Falling Skies Season 2 Finale Review

The conclusion I've come to is that Falling Skies is the American equivalent of Primeval: there are plot holes and contrivances everywhere, the characters are flat, it really isn't even that good, and yet we all seem to keep watching it...

Okay, I know I usually avoid spoilers at all costs in my reviews, but today I am screwing it, so SPOILERS for the whole episode. In case you missed that:

*******SPOILERS*******

So, the episode starts directly where the last one left off, which I personally really liked. They haven't done that too much on this show, and I want them to more because it helps with the pacing. But aside from that, the set up from the last episode was that the 2nd Mass has, by mistake, instigated a coup in Charleston. Except that was barely part of what happened, and was completely undone by the end of the episode. Seriously?! Coup story lines are cool; I wanted to see more of that! But no.

So, then Ben and his Rebel Skitter friends show up and tell everyone that they can throw a major monkey wrench into the Overlords's plans by assassinating one of them, but they need help. So, after some initial hostilities and hardcore Not-Cool-Ness from Gen. Bressler, the 2nd Mass gets the green light to go on this suicide mission. But first, we need some emotional character interactions! First we have the cringe-inducing father-daughter dynamic between Weaver and Jean, then we find out Anne is preggers; I wouldn't have a problem with that if it wasn't for two things: long running dramas have some sort of fetish for pregnancy story lines (LOST did one, BSG did one, Doctor Who even did one, Angel did TWO, the Walking Dead's doing one, so forth), and Anne and Tom's relationship has never seemed very natural. The actors have pretty much no chemistry, so it's felt tacked onto the whole season.

I probably sound like some sort of super critic all of the sudden two, and don't get the wrong idea, there were good moments in the mix of this: Tector's interaction with Pope (who's been severely underused this season) and company, Hal and Ben's little brotherly bonding moment, and Tom even had a one-liner.

But then we get to the alien station thing that we never really get a name for, and that was the highlight of the episode. Seriously, they should have spent more time with this. They get there, guns are fired, Skit is hitting the fan, I'm enjoying myself, and then Creeptastic Karen shows up, ties them all up, and starts torturing them for information. Jessy Schram does a great job of playing this part, and the whole sequence was just enjoyable as a whole because it was, especially because of the different reactions to the torture by the characters (and frankly, if it Karen hadn't been the one to really creepily tell Tom his lady friend was pregnant, there was no way that news would've been pleasant to watch), and when Karen makes out with Hal putting him into a coma. And then the Rebel Skitters show up (but not before Dai dies), more Skit hits the fan, guns are fired, and Tom Mason goes from man to Overlord Slayer! Mission accomplished, right?

Then we get back to Charleston, Hal wakes up and we get introduced to Evil Hal, which is something I'm really looking forward to seeing next season. And then the big cliffhanger: the city shakes, making Tom the Overlord Slayer and the rest of the populace rush outside to see a whole new type of alien who looks weirdly like Thanos (apparently FS takes place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now we just have to wait for Thor to show up and kill all the aliens), and the season ends.

So, good episode as a whole, mostly because of the events at Skitter station, they have pretty good cliffhangers in place for season 3, which I do look forward too. But, contrivances, conveniences, bad character interactions, and the under use of both Pope and Terry O'Quinn dragged this episode down a lot.

Final Rating: 84%