Back with the review of Falling Skies Season Two, this review will contain a lot more spoilers than my review of season one.
The story picks up three months after Tom Mason boarded the Overlord ship and things are not looking too good for the Second Massachusetts. They have lost over half of the group, can not get in touch with any of the other Mass's and are constantly on the run from the Skitters. However Tom suddenly appears out of nowhere with barely any memory of what happened aboard the ship. The group continues to move on but hear of a well organized group of humans have set up a base at Charleston and journey there experience many hardships along the way.
Guess I will just come out and say it that this season is definitely better than season one! They have improved on a lot of things this season and I guess what has mostly helped is the darker tone they have this season has. Whether it is mass executions of Humans, character deaths or the constant feeling of desperation the Second Massachusetts has against the Overlords. I guess one thing that I criticize the first season for doing is having the school as a base of operations for the majority of it. While having a base is good for a post - apocalyptic genre I much prefer when the characters are constantly on the move and we get to see the ruined world (like I mentioned in my Revolution reviews)
Now when I said earlier that this season has a more darker tone than the original I definitely meant it because in this one they have the deaths of several characters, the most notable being Dai and Jimmy. While they are not major characters they were never just background characters either and their deaths were done really well. Also a lot more action and violence as been added probably to make up for the lack of much in season one; one of my favourite parts of this season for example was when the group decided to stay at a hospital for a while on the way to Charleston. Some great scenes were the Second Mass are defending themselves against the Skitters, Mechs and a new insect like enemy that attacks the insides of people. Overall the sense of safeness that the Second Mass had in the first season was almost gone in this one. Also as mentioned above the action is just overall bigger now than ever, straight from the first episode to the very end we get some great scenes of explosion and excellent gunfights .
Another one of my fav parts was near the end of the season and the group makes it to Charleston only to discover that it is not the haven they thought it was. Sure it is well organized and secure but one individual and old friend of Tom's, Arthur Manchester (Terry O'Quinn), thinks it is best just to hide from the enemy. In my opinion this replaces the dilemma presented in the first season of Soldiers vs. Civilians and was really interesting in seeing how the characters deal with the conflicting views.
As for the characters and Skitters I like them just as much as I did last season (Pope still being the best!) and I even like Weaver more in this since he works more with Tom than against him and realises that the civilians are not a bother to the Second Mass after all. However I really did not like the character Karen for the voice of the Overlord and I found the episode when she tricked her way in to Second Mass to be pointless and annoying. I also hated in that episode when she tired to pit Hal and Ben against each other because with all that is going on they can both be fooled like that. Also the Skitters got a lot more interesting in season when we find out that many are resisting the harness affects and want to overthrow the Overlords, creates a lot of infighting in the group on whether they could be trusted or not (got me wondering as well).
For stuff I did not like about this season, besides Karen and Maggie (as always!), I did not like the episode were Weaver found his daughter with a group of kids. I just do not like when I group of kids can manage to survive for ages in a post - apocalyptic environment and causes the Second Mass a lot of trouble, which they did at the end of the episode. I am also finding Tom's youngest son Matt to just keep getting more and more annoying because for some reason they are deciding to give him a more prominent role.
Overall this is a definite improvement over the last season in terms of more bigger action, darker tones and more expansive story such as getting to Charleston, dealing with Tom's arrival and destroying the massive Overlord weapon at the end. It is only let down by some annoying characters that luckily don't distract from the majority of the show and the lack of a major character death (will talk more in to this in my review of season three because there is some stuff about Hal I want to talk about, those who have watched it may know what I mean).
It also left the audience on a cliff hanger even more better than the end of season one; just when we think the Overlords are the only thing the Humans have to worry about a new species appears. That ending shot of the alien walking out of the pod in that arm was just so cool!
SCORE: 9/10
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