Thursday, February 18, 2021

Resident Alien, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Welcome to the first episode of Resident Alien!

I'm a bit behind on this review, as I think they've already aired four or five episodes at this point. The reason I'm so late is because I just found out about the show! I didn't even know it existed until it popped up on the YouTube Channel on my Roku.

When I saw it was a Siffy Channel show I immediately wrote it off, assuming it was as awful as their other offerings and unworthy of my time. But then I saw it starred the always awesome Alan Tudyk. I've been a fan of his for years, so I thought, "Eh, what the heck" and gave it a shot.

Am I glad I did! Resident Alien turned out to be quite the pleasant surprise. It takes the well-worn "Alien Among Us" genre and manages to put a fresh new spin on it. In fact you could say it subverted my expectations.

Take Northern Exposure, add a dash of Twin Peaks, stir in some The Man Who Fell To Earth and you'll have a pretty good idea what this series is like.

I was very impressed with the above average writing, and the acting was top notch as well. I actually liked it quite a bit, and am looking forward to seeing where it goes. Even more amazing, I couldn't find much wrong with this first episode, which may be a first!

Let's get into the review!

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
As the episode begins, Doctor Harry Vanderspeigle is fishing on the lake next to his home outside Patience, Colorado. Sheriff Mike Thompson (who insists on being called "Big Black") and his quirky Deputy Liv Baker arrive at Vanderspeigle's home and call him back to shore.

Sheriff Thompson tells Harry they need him to come into town to examine a dead body and determine the cause of death. Harry's reluctant to go, saying they must have a doctor for that. Thompson says Unfortunately the victim IS their doctor.

Flashback to four months earlier, as we see "Harry" is really an alien named Hah Re (com-O-dee!). He's on a mission to deliver a "package" to Earth, when his ship is struck by lightning. He crash lands on a snowy mountaintop somewhere in Colorado. Hah staggers through the snow and arrives at the cabin of Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle.

The alien bursts into the cabin, startling Harry. He fights the alien, who picks him up and hurls him through a window. Harry lands on the upper deck, and the alien picks him up and hurls him into the frozen lake far below. Harry crashes through the ice and drowns.

Hah Re then morphs and takes on the form of Harry in order to blend in. He practices controlling his new body and learns English by watching reruns of Law & Order (Important Plot Point!). He also spends a few hours each day searching the mountain for his ship's payload, in order to complete his mission.

Up to now Harry's avoided going into town, because even though he looks and sounds human, there's clearly something "off" about him. Unable to think of an excuse, Harry agrees to examine the dead doctor. He follows the Sheriff to the clinic.

Once there, Harry meets Ben Hawthorne, the young, inexperienced Mayor, who welcomes him to Patience. Harry sees the body of a young woman lying on an exam table, and assumes she's the deceased. When he touches her she jumps up, startling him. She says her name is Asta Twelvetrees, the late doctor's nurse/assistant.

Harry then sees Hodges' body lying under a sheet. He sniffs the corpse (?), gives it a cursory look and notes several puncture wounds in its neck. He says the stab marks were self inflicted and says the doctor murdered himself. When the Sheriff asks why Hodges would do that, Harry says he doesn't know and leaves. The others stare at one another, unsure of what just happened.

Ben follows Harry out of the clinic, and begs him to perform an autopsy on Hodges, to make sure his death was a suicide. Harry agrees, as he appears eager to "cut into a body and pull out the organs."

Harry then walks down the street, as Ben's wife Kate and his young son Max approach. Max looks up and somehow sees Harry in his true alien form. He lets out a bloodcurdling scream and dives into his mother's car. Harry notes that only one human in a million has the "genetic mutation" that allows them to see through his disguise. Obviously Max is one in a million.

Later on Harry wheels Hodges' body into the lab and begins the autopsy. Asta appears and insists on helping, as she was close to Hodges, and doesn't believe he killed himself. Harry's not happy with the intrusion, but agrees to let her help.

After the autopsy, Asta says she's going to the bar across the street for drinks. For no good reason, she invites Harry— who she openly admits is creepy— to come. He defers at first, but realizes socializing would help him to fit in with humans. He tells her he'll meet her later.

After Asta leaves, Harry cuts Hodges' skull open so he can squeeze his brain between his fingers (???). Unfortunately, Hodges' wife— who doesn't know her husband is dead— picks that moment to enter the lab looking for him. It doesn't go well.

Harry joins Asta at the bar, called The 59. Asta begins telling Harry her life story, saying she left home when she was sixteen and married a biker. Unfortunately they split four months ago, Since Harry has a truck, she asks Harry if he'll help her move her stuff out of her ex's house. Asta's friend D'arcy, who's the bartender, then begins aggressively hitting on Harry. 

Harry asks why the bar's called "The 59." D'arcy says the town motto is "Fifty Nine Died To Save One," and tells him if he sticks around long enough he may find out what it means (Plot Point!).

The three begin doing whiskey shots, and Harry becomes intoxicated for the first time. Against his better judgement, he gets up and dances around the bar.

Hours later Harry & Asta leave the bar, and she tells him to pick her up at 10am the next morning. After she leaves, Harry congratulates himself, saying no one could tell he was different. He then remembers that Max could see his actual form, and decides to hunt the kid down and kill him (!).

He drives around till he spots Kate Hawthorne's car in front of a house, and determines that Max lives there. He climbs into Max's bedroom window and clamps his hand over his mouth. He tells the struggling boy that he's not going to hurt him— just kill him. Max bites Harry's hand and begins screaming bloody murder.

Ben and Kate enter Max's room just as Harry dives under the bed. Max tells them the alien's back, but of course they don't believe him. They tell Max he can sleep in their room tonight. As the three leave, Max turns back and sees Harry flip him off from under the bed.

The next morning Harry wakes with a raging hangover, and erroneously deduces that if whiskey affected humans the way it did him, they'd never drink it. He looks for the device again, and comes across a mine entrance labeled with a sign that reads, "Fifty Nine Died To Save One."

Later on Harry returns to the clinic, where the Sheriff accuses him of "stealing" Hodges' body. Harry admits he took it, and shows them that he placed it in a snow bank behind the building to preserve it until the coroner arrived (???). I assume this scene was meant to show us that Harry's quirky?

Inside the clinic, Asta introduces Harry to Jay, a troubled young girl who works part time as an intern. Harry comments on her birthmark, thinking she has a fly on her neck. Jay calls him a douchebag and leaves. Since nothing really comes of this scene, I'm assuming it's setup for a later episode.

Harry drives Asta to the home of her ex, Jimmy. She grabs her stuff and Harry carries it out to his truck. Unfortunately Jimmy picks that moment to return. He naturally assumes Harry is Asta's new boyfriend, but she tells him they just work together. Asta tells Harry to go, as she and Jimmy have things to discuss. Harry gets in his truck and leaves.

As he drives off, Harry tells himself he needs to stick to his mission and not get involved with the natives. It's clear that Jimmy's an abusive spouse though, so against his better judgement, he turns around and returns to the house. He peeks through a window and sees Jimmy hitting Asta and shoving her to the floor.

Harry smashes through a wall, grabs Jimmy and hauls him outside. He begins choking him, but Asta rushes outside and begs him to stop. Harry releases Jimmy, and Asta kicks him in the side while he's down. Harry & Asta leave together.

Asta has Harry drive her to a lookout spot, and the two get out and stare at a scenic mountain. She admits she became pregnant when she married Jimmy at age sixteen, and he forced her to give the child up for adoption.

The next day we see Harry at the burial service for Dr. Hodges. He approaches Ben, and asks him why everyone in town is calling him, believing he's the new doctor. Ben says it's because he is. Asta thanks Harry for coming and says he's "a breath of fresh air" in the town. This sparks an idea in Harry.

He marches up to the casket, and to the horror of everyone assembled, throws open the lid. He begins sniffing Hodges' body, as Asta drags him away. He tells her he knows how Hodges died— he couldn't breathe for some reason, so he attempted to do a tracheotomy on himself. Unfortunately he wasn't quick enough. Harry says that explains the self-inflicted stab wounds on Hodges' neck. Asta asks why Hodges couldn't breathe, and Harry says it's obvious that someone in town poisoned him.

Flash back to four months earlier again, as Asta walks out on Jimmy. She looks up and just happens to see Harry's damaged ship streak across the sky. She takes this as a sign and drives off.

Sometime later, we see Harry staring at the night sky. He says he was taught that the human race's biggest weakness was their need for connection, but now thinks it's their biggest strength. As proof, he recounts the tale of The 59— when the Patience Coal Mine caved in, fifty nine miners managed to escape. One was trapped inside though, so the rest went back in to save him. Unfortunately the tunnel collapsed and they all perished. "Fifty nine died to save one."

The next day Harry searches the mountain again for his missing payload. He detects a piece of it and digs it out of the snow. For some reason, the fragment is labeled "FULL EXTINCTION EVENT." Harry says the human race may be redeemable after all, but unfortunately for them it's too late. He says it's only a matter of time before he finds his device and wipes out the entire population.

Later on, Harry reports for duty at the clinic. Asta tells him he has a patient in Exam 1. Harry enters the room and sees Max, who lets out another bloodcurdling scream.

Thoughts:
• When I first sat down to watch the show and this logo popped up, I audibly groaned. I can't believe I'm saying this, but somehow the Siffy Channel managed to produce a series that's actually worth watching! Believe me, no one's more surprised than I am to hear me say that, as they're perennially the worst They're like the Sony of TV networks.

Resident Alien is based on the Dark Horse comic book of the same name, written by Peter Hogan and illustrated by Steve Parkhouse. It debuted in 2012, and is still going strong.

The series appears to be based on the first miniseries of the comic, titled Welcome To Earth! Amazingly, some scenes look like they jumped right off the printed page!

The series makes some major deviations from the comic though. The biggest difference has to be Harry's personality. Although Comic Harry is ostensibly an alien, he acts pretty much like a normal human. He's occasionally puzzled by an unfamiliar Earth saying, but other than that he's virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the cast.

Fortunately, TV Harry is much more eccentric and... well, alien, as he struggles to understand the baffling behavior of the humans around him. I have to admit, I much prefer the TV version of Harry.

Other notable differences: In the comic, Harry's spaceship is shot down by an American fighter jet and crashes in a desert in the Southwest. He's then pursued by Men In Black, who track him by following his ATM withdrawals. 

Comic Harry eventually moves to Patience, Washington (not Colorado), where he invents the identity of Harry Vanderspeigle and buys a remote cabin. He uses his psychic abilities to mask his true form from the locals.

As I said, similar, but with some major changes. It was probably a good idea to get rid of the Men In Black angle, as we've been there and done all that in the theater four times now. Not sure why the series changed the setting from Washington to Colorado though.

• With its glowing engine pods, Harry's spaceship reminds me a bit of the Nebuchadnezzar from The Matrix Trilogy.

• I like Harry's cool little secondary arms that fold up into his torso when he's in alien form.

• So hold up— just how does Harry's morphing ability work? At one point he says, "Only one in a million humans have the genetic mutation that enables them to see through our genetic reconstruction. Yet somehow, in a town of a thousand people, there is a runny-nosed kid who can see me in my true form." 

"Genetic reconstruction" implies that Harry physically altered the appearance of his body. And that's exactly what we see during the impressive morphing sequence. His skin bubbles and changes as his body LITERALLY modifies its shape. The transformation was clearly physical— there's no illusion or holographic projection involved.

In the comic, Harry doesn't go through any such metamorphosis— he uses his powers to alter the perception of the people around him, so they see him as human. This explanation sounds like the way Max is able to "see through" Harry's disguise.

It's like the show's using both methods to alter Harry's looks. Nice try, writers, but you can't have it both ways! Pick one and go with it!

• As is typical in "Alien Assimilating Into Human Society " stories, Harry learns about our ways and how to speak English by watching hours and hours of TV.

In particular he watches a lot of Law & Order— specifically Bounty, the second episode of the fourteenth season— in which Lennie Brisco tells a suspect "There's no such thing as hooker-client confidentiality."

Also, Harry's fascination with police procedural series explains his deductive and forensic abilities, as well as his fondness for figuring out mysteries.

• Harry spends much of his time searching the nearby mountain for missing components from his crashed ship. Note that he apparently built a detection device out of an old fishing net! Haw!

• The show takes place in the fictional small town of Patience, Colorado, but is filmed in and around Vancouver (what isn't these days?). Harry's cabin was filmed on Britannia Beach, while the mountaintop scenes were shot at Rainbow Mountain and the Pemberton Ice Cap.

The town of Patience is actually Ladysmith, located on Vancouver Island. It's a small little town that's only accessible by ferry! 

Note that while this establishing shot uses Ladysmith's main street, that mountain in the background is clearly a digital matte painting. As I said, Ladysmith's located on an island, and there's no terrain like that anywhere nearby.

• Overall I was very impressed with this episode, as the writing was above average and the performances were top notch. That said, if I had to come up with one complaint though, it'd be Asta's relationship with Harry.

Their friendship happens wayyyyyy too quickly. Harry consistently acts like a serial killer, and Asta's clearly put off by his personality. But then immediately after he performs the autopsy on Dr. Hodges, she invites him out for a drink! What the hell? 

I get that the writers needed to speed things along in the pilot, but their friendship moved a little too fast, and felt unrealistic and unearned.

As if that wasn't enough, Harry meets Asta at The 59 for drinks, and D'Arcy the bartender instantly starts hitting on him. What the hell?

Does Harry exude some sort of alien pheromones that makes him irresistible to women?

• Alan Tudyk is amazing in everything he does, but he's especially good here. He gives Harry a bizarre personality that's cold and creepy, yet somehow oddly endearing. I can't think of any other actors who could've pulled that off. 

Tudyk's been in dozens of movies and TV shows over the years, including A Knight's Tale, Firefly, V and Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil (which I HIGHLY recommend!).

He's also done extensive voice work in animated features, such as Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia and Ralph Breaks The Internet.

He's also the go-to guy when you need someone to voice and motion-capture a robot character. He played Sonny in I, Robot, as well as K-2S0 in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

• Harry joins Asta for drinks at The 59, Patience's local watering hole. Later he finds out the bar was named after the local mining disaster, in which fifty nine miners died in a cave in while attempting to save one.

The story's based on an actual mining disaster that happened in Crested Butte, Colorado, in which a gas explosion cased the mine to cave in, killing fifty nine miners.

The real disaster happened on January 24, 1884. For some reason they changed the date of The 59 tragedy to January 17, 1884.

• After Harry realizes Max can somehow see his true form, he attempts to kill the kid tp prevent him from revealing his true identity. 

I'm assuming that Harry trying to kill Max will become a running gag in the series, and I'm personally OK with that.

• Asta introduces Harry to Jay, a troubled young teen who helps out at the clinic. 

Hmm... Later on Asta infodumps her backstory to Harry, saying she married Jimmy and became pregnant when she was sixteen, and he forced her to give up the baby for adoption. Because of that, she tries to help kids like Jay stay off the streets so they don't make the same mistakes she did.

I wonder... is Jay gonna turn out to be the baby that Asta gave up? I guess it all depends on how old Asta's supposed to be. If Jay's eighteen and Asta had her when she was sixteen, that'd make her thirty four now. Actress Sara Tomko, who plays Asta, is currently thirty eight, which is pretty close. So it's entirely possible that Asta's secretly Jay's mom! 

Stay tuned to find out if I'm right, or seeing story arcs that just aren't there.

• When Harry innocently comments on Jay's birthmark, she calls him a douche bag. The Sheriff also calls him a "taint" after he makes an inappropriate comment.

I loved the scene in which Harry looks up both words and reacts with shock & horror when he sees google images of them! Once again, Alan Tudyk's a comedy genius.

• Harry takes Asta to Jimmy's house to pick up her things. Jimmy unexpectedly arrives and confronts the two. Asta tells Harry to go, claiming she'll be OK.

As Harry drives off, he realizes Asta's in danger, and reluctantly turns his truck around. He peers through a window and sees Jimmy hit Asta and knock her to the floor. Harry punches through the wall, grabs Jimmy by the shoulders and hauls him outside.

Harry's really lucky that Jimmy just happened to be directly in front of the wall he smashed through. Just a second earlier Asta herself had been standing in that exact spot! He could have easily grabbed her and yanked her through the hole instead!

•  Asta asks Harry to drive to a scenic lookout so she can gaze at a mountain. As they stop, she removes her shoes and walks barefoot through the snow to the edge of a cliff. I'm assuming that must be a Native American thing?

I wonder if we'll find out Asta's from a real tribe, or a made up TV one? If I had to bet, I'd say it'll be the latter.

• At the end of the episode, Harry finds a piece of the component he's been looking for. For no good reason I can think of, this chunk of metal is labeled "Full Extinction Event."

That... that doesn't make a lick of sense.

OK, I get it— this is the writers' way of letting us know Harry's mission is to wipe out all human life on Earth. But why the hell would his doomsday device be engraved with its purpose? Think of it this way— would the Army have written "Blow Up Hiroshima" on the side of the Little Boy bomb in 1945?

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