Last night, Falling Skies came back with a two-hour season premiere, written by a trio of Battlestar Galactica writers. While both the creep factor and the alien menace were amped up from the first season, along with a noticeable reduction in the rate of platitudes per minute.
For most of all, this show seems to be finding new ways to talk about its central metaphor the harness by making its highly-anticipated return to television—the Falling Skies season 2 premiere presents a compelling story with enough twists and plot points to help drive the series into what looks to be an extremely exciting season.
Notably, the two-hour season two premiere delivered 4.5 million viewers. That’s down 24 percent from last year’s series debut, which ranked as basic cable’s top new scripted series. In this respect, TNT expects the show’s audience will grow to 6 million viewers once DVR is added, for whatever it’s worth.
The point which distinguishes Falling Skies from so many other alien invasion stories is the notion that the aliens are taking our kids and changing them into—something else. Even as the show dwells on the ways in which ordinary people adapt and survive in the wake of an alien invasion, the question of how we preserve our humanity is amplified and focused through the story of Ben Mason, who was harnessed by the aliens and rescued last season. Follow the Falling Skies season premiere
