Falling Skies…. Before the season started I said the Steven Spielberg-produced, alien invasion program was “a special kind of show,” and I still stand by that statement ten episodes later. This entire season has been spent with the Second Massachusetts trying to achieve one goal: survival. With every passing episode, we watched as Tom and his rag tag group of soldiers tried to keep everyone breathing, all in hopes that it was building up to something. And the best part? It did.

This past weekend, the first of many pieces of sci-fi media with one entity at their center was released. That one entity has a name. It’s Steven Spielberg. Yet while Super 8 was fun, the first television-based Spielberg project of the next six months can be summed up in one word: amazing. That project is the TNT drama Falling Skies. Encompassing everything that makes up the things we expect from the Spielberg brand, like a focus on characters as opposed to events, grand scale world building, and a pinch of awesome action, Falling Skies delivers on the hopes that its advertising has created. The show, which premieres this Sunday on TNT, is a refreshing spectacle to see arrive on the small screen.

Carter and his crew get involved with a drug smuggling ring using flower delivery as a front. But this comes only days after Carter is nearly gunned down for being outed as a cop. This job will require the entire team and will end up being much bigger than any of them realize. At the same time, everyone tries to deal with their own relationships and by the end, Carter will make a call that will shock everyone to the bone. And so begins the two part season finale of Dark Blue.

Dean returns from his injury just in time for Carter, Alex and the rest of the team to get a murder case involving high end burglaries which they decide to take it on. But things go astray when Ty is taken hostage and suspected of being a snitch from the inside. Because of this, Carter and Alex’s take down gets blown to hell and they to are taken hostage by the burglars. Now it’s a race to beat the morning sun, otherwise no one is walking away alive. Jamie also becomes suspicious after meeting Ty’s new squeeze.

Today, two summer shows and one fall show that hasn’t aired yet saw renewals for another season including Hung, Memphis Beat, and The Walking Dead. Looks like we’ll be seeing more of Thomas Jane’s man parts, Jason Lee doing a southern accent and zombies attacking a guy on a horse. Look again. Now the horse is diamonds.

Carter, Rice and the rest of the Dark Blue team go after a man ripping off drug deals under the false identity of the DEA. But things take an unplanned turned when Jamie’s confidence is rattled after being assaulted by a perp that ended up being gunned down by Carter and Dean. Now she thinks the entire case rests on her shoulders. But just to make sure not all of his eggs are in one basket, Carter sends Ty and Dean to meet with an old – and very annoying – contact that will hopefully put the boys in with their mark.

Editor’s note: For those of you paying attention, Dark Blue is the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced cop show on TNT, and it should not be confused with the far more entertaining Canadian import, Rookie Blue, on ABC. The team gets word that a gun running extremist is in the planning stages of a major political assassination. So Carter, Rice, and the rest of team decide to break the extremist’s brother out of jail. But things don’t go as planned when a third member is thrown into the mix. Now it’s a race against the clock to see who will break first. Carter, the mark, or the third man who no one wanted to see.

Carter and Rice have been building their relationship for a while and things seem to be going well for them. But Carter isn’t to happy when he and his team are called in to investigate the murder of a 20 year old kid. The team figures out that he was murdered over a debt and now the team must infiltrate the inner workings of a casino and a local loan shark, in order to make a case. However, unbeknown to the rest of the team, Ty has gone into a deep depression after his wife leaves him. Now it’s Carter that stands between Ty and a career ending mistake after Ty loses $5,000 of the departments money at the black jack table. And Agent Rice must figure out a way to turn a local TV agent against his boss before another kid is murdered. But none of that is going to save Dark Blue from depths of awful television…

Carter goes undercover as a porn king that wants to expand his business into pharmaceuticals in order to bust the head of an important Mexican drug cartel . Meanwhile Dean gets involved in a complicated relationship with a drug dealer’s daughter. Major developments: That depends, does the complete lack of show quality count as a major development? What worked: There was this really brief, but awesome shoot out at the start of the third act. Can we get more of that? O, and those “hookers” were pretty hot, too bad they were all dressed up in nice cloths looking like goodie goodie porn stars. What didn’t: As you can probably tell by the extremely brief “What Worked” section, this episode sucked, and sucked hard.

Dark Blue is a crime drama that airs on TNT. From the big dog himself, Jerry Bruckheimer (his first, and so far only, cable television show). Dark Blue is all about Lt. Carter Shaw, the head of a deep cover unit of the LAPD. But this is no ordinary deep cover. This unit has next to no communication with brass and operates outside of standard operating procedure. His methods may be unorthodox, but you can’t argue with his results. Season one of Dark Blue was recently released on DVD from Warner Bros. and is available exclusively online. Season two just started airing on TNT, and we take a look at the first couple of episodes after the jump.

Steven Spielberg has selected Noah Wyle to lead the resistance against those evil alien bastards.