I’ve watched Falling Skies from the beginning and last night marked the series finale. The show had the big name of Stephan Spielberg as Executive Producer attached to it, along with its biggest star, Noah Wyle. Big concept sci-fi is tough to do on a TV budget, but TNT stepped up and made a fun alien invasion series.

While the budget often showed on screen with some awkward CG and limited scope in showing destruction, I gotta say the production really made the most out of what they were given. The prosthetic effects and physical aliens were often very good, Doug Jones as Cochise looked fantastic (all the Volm do, as few as we get to see).

With any alien invasion story, the end is pretty much one of two outcomes: annihilation or a triumphant fight back. In between that is the struggle. The horrors of war, the internal struggle between survivors, the wins and losses of battle. Falling Skies often showed that well and showed us new and interesting things. The harnesses and “Skitterizing” of humans, the tech of alien espionage, and their weapons, both biological and in hardware. But in an effort to have major season finale’s, they would often dip into deus ex machina territory to make things work. Mostly, people surviving things they shouldn’t.

After five seasons of this alien war, I was rather let down by the series finale. So much build up, so many trials and tribulations and it just wasn’t grand enough. First, the bio-weapon that Tom Mason was given was a huge cop-out, despite them modifying it so it wasn’t a complete gift from God. It was never really explained well, going all the way back to Tom surviving the off-planet mission (which was a huge cop-out to begin with). I’m not a fan of the Dorniya idea at all.

Much of the season was spent on gathering intel for the final fight, which worked well and fit in. Lexi coming back and the other Espheni tricks were fun to watch (they usually are). That leads us to a showdown in Washington that should have been massive.  Tom and the 2nd Mass sneak in, but the tunnel sequence was shot so dark, it was hard to tell what was going on. Someone makes a sacrifice there, but it came off as confusing and unwarranted. Someone goes to be a hero, you need that to pay off, not have your audience shrug their shoulders. Tom gets separated only to face the Queen conveniently by himself. This had to have been done because of the budget because the final fight was barely one. The Queen looked awesome, though, loved the design and it looked like a lot of time was put into it so I can’t hate on this scene entirely. And then this huge war kind of…ends. Everything drops dead, even the goo holding Tom to the wall suddenly dissolves (makes no sense). There’s a bit of exposition on the Queen’s part, but that turned out to be pretty damn stupid. A lot of wasted potential (plus a miracle character rescue that I didn’t like at all. There was very little consequence for the Mason clan this season, felt too safe).

There were a lot of good ideas in the last season, but they kinda fizzled out at the end. Pope’s defection was a great move, but really anticlimactic. I think that thread could have used some more time in the writers room to make work.

I really wanted a satisfying ending so I’d be able to confidently recommend the show. It was on a nice track for a long time, but it grinds to a half-hearted halt. I’m not mad at the ending. I’m good with the outcome and the final dialog is pretty great. I also appreciated the thank you message and the title being assembled by the names of the cast and crew, it’s a classy touch.  How we got to that ending, is what upset me. Those final threads of the story just crumbled to the wayside.