever-changing landscape of tactics and weaponry.

First season: Our bullets do nothing to either the mechs or the skitters. Six people emptying seemingly unending magazines of .556 ammo from Kalashnikovs into skitters causes the equivalent of bee stings, and doesn't do anything to Mechs.

Enter Pope, who teaches everyone to shoot the legs, to slow them down, and then do the heads. This works.

Season two: Everyone is seemingly back to emptying dozens of magazines of ammo into the body of the skitters. And now it is effective. Kinda. Until we discover that the Espheni are using our own ammo, but just reloading the slug with Espheni metal. So we've taken down Mechs, and so we start reloading our ammo with Espheni metal, and suddenly we can blow holes entirely through Mechs. Groovy. Now we can fight back.

Season three: Everyone forgets everything from seasons 1 and 2, and is back to emptying magazines of ammo into the skitters, but now it works. We can kill them with our unmodified bullets. Then we discover that nerve cluster and hole in the skull under the chin, and - if you can get close enough - you can drive a knife/spike/pointy-stick into that spot and kill them instantly. New Mechs show up, and our weapons are entirely ineffectual and everyone seems to have forgotten about reloading our ammo with Espheni metal to kill the Mechs.

Season four: The Volm are here and their weapons are seriously effective against the Espheni skitters and mechs alike. A dozen people get Volm weapons and the humans have a fighting chance. Except Tom Mason is suddenly the ONLY person with a Volm weapon, which he uses to shoot down a flying Espheni craft ... and when the Espheni drop the electric fences, he NEVER ONCE even tries to shoot the fence posts with the Volm weapon. And gets knocked out. And NOBODY picks up the badass Tom Mason weapon and just lets it lay there on the ground as everyone is gathered up into camps.

I'm not sure I got the tactics/seasons all lined up properly, but that's still the sequence of weapons and tactics.

It's just so .... dumb. It's been about 18 months since the Espheni landed. Sure there is a lot of turnover as defenders die and are replaced by new characters or extras, but ... everyone is just back to emptying entire magazines into the enemies and doing little to no damage? Except if they need to save someone and suddenly the bullets have more effect, or something? Anger-fied bullets?

Reading the other comments in this sub, maybe I just go back to watching The Night Agent instead of investing more time in watching humans be colossally dumb and failing to learn from their experiences?

I have loved re-watching this, but the endless life lessons from Tom get really tiring after a while.

I just want to say, thanks to everyone over the last decade who constantly posted about what a dogshit show Falling Skies is and how it's so terrible.

You lowered my expectations so much that I genuinely enjoyed it. I watched it all the way through.

Was it full of old, tired TV tropes? Yep.

Was the acting sub par in many scenes? Yep.

Were the special effects cheap and dated? Yep.

Did the plot go off on weird tangents that made little sense? Yep.

Was the ending a bit of a disappointment? Yep.

Did they leave some massive, massive loose ends? Yep.

But, did I enjoy watching it? Yep.

Okay so I just finished watching the show and I have some thoughts.

1. Did I miss something, or was the only time we saw Hal and Maggie actually hookup when he was taken over by the bug? But he was also actively hooking up with Karen in the forest as well which he wouldve realised wasnt a dream not long after also?? None of this ever got addressed I swear

2. Of all the hairstyles, why did they think giving Maggie perfect styled curls was the right option for the context? Waves from braids wouldve been more believable, but man the perfect barrel curls threw me off

3. I really just wanna know how bad these people stink. Like I dont know that we ever saw them wash a pair of undies throughout the entire show.

4. I would never survive an apocolypse because do these people all have perfect vision or what?? I guess the people that wear glasses all just died out early or something? The only one I can remember with glasses was Dr Kadar

I’m have watched this show all the way through many times and I have to say Lourdes has been a bothersome see you next Tuesday since she was flirting with Hal in episode one when she knew he was with Karen! Then the whole boyfriend getting killed plot she was so off the chain with Anne and acted like she was the only one who lost someone and to top it all off the cult with Lexi and treating Lexi’s own family like they had no right to even be by her let alone talk to her. I was so glad when Lexi killed her but super annoyed at Hal for being so distraught after. Just me???

It’s people like weaver in real life who are actually the worse leaders and the last type of person I’d want to be around. Reminds me of my uncle. Stubborn, abusive, constant power trip