Falling Skies

I saw the trailer for this in a theatre before a movie and was immediatly put on my must watch list. I just saw the pilot episode last night and it took me on a thrill ride from the very beginning. It had everything perfectly set to make it seem real, and not cheesily overdone. I will go through each category one by one. This show has a very positive mesage. Aleins have taken over the earth after killing most of the worlds population. The remaining people form scattered malitias, as the aleins made sure to wipe out all of the army bases, all ships, and a majority of capitols and armorys. Everyone joins together as a team called the 2nd Massachusetts. They are all strongly bonded and are very strong with human rights and the value of life. The role models are all very strong characters, (all male, i might add) and are intent on saving the world and all of the people remaining on it. The violonce is a large part of this show, but the blood and gore are at the bare minimum. No blood is shown even when a man gets shot through the body twice with two diffrent arrows, and the alien "skitters" die without any goopy mess, as they do in other sci-fi shows. Gun fights are frequent, but mainly against the aliens. Gunfight does break out among other people as our group of main characters runs across a rogue group of surviving outlaws taking refuge by the armory that they attempt to search. One man of the 2nd Mass. is taken out, and one of the outlaws is shot in the leg. They are promptly taken hostage, and visiosly handled and threatened with a variety of weapons. They are held hostage by the outlaws, with demands of the rebels strongest weapon. A girl that is with the outlaws suddenly turns against them, and hints that she was taken captive by them and sexually abused. after shooting them, She says "after what they did to me after they took me, they deserved to die" One of the main characters has two girls fighting over him (subtly, i might add) and he comes close to kissing one of them. Language use is infrequent, and when it is used, it is not just out of the blue. That character at the moment he uses the language was in extreme pain or shock, a moment that we may have heard people use languag in in real life. There is no brands advertised, but gun types may be recognizable to those who know them. One of the main characters, while held hostage, asks for a beer as it is obvious the outlaws hideout is scattered with discarded beer bottles and other liqour bottles. The monsters/ aliens/ "skitters"/"mechs" are animated, but not overdone. They do have some pretty nasty weapons, including wicked "harnesses" that they put on children to control them. The name harness is misleading, as it is a strip of alien materials attached to the childs spine and neck base. Doctors attempt to remove them, but every child so far had died in the proscess. The aliens are merciless when it comes to killing, but the animation is not really obvious. I loved it, and teens (possibly older tweens) will be dying to watch this show if they catch a glimspe of the trailers. In review, a not overdone, violent but not gory, and sure to please kind of show.