This week on Resident Alien, Harry, Asta and Dan headed to the woods so they could broadcast the message for his people at the required time and place, but received unwanted guests in her cousins Kayla, and Drew (Tommy Pico, who also wrote this episode.) Meanwhile, Ben and Kate, D’Arcy, Thompson, and Dr. Ethan Stone (yes, he’s back!) all went on dates from hell (what an odd coincidence.)
1. A Seed of Doubt
Early this week, Sahar asks Asta how she can really be sure Harry no longer wants to destroy the human race: now, we may all know that, but it’s a good question, how can she really be certain? He’s a liar, a “murderererer,” and a dipshit, so she better keep an eye on him. Harry being an oblivious fool very much turns out to be the case here, when he reveals the message he’s broadcasting is to tell his people to go back and destroy humanity 50 years from now, because Asta will have, erm, passed away by then. Sure, he’s worried about what we’re doing to our planet, and he had a vivid vision of a bison, but this is why you should make clear everyone’s on the same page about something, so you can solve a problem then rather than now!
2. Children Are the Future
Harry doesn’t like children — he compares them to chewing gum litter at the start of the episode — and that likely played a role in his faulty decision to just delay the apocalypse: he recognizes the beauty of the world, and that we’re dooming ourselves through pollution and climate change, but he’s unable to comprehend the reason that is so terrible is because we are depriving our descendants (literal or otherwise) of a decent world to live in. A big problem is that for Harry’s people, reproduction is a lethal and noxious event, and it’s only after everyone returns from the “camping trip” to the reservation, and finds Sunny (Grace Dove) is in labor, that he realizes nothing brings people together like the birth of a child, and the drive to protect them — it certainly made me wonder if we’ve done enough to reach out to the remaining climate skeptics by appealing to their parental instincts.
3. Water Snobbery? Really?
Ben and Kate’s storyline wasn’t all that substantial this week, but it was still pretty amusing: she convinces him to visit Jessup, despite their awfully rude tourism campaign, in an apparent attempt to defuse tensions between the two towns. However, on meeting Mayor Mitch Green, even Kate finds him too much of a pretentious asshole to play nice, and decides to leave. I think Jessup’s pride in having the best water in the world, and the various types of water they had on offer at the restaurant, was a great way to illustrate that pretentiousness: I mean, seriously, it’s water, it’s supposed to be tasteless! Did they all flunk out of wine snob class or something?
4. Backstories and Dinners From Hell
D’Arcy gets asked out by dashing baseball player Elliott (Justin Rain), but unfortunately her parents Gerald and Bethany (Barclay Hope and Lini Evans) are in town, so she has to meet them for dinner instead. It’s an awkward reunion: her parents are insufferable people who try but fail to hide their disappointment at their Olympian daughter becoming a bartender, talking about her like she isn’t even there. Liv tries to provide moral support, but she gets pulled away, and D’Arcy winds up literally pulling the rug (OK, table cloth) on her parents.
Liv leaves because, by complete coincidence, Thompson is also on a date at the same restaurant, with a stranger named Moira (Amber Lewis). She winds up pressing him too much about his past, causing him to confess he left Washington D.C. for Patience because he made a mistake that got his best friend killed. He leaves, and Liv tries to check on him, but he’s already gone, leaving her to wonder if she shouldn’t have goaded him into going back into the dating scene for the rest of the evening.
Lastly, General McCallister has Dr. Ethan Stone taken out of his prison cell to apologize for his rough treatment, and to treat him to dinner. She still believes he’s an alien though, and reveals her father died by suicide after everyone mocked him over the spectacular UFO they saw when she was a child; she then stabs Ethan in the hand with a fork, to trigger him into changing back to his “true form.” Look, I hate to sound like I’m stigmatizing trauma and poor mental health, but: she’s crazy.
Continued below5. Oh No Asta, What Are You Doing?
The birth of Sunny’s baby has an emotional effect on Asta, as she was not supported by her family when she gave birth to Jay, and she winds up heading back to her scumbag ex Jimmy’s place for the night. To put it plainly, that’s a terrible idea, and I doubt any of her friends or family would approve. Hopefully, the alien signal Harry (and McCallister) pick up from New York will pull her away before it’s too late.
Bonus Thoughts:
– So we’re clear, Sahar’s quotation of Dr. Maya Angelou is actually a paraphrasing by Oprah Winfrey: Angelou actually said, “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can’t you get it the first time?”
– Harry mumbling “like and subscribe,” while remembering what he learned from YouTube about delivering babies, may low-key be the funniest thing he’s ever said.
– Remember Scott Derrickson and Keanu Reeves’s disappointing remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still? Oh, no reason…
– Apparently octopuses fantasize about other species: who knew?
See you all next week for “Family Day,” and remember to like and subscribe! Wait a minute…
