The King Is Dead

I feel like nobody is addressing the elephant in the room. That's why all those reviewers of those "positive" reviews are ranting at the ones leaving a negative review.

So, if I may, allow me to play the devil's advocate here;

The main problem of this show (thus far, 4 episodes in) is not that it is super slow, lack of actual Alien invasion, too much drama, boring, boring, boring japanese segment, wife that totally belongs in a lifetime movie deals with cheating husband, etc. No, the problem is that this show has been falsely advertised as being a Sci-Fi show.

This is the premise of the show, and I quote from IMDb's main page for this series:

"Earth is visited by an alien species that threatens humanity's existence. Events unfold in real time through the eyes of five ordinary people across the globe as they struggle to make sense of the chaos unraveling around them."

Of course, when you look at the genre, it says, DRAMA, FANTASY, SCI-FI. We are used to sci-fi shows of this combination. Usually it means more sci-fi, a little fantasy and the drama part is suppose to be there for developments and to make the characters more relatable; be it plot, characters, life changing events, etc. Think a sci-fi TV-show/Movie that has to deal with politics for example, (Dune, Foundation, The Expanse, to name a few) not just mindless shoot'em up. So, we need the drama.

Having said that, this show leans too much into the drama part. It's a drama show that has like 3% sci-fi element. Again, a drama show in itself is not necessarily bad. However, this show was marketed as SCI-FI, was sold on the fact that IT-IS-A-SCI-FI-SHOW! So naturally the GROUP IT TARGETS (or at the very least DRAWS), is a group that wants to see a SCI-FI show. A group that watches shows like Resident Alien (2021), The Expanse (2015), Falling Skies (2011), Altered Carbon (2018), The Mandalorian (2019), Foundation (2021) (FOUNDATION also entices quite the hate, but not from me. I like it. Say what you will about FOUNDATION, at least its more sci-fi than this!!!).

This group is not interested in a drama show. I'm switching to my perspective now; I'm not interested in TV-Drama. The genre that is. So when I choose what to entertain myself with, I completely omit only Drama Television ala Titanic, The Crown, etc.

No one is saying they want to just see mindless Alien Invasion that leans heavily into explosion and heavy artilleries firing at anything that moves ala Transformers! Or dismemberment of people, brains flying all over the place!!! We don't need that! Though the mob of the positive reviews sure make it seem like anyone who doesn't remotely like this show is part of that group that also enjoy the endless Halloween movies where Mike Myers is basically stronger than Thor and Hulk combined!!! No, all we are saying is we want what we came here to see: a decent Sci-Fi show and so far INVASION has failed to deliver.

Anyways, in conclusion: This show, is not inherently bad. The problem is the targeted group it drew under false pretense of being a Sci-Fi show, when in reality its just an ordinary drama show that deals with real life issues, laced veeeeeeeeeeeery thinly with a wee bit of Sci-Fi (the Sci-Fi, thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread; the DRAMA.... Bilbo Legendary Baggins!!!)

So this show is bleedingly slow. It's like someone drew straws for a human experience (affair, bully as a kid, soldier) and decided to film it real time so that the plot goes minute in screen= 1 minute real world.

The show haphazardly jumps between characters around the world. And Apple must get paid a premium for unsolicited F-word that added nothing. And some characters seem to add nothing

So far, the Japanese, cheater sheriff are the only that seem interesting.

The kid scenes are way too long and make me only think about how evil those two bully kids are

The soldier scene was interesting for a second when the nomad helped him.

The only characters that seem no where in this show.... THE ALIENS!!!!

So far, just a bad drama.

Sci-Fi is about ideas, technology and action - stuff that is thought provoking. This show so far is 90% about dysfunctional relationships. This is like a techie chick flick. Totally slow paced and booooooring. Please speed it up a bit.

I gave it another shot. 6 minutes of watchable entertainment out of 56 minute program. Excepting the Japanese portion, the other people have no useful content. Focusing on irrelevant and unimportant events for no discernible reason. What happened to Sam Neill and his part? Sigh.

There a billion hours of tv out there to watch, this is going nowhere and by the review ratings it's obvious it won't get another season. And we all at this pace aliens won't show up until season 4.

This feels more like a troll on the viewers than an actual tv show.