A lot of science fiction gets bogged down in exposition. The pilot of Falling Skies takes care of that issue in the opening sequence, in which children tell the story of how aliens invaded the Earth.

But once that’s out of the way, the show consistently struggles to place relatable characters in a show that appears to be about survival tactics and guerilla warfare.

When ex-Boston University history professor Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) volunteers for missions organized by the curmudgeonly Captain Weaver (Will Patton), it’s not just because he wants to help kill aliens, it’s because he wants to help support his militarized East Coast shantytown.

The show, despite being set entirely in a post-Apocalyptic Earth where people are under constant threat of being destroyed, has almost no action in it whatsoever. This lack of action is balanced out with a lot of strategizing for missions that help to keep the mini-society going.

These missions, with their insistence on working together and helping each other out, don’t advance the plot or create any tension. I think the “in media res” motif is trying to immerse the audience in the same mindset of the characters. There is no reality outside of this post-apocalyptic east coast, since their old world has literally been obliterated.

But unlike Lost, which constantly battered the audience with information about the backgrounds of characters outside of their “fish out of water” scenario, the mindset of the survivors appears to be: Let’s do this!.

Mildly bland drama with a science fiction twist is still pretty bland.

And the affirmative action in the cast doesn’t help this problem at all, either. There are two hot shot black guys who get a kick out of shooting skitters. And then there’s a ruggedly handsome Asian guy who doesn’t talk very much but tries his best to help Tom kill aliens.

The alien menace that primarily lurks in the background is the saving grace that prevents the show from becoming a piece of moralizing dreck.

There was this great moment in the middle of a “food run/mission”, that exceeded the confines of bland strategizing dialogue and characters that were poorly introduced. Hal Mason (Drew Roy), Tom’s older son, sees a group of children that the aliens have kidnapped and turned into mindless slaves. And one of Tom’s three kids is an alien child slave! But the pacing of what should be an incredibly compelling shot is pretty tedious. There aren’t any close-ups of the missing boy or a dramatic sequence of Tom having to run away from an alien horde either with or without his son.

There is a mildly tense exchange between Tom and Hal. Hal is being a cocksure asshole of a son, wanting to recklessly run after his brother, sure to get himself blown to bits. Tom has to perform his duties for the survivors, but also has to protect his son’s life, so he tells Hal it’s too dangerous. When Hal says he’s going by himself, Tom wrestles him to the ground. For a fight scene, or whatever you’d call it, it went at a snail’s pace, and all it really did was allow for Tom to talk his way out of the situation. And apparently, it’s more important for the survivors to resolve things among themselves, than to resolve conflicts with those killer Skitters. (The name they have given to the inhuman, bug-like alien invaders.) Once Tom comes back with some food, Weaver tells him that instead of going to find his missing son, he has to check out an armory and find out if there are any weapons inside of it.

The weakest parts of the episode are where Dr. Anne Glass (Moon Bloodgood), a former pediatrician and now medic of the “Massachusetts 2nd Battalion”, is arguing with Weaver about how the military weren’t thinking about the health and safety of the community. She is speaking basic societal truths, sure, but the show doesn’t seem to realize that decent dialogue doesn’t overpower the question of why it seems like survivors of an alien invasion can just sit around and talk all of the time. Plus, she never offers any concrete solutions when she is whining, albeit correctly.

And she’s only saying that stuff to get in Tom’s pants. I mean, come on, he’s a widower with kids, she’s a widow with dead kids. A MASON and GLASS...They have perfect chemistry already!

Anyway, this problem was positively overshadowed once the armory mission finally got going. Tom and company are ambushed by a team of former criminals, led by John Pope (Colin Cunningham). There’s a lot more talking, sure, but when Tom and John start talking, it’s tremendous.

Tom is going with the flow, protecting his team. But John is spouting all of this crazy philosophy about killing Skitters, and it’s surprisingly captivating, given how the show seems to treat Skitters as pre-established. John was bragging about how he could kill them really easily, and how the resistance was a waste of time. At this point, the survivors banded together to foil John’s ill-conceived plan to hold people hostage and steal the supplies of the protagonists.

It was surprising for a show like this to appear like everything went back to normal at the end, but there are some interesting new characters in the mix to like, mainly John Pope, and hopefully Noah Wyle can continue to carry the show on his back.

The Checklist

Close-ups of Noah Wyle:	Check. (Too many to count.)
Token minorities to die later:	Check. (Too many to count.)
Hey, where the hell are my kids?:	Check.

   -- Jason Luna