The Scoop From The Coop

Is it just me, or does Falling Skies have the worst writing on television?

Seriously, with Spielberg producing, you would think they could scrounge together a couple of better writers.  What’s really frustrating about it is that the show has a lot of potential.  The concept alone is pretty interesting: post-alien invasion, a human resistance force struggles to win against the alien invaders.  They have some interesting characters too: a conflicted captain, a father who balances his need to protect his children with being active in the resistance, and a wild card whose actions are as unpredictable as he is mysterious.

But the dialog is absolutely atrocious.  The writers severely struggle with conveying almost any information without just having a character explain exactly what is going on.  Emotions, setting, actions are all explicitly narrated via the exhaustingly stiff, awkward, and obvious lines given to the characters.  It stars some talented people (Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Will Patton), but the terrible dialog makes even them look awkward in their performances.

Also, they seem to just throw in random plot twists to make up for their lack of compelling writing skills… “We can’t make this show about a FUCKING ALIEN INVASION interesting enough… umm… let’s have more people make dumb choices to raise the stakes… or something…”

When the character of Tom (Noah Wyle) got on the alien ship at the end of season 1, my mom checked out.  We rode out the whole first season, putting our faith in the promising premise and in the actors, hoping the show would get better.  As soon as he agreed to go with the aliens, we both rolled my eyes, and my mom proclaimed, “I have no interest in seeing Season 2.”

After watching the first two episodes of the second season, I find myself exhausted again (and not just because it’s 2am).  The dialog is as awful as it ever was, and the “twists” in the storyline are laughable and annoying.  Not to mention how stupid the editing of the first episode one as they attempted intercutting between two different timelines very poorly.

I’d expect more of Spielberg’s money.  And of TNT, which has, as of late, cranked out several high quality shows.  But this one, in spite of the actors trying SO hard to pull something out those shallowly-thought-out scripts, continues to fall short of impressive.