Invasion

I tried. Sort of. After watching the first couple of episodes I did the rest of the series in fast forward mode, stopping every now and then when it seemed like something might actually be happening. Which wasn’t often.

I finally got to Episode 10 and watched the entire thing and really, WTF? What a non-ending. Perhaps one might consider it a cliffhanger, but hanging over what? A vast nothingness of plot? Characters who I didn’t really care about? The latter is the real problem because it was the backbone of the concept. How these people react to an uncertain event that is an alien invasion. They were billed as ordinary but apparently one or two weren’t. So they wanted their orindary characters and have them be extraordinary too. Greedy writers. I know them well as I’ve tried too much at times also.

I have serious doubts whether it will be picked up for a second season. As in publishing, it all depends on the numbers. Hey, I saw Stephen King tweet that he liked it. So, who knows.

What perplexes me is what someone saw in this to greenlight it? I think there was a neat idea, but so much of the ten episodes is these characters sitting and chatting with each other about their personal stories and that kind of goes against a template for thrillers. Which is when the entire world is at stake, a personal problem isn’t that interesting. Now, I am a fan of breaking rules. Hell, I even have my three rules of rule-breaking.

!. Know the rule

2. Have a good reason for breaking the rule

3. Take responsibility for breaking the rule

Where Invasion didn’t make it in my humble opinion, was the execution of breaking the rules.

Beyond all that, there were disconnects in logistics in a number of scenes. Minor things but kind of irritating. When the SEAL (who makes a point of calling himself an “Operator” not a soldier) gets  on the plane in Afghanistan, the line of guards holding people back don’t get on. I mean, hey? What? Were they just nice guys letting their buddies go? Then the C-123, they couldn’t afford a C-130, I guess, flies all the way to England. Without refueling. That kind of logistics is the stuff that gives thriller writers like me nightmares. I guess the approved solution is just ignore logistics when you need to. We used to have to stop in Gander or Iceland to refuel on our way to England when deploying from Fort Devens. But then again, it wasn’t in the middle of an Invasion.

Bottom line: Not enough payoff for the time invested even to fast forward through it.