...and I wasn't going to expect nBSG-level characters. Only TNG, DS9, and B5 have gotten into that stratosphere in my experience.
If you watched the new
V, envision a show at about that level, but executed better/more entertainingly.
Falling Skies is not groundbreaking TV, but could get there if they play their cards right.
I wont watch it. I learned my lesson with "V". I loved that show and now it is gone.
Falling Skies has strong and stable ratings so if all you're worried about is being disappointed by premature cancellation, don't let that stop you. The show has locked in a loyal audience and it's now TNT's best-rated show. It ain't going anywhere.
Quality-wise,
Falling Skies is better than
V - more entertaining, more focused, fewer quibbles over plot logic.
My point, obviously, is that the BSG crew were one depressed, messed up bunch, to which the Falling Skies people are incredibly damn cheery and optimistic.
There's an episode which you haven't yet seen with Weaver that does a nice job depicting the stresses that can overcome optimism. And didn't you see the episode where Anne goes kind of berzerk? That was a very striking scene. Noah Wylie plays Tom as being in a constant state of barely repressed agitation. Pope acts out all the time as his escape valve. So I don't think of these people as "cheery," more like hanging onto their wits by repressing their emotions and by willfully not dwelling on their situation. They're a bit zombie-like sometimes, in a kind of blind survival mode, just putting one foot in front of the other.
I think
Falling Skies depicts people more realistically, in that they have no choice but to be hopeful. Despairing and tearing their hair won't do any good and anyone prone to despair has probably committed suicide before the series starts because the situation is objectively hopeless even at the start.
The ones left by definition are the hardiest (and luckiest). Many of them have family members to look out for, and even those that don't, like Weaver, seem to be adopting de-facto family members (Jimmy). It's human nature to bond into small groups and persevere for the sake of the group in spite of any and all threats to survival. And nobody is going to be calculating the odds because they know the odds are that they're all dead.
When things get bleak, people lock down emotionally and just keep moving. They don't wallow like the
BSG guys did. Maybe the difference is that the
BSG gang were stuck in tin cans with nothing to do but wait for attack. The
Falling Skies crowd can always move to the next town over, and imagine that they're never trapped, that they'll find some magic thing that will change the odds.
