Falling Skies renewed for 5th and final season

Yep, last episode forever this coming Sunday. "Epic" battle between Tom Mason and Pope (who are they kidding, he isn't dead!) will finally come to an end.
Not sure who I feel feel worse for: Pope for losing the "love of his life" Sara earlier in the season, or Oscar Winner Mira Sorvino for taking the job.

 

How about the audience?

 

^^^ As a member of the audience that stuck with it for so long, I realise I must have had deep, deep masochistic issues to resolve

 

Ratings have never been so low for Falling Skies >>> S05E09: 1.76 million viewers
Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falling_Skies_episodes#Season_5_.282015.29

...can't believe that Under The Dumb still has around 4 million viewers.

 

Not surprising. They’re pushing the show less since it’s on its way out. Plus, like other shows (such as “Fringe” which is of course a million times better), it’s at the tail end of working in a big underlying mythos and back story (whether you actually like that mythos or how it’s executed is another issue of course), so less new viewers jump on.

I always figure stuff like “Under the Dome” will have better ratings, as even in the modern age, “network” shows still sometimes tend to have better ratings than cable shows.

I also remember during last season of “Falling Skies” when they announced Wyle would be doing another more or less concurrent TNT show (that “Librarian” spinoff show), my first thought was that he was already kind of “over” “Falling Skies” and would be at risk of kind of mailing it in *even more* in the last season. I think the producers at some point somewhere even reiterated that he would still be putting his full attention into “Falling Skies”, but who knows.

 

The show got progressively worse. There were many episodes that just didn't seem to serve any purpose. I totally stopped watching after a few episodes into season three, and I again started watching around the middle of this season. It honestly felt like I didn't miss anything.

 

I've felt that way for far too many seasons (more fool me). I wouldn't have watched this season, at all, had I not known it would be concluding.

If Pope does come back (I'm sure he will) and they try to have him do something to actually redeem his character, it'll be about the worst possible ending I could imagine.

 

^^^ Odds are that sadly, Pope will attempt to redeem himself (more than likely by self-sacrifice to save the human race).

 

A braver ending would be: aliens kill all the regulars, take over the world, and put alien fast-food franchises on every corner.

I actually set up to record the finale just because I want to see how much of the plot I can remember from the first couple of (forgettable) seasons. They had the teenage boy who got infected, then they ripped the alien bug off his back, only sometimes his mind was affected; then there was the woman who had the alien baby; then there was the older military guy who was hiding a brain tumor; then there was the motorcycle gangleader who couldn't decide if he was a hero or an a-hole. Then there was Noah Wyle, who I think wishes he was back in E.R. God, what a stupid show.

 

...
>>>

 

Haha...unbelievable how awful the series finale was...!

 

>>>
https://www.reddit.com/r/FallingSkies/comments/3j10h4/falling_skies_series_finale_reborn_discussion/

https://www.reddit.com/r/FallingSkies/comments/3j1dbl/thoughts_on_the_ending_spoilers/

 

I knew they were capable of delivering a bad ending, and they didn't disappoint! I just never knew until now, that they were capable of delivering an ending 10 times worse that I could have ever imagined! If the show was as popular as 'Lost' was, the buzz on the internet today would be about how the ending of 'Lost' was dethroned as the "Worst Ending Ever" for a TV series.

 

Horrible episode and ending. My wife and I laughed through the entire program. I especially loved the part where they spent around fifteen minutes in a dark tunnel under Washington probably just to eat-up time because they couldn't think of anything else.

 

At least I've been put out of my misery.
Will the Stain go the same way as FS?

 

I ended up watching the ten episodes from this final season of “Falling Skies” in about three or four “waves”, so I just watched the final three episodes last night.

Not sure what to make of it. It’s almost like they stretched out the final half of the season with little actual plot or content, and then crammed way too much into the finale and ended up just kind of giving up. The final episode kind of came off like three or four different writers tried to write the episode, and then they just randomly selected different scenes from different scripts.

If there are fans of the show who are into the Pope character, they have to be extra disappointed on top of everything else. What a weird and lazy way to finish with that character. I actually thought it was somewhat effective, and inadvertently a tiny bit of meta-referencing, for Pope to point out that Noah Wyle always made sure to save his own family members, but kinda doesn’t care so much about anyone else’s. The “mission” is more important, unless it’s one of his family members. So to put those two at odds was not in and of itself a horrible writing decision. But they didn’t do anything with it in the end. He turned “evil”, but they didn’t even do some effective “evil villains” stuff with him apart from one “torture” scene.
I thought numerous times during the finale as various “loose ends” were tied up, “Is that *really* how they’re ending that?”

I know a lot of people hate on the show, and I do think the early era was better. But beyond what has gone down in previous seasons, something weird seems to have gone on for this final stretch of episodes as far as plotting and writing. It’s almost like the writers would have been better off doing a 6-episode season, or a 16-episode season. It’s almost like they thought they were getting 12 episodes, and then a few days before Episode 10 started shooting, they were told it was going to be 10 instead of 12.

I’m also shocked they burned TWO episodes just prior to the finale with Weaver’s old girlfriend killing off human “collaborators” instead of fighting the aliens. Weaver just stumbles around for two episodes with a grimace while it’s painfully obvious what’s going on and what’s going to happen.

 

To me, this was the problem with the entire series. Too many episodes were just a waste. Almost every season probably could have been condensed into three or four good episodes, while the rest seemed to be nothing but filler.

 

IMO, the whole premise of the show was the problem. You have these super advanced alien overlords with the technology to traverse interstellar space in vast ships and yet they wage a World War II era battle against a handful of rebels and lose (because of some silly queen nonsense and a glowy, magic death thingy)? Silly beyond belief.

 

Just finished all 5 seasons in about a month.

Mixed emotions. Some good stuff early on but season 4 onwards...either the budget, the writers or the cast were losing the will. Season 5 was a classic example of how it can end terribly for a show.

It was obvious to me that the budget had been cut back drastically with hardly any alien CGI effects for about 5 of the 10 episodes and it all came to be fighting between humans. Plus the Mason boys still hadn't learned the lesson of not wandering off..

The final episode was really weak and the cheapest looking.

Sad. The Gf and I hardly said a word when it finished.

 

The show, especially past the first season or two, had mixed reviews from critics.

But what was stunning is that even hardcore fans of the show, the type who will try to wring anything positive out it at any cost, were epically disappointed.

Ended up grabbing the final season on BD when Amazon marked it down to like ten bucks, just to "complete the set."

Early seasons were pretty good on this show, though. It even built up a little nerdy fan base with some comic books and merchandise and everything.

 

I think I have seen only a couple of episodes from the first season, didn't realize it was still on. Just didn't hold my interest.