Resident Alien series wraps with funny, bittersweet finale after only four seasons

Review by C.J. Bunce

How do you say goodbye to a beloved show, one you get to visit each week for several years like an old friend? Resident Alien figured out how it’s done, with equal doses of laugh out loud humor and the requisite bittersweet tear-jerky stuff fans–and the cast–deserve. It’s hard to imagine that if the series was given more warning of cancelation, would they have ended it any other way? After one of the series’ best seasons–with each new episode even funnier and smarter than the last–the finale was a series of denouements exploring every corner of the past four seasons to make sure every remaining plot thread was nicely tied up. The biggest loss to all of fandom is no longer having a series running that features Sara Tomko, whose portrayal of Asta Twelvetrees represented so many positive things to so many people.

Resident Alien sprouted from the comic books by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse. It now joins Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Eureka, Chuck, Warehouse 13, Haven, Grimm, iZombie, and Psych as a genre show we never could get enough of no matter how many seasons it ran. These were all shows about community, about pop culture commonality–“humor plus…” humor plus singular twists on supernatural, fantasy, mystery, and science fiction that anyone could drop in on for a good fix of genre fun anywhere, anytime.

The season also did something that no writer has done for Alan Tudyk yet, at least since Firefly: Give him a script that drops the shtick for five minutes so we can see there’s some warmth behind that smirk. The culmination of his Harry Vanderspiegle was a set up for a scene Tudyk didn’t even appear in: a “Men in Black” mental trick he worked on Corey Reynolds’ Sheriff Mike was revisited to allow the Sheriff to have a few minutes with his dad. Pretty powerful, heartwarming stuff for a show that was like a rollercoaster of sketch comedy at times, especially when Asta and best pal Alice Wetterlund’s D’Arcy Bloom became their own Abbott and Costello at the end of last season. It’s always the darkest before the dawn, and the dark this season followed D’Arcy on a pathway to her own end that was caught just in time by that bolstering of Harry’s character into a more caring and compassionate sort. By making Tudyk’s cranky, self-centered character more human, the show actually strived to make humanity in 2025 more human as well. Will anyone get it? Will it stick?

Not once did Jenna Lamia’s Judy Cooper’s ability to say the most crude comment in the sweetest way fail to get a gut-busting laugh. Appearances by Terry O’Quinn’s cyborg alien hunter meeting up with his son (played by Paul Piaskowski), Gary Farmer back after a break as Asta’s dad, and a future for Asta’s daughter Jay (Kaylayla Raine) were exactly what the end needed. We even got a farewell for one of pop culture’s queens: Linda Hamilton’s General Wright swept in for her own swan song early in the season (no doubt Hamilton will be back elsewhere). The now older kids of the show, Sahar (Gracelyn Awad Rinke) and Max (Judah Prehn), weren’t left hanging, as the writers gave them some key scenes mid-season. And the quick in-and-out dry comedy of Diana Bang’s Nurse Ellen didn’t go unnoticed. With more episodes–or a much-earned but denied fifth season–we could have gotten to know Lena better (Nicola Correia-Damude), seen what a long-term relationship with her and Sheriff Mike would have been like, and maybe seen something more than a last minute stunt-cast opportunity for Jewel Staite (or maybe even more of Tudyk’s Firefly co-stars like we saw with Nathan Fillion in the first season).

In its third season, showrunner Chris Sheridan had firmly established Resident Alien as the kind of series with the potential to have an enduring place in TV land. When that season ended Harry had been swapped for another alien, a Grey ready to bring doom for Earth. The Mayor (Levi Fiehler) and his wife Kate (Meredith Garretson) were in a state of chaos, with Kate visibly appearing like maybe the actress was sick in real life–maybe that’s the cost of being abducted by aliens–and she made it look real. Garretson seemed to go through her own transformation, Linda Hamilton-Terminator II style, as Kate fought to get her baby back this season. At the same time Deputy Liv (Elizabeth Bowen) did a similar thing, and not hiding from it as it formed a comedy bit involving her big uniform, used to poke even more at the ongoing non-PC antics of Sheriff Mike. What was the best of the season, and probably the best of the entire series run? It’s hard not to point at Reynolds and Bowen playing off each other for laughs consistently from the beginning to the very last scene. Was their final scene together a springboard for a new spin-off series? It sure looks like it could be. You can bet people would watch it.