Falling Skies was never without problems. The main character was forever speechifying in a way that could be boiled down to "USA! USA! USA!" and few opportunities were passed up to revel in American exceptionalism.
It's perhaps fitting that one of the characters gets so fed up with Tom Mason that he tries to kill him and sets off on his own because he's sick of listening to him... but at least the show didn't overstay its welcome.
There seemed to be a rather marked downturn in budget for this final season and while it's clear that Falling Skies was never cheap to make it clearly suffered from aspirations for a Hollywood blockbuster but on a TV show's budget.
Most perplexing though, is that the enemy for the entire show had one CRITICAL weakness - kill their queen (let's just call her Sarah Kerrigan) and they ALL die. All of them. Literally turning to ash. As this show rejoices in historical parallels to the American Revolutionary War... this would be like George Washington crossing the Atlantic, killing King George and that just destroying the entire British army.
It seems particularly baffling as prior to that magic bullet, things had been parsed in very much a resistance type way. The enemy was on the back foot after a series of hard won tactical victories... and then they allude to how the Queen is basically going to allow them to win (somehow) but all it takes is for the magical ER doctor Tom Mason to use a magical bioweapon grenade to kill her and commit genocide.
"LOLWUT?!" As the Internet is wont to say.
Was this supposed to be a climactic showdown? It felt as though someone suddenly got told "We're not getting another season." and it was 4:30pm on a Friday and they went "Oh, uh - then he uses this biological grenade thing and it kills all the aliens forever. The end."
Oh, wait - they had to do a bit more masturbatory "USA! USA! USA!" at the end. Naturally.
It just seemed to be an ending rather anathema to the whole programme's thesis.
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