To say the first season had mixed reviews is an understatement, but I enjoyed the experience and I’m looking forward to the second season!
It seems like the biggest gripe most negative reviewers had was there wasn’t enough action in the first season, which based on the trailer seems to have been heard. I always viewed the show as more of a character study on how people react and adapt when put into impossible situations, but I’m happy to see some big battles in the trailer.
The second season begins on August 23 and runs weekly through October 25.
the problems with the first season were multitudinous. there were so many storylines to follow, none of which made any sense. most of the characters reacted to the invasion with a mixed sense of absolute panic and an attempt to reason their way through the situation with mixed results, which is reasonable, but not nearly as entertaining to watch as you’d think. most characters made a lot of stupid decisions that got lots of people hurt and/or killed, and many of the characters turned out to be very unlikable and their stories both uninteresting and futile. the vast majority of characters ended up in a desperate struggle to get from A to B for no real reason in particular and failed, which ended up not mattering because they either died in the attempt, got stranded, or destination B was destroyed/abandoned/occupied by aliens.
another huge problem was the aliens. we didn’t even see them until the end of the penultimate episode, so they weren’t even a real threat until then. for a show titled Invasion, we never really saw any invasion, just a couple of small attacks! all that happened for every episode until then was no internet, power, or digital payment systems, and all of the governments freaking out while people were stranded and scared. but no aliens. maybe that would make sense for a couple of episodes, but not for the whole damned season. that really pissed me off.
then there’s the whole dream/flashback bullshit with the japanese scientist trying to figure out their language in this massive ripoff from Arrival, but not nearly as clever and which makes hardly any sense. and this doesn’t really amount to much, anyway.
and, of course, there’s the kids in the show, and, as everyone knows, kids ruin everything. whenever a kid shows up on screen, we know they’re going to say or do some stupid-ass shit that’s probably going to get someone killed because they’re stupid and annoying and selfish and dumb as dog shit.
the whole show was a clusterfuck, and I can’t believe it got renewed for another season.
Oh man I 100% agree with this whole comment. I was hate-watching by episode three. The choice not to show the aliens was so frustrating. I get how something like Signs can get away with it, but that’s still only about an hour of waiting. We spent a whole season waiting and it was a SLOG.
what was even worse is that they never gave any characters any motivation for anything they were doing, not even the aliens. why was anyone doing, literally anything? why should we care about them? why should we keep watching the show?
everything about the show was maddeningly frustrating, and even though nobody seems to know what the hell they’re going or where they’re going, they all seem to be trying to do something or go somewhere and still manage to fail spectacularly, which is even MORE FRUSTRATING. and, to add on to that, everyone keeps making the most stupid, selfish, cliched mistakes. it’s exhausting.
and the kids… the damned kids… every time a kid comes on screen, you just know that they’re going to fuck something up and get someone killed or almost get the group caught or both. because they’re just so dumb, selfish, or both. with the mom, son, and daughter group, you have the daughter who was born with dog shit for brains and refuses to listen to even the most simple instruction and the back-stabbing fucker of a son. that mom should have just left the both of them with her cheating bastard of a husband. those shitty kids will just get her killed or human trafficked or worse.
then there’s the kids in the bus. by episode 4, I was seriously hoping they’d go all Lord of the Flies and bash each others’ heads in with rocks over the last bag of Takis so we could be done with that storyline.
Such an unusual series. Putatively about an alien invasion but it focuses on the characters so much it’s really about how they react to and deal with the events.
It has a strange “generic atmospheric sci-fi horror possibly-trying-too-hard-to-be-realistic” feeling to it ala Cloverfield etc, but it’s also fairly unique in that the characterisation is REALLY deep and believable. I was sad when Casp went into the coma
The comparisons to The War of the Worlds are pretty obvious. It also reminds me sometimes of a sci-fi novel series called The War Against the Chtorr