TV Review – Falling Skies: The Complete Fourth Season
2 min read
Falling Skies’ fourth season is a bit of a mixed bag. The show attempted to correct a lot of the shows past failings by bringing a focus back onto the core group’s attempt to survive the invasion, but also delved into new territory that didn’t seem fully realised.
This season is essentially split into two different halves. The first half concerns Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) being locked away in an Espheni ghetto and fighting back under the guise of the vigilante, Ghost. With other characters caught as well, the series harked back to earlier episodes with the group in real danger and against the odds against alien forces.
The later half of the season sees the rise of Lexi (Scarlett Byrne), Tom and Anne’s (Moon Bloodgood) daughter, who due to alien influences ages years in a short few months. Proclaimed as an almost messiah, she preaches the peaceful bridging of humans and the Espheni, with a group of followers that blindly obey, although her motives are considerably questionable. While an interesting idea, this proves to be one of the weaker arcs as this type of storyline has been played out many times in other sci-fi shows, and there isn’t really anything fresh brought to the table here.
One of the best decisions made this season was to put Anne in a more prominent role, leading the 2nd Mass to reunite. After losing her daughter she’s pushed to her limits, and the transition into a strong leader was well deserved. The other addition was finally broadening Pope’s (Colin Cunningham) character with the introduction of Sara (Mira Sorvino) who opened up a whole new side to him. Although at times her character was too much of an obvious ‘female Pope’ character, with both being angry for the sake of being angry, causing them to consistently clash over trivial matters.
The poorest, and most illogical, of all plots though was the love triangle between Hal (Drew Roy), Maggie (Sarah Carter) and Ben (Connor Jessup). There was never any chemistry between Maggie and Ben, which meant their relationship continuously felt forced and never natural, and at best felt like a cheap effort to create drama between the brothers.
Overall, Falling Skies season four left a lot to be desired but provided enough that most fans of the series should be satisfied.
