RESIDENT ALIEN
Broadcasting date : January 26, 2022 Dissemination platform : SyFy Episode : 2.01 Title : Old Friends director : Robert Duncan McNeill screenwriter : Chris Sheridan performers : Alan Tudyk, Sara Tomko, Corey Reynolds, Alice Wetterlund, Levi Fiehler, Elizabeth Bowen, Judah Prehn, Meredith Garretson, Gary Farmer, Gracelyn Awad Rinke, Nathan Fillion.
CRITICISM
A few months ago (well, a few hours in the series), Harry fled in his spacecraft with a stowaway, the young Max. We find our two lads on Earth, the first in the hospital with memory problems, the second at the house where his parents have just had a shocking experience by demolishing the government agents who were pursuing Harry.
Asta recovers Harry who thinks he is Lennie Roscoe (Jerry Orbach), the central character of the series Law & Order original. To try to make him recover his memory, she takes him to her favorite Chinese restaurant where the talking octopus, condemned to death in his aquarium, gives him a helping hand (with a tentacle).
In town, the sheriff celebrates a very sad birthday while the mayor fools around cowboy, his self-esteem greatly boosted by his nocturnal adventure and the good it has done his couple.
As for Harry’s spaceship, it’s in disrepair, invisible at the edge of a baseball field…
The first episode of a new season is often a catch-all hinge that serves to both get us back into the mood of the series and lay the groundwork for stories to come. Resident Alien is no exception to the rule: we feel a kind of hesitation and it’s not as funny as usual, until the burst of the final scene announcing some tasty gags in the episodes to come. What a happy idea to have added Nathan Fillion (Firefly) in the casting, even if it only has the voice of a cephalopod!
Alan Tudyk is still brilliant in his role as an alien, uncomfortable in his human skin, tortured by his feelings for Asta which prevent him from carrying out his mission of global destruction. His facial expressions are as tasty as this peach pie he is eating with oatmeal, and I have searched in vain, I cannot find another series in which an actor is forced to constantly make grimaces (apart, perhaps , Mr Bean). Tudyk does it remarkably well, and a lot of the show’s humor rests in his facial performances.
The realization of Robert Duncan McNeill (Lt. Paris in Star Trek: Voyager) is clean and conventional, with a small moment of bewilderment in the scene where Harry laments in front of his failed spaceship. Are his dbulls an artistic experiment or just the result of a technical constraint, which I highly doubt? I found them clumsy, out of place, in short, rather dumb. But it’s anecdotal.
A transition episode far from disappointing but I still hope that the sequel will return to the level of the previous season.
TRAILER – EXCERPTS
