First there was Gort, then there was Harry Vanderspeigle. Or at least the alien who took over Harry Vanderspeigle on Resident Alien, streaming now on Peacock. That’s really all you need to know, other than the times have changed a bit since director Robert Wise premiered his landmark alien visitor movie The Day the Earth Stood Still on New Year’s Day 70 years ago. Actually maybe the times haven’t changed at all. For Alan Tudyk’s visiting resident alien and his town of newfound friends the stakes just keeping bigger and we need the laughs more than ever, as we learned at the midseason break this past March.
A new trailer reveals even more sci-fi comedy antics are coming for the residents of Patience this summer. Check it out:
We knew Steve Martin was funny from his stand-up comedy, comedy LPs, and Saturday Night Live before his long career as comedic actor. But he stands apart for that unique physical comedy that made films like The Jerk, Roxanne, and Housesitter comedy hits. Why bring up Steve Martin? Because nobody has done that kind of humor as well until Alan Tudyk found his role of a lifetime as the title character in Resident Alien. Tudyk may have acquired his sci-fi street cred by co-starring in fan favorite mega-hits like Firefly and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but Resident Alien is really his first starring role, and his first chance to truly shine.
But it’s not just Tudyk that makes Resident Alien a series that’s here to stay.
After a twelve-year break, the best, award-winning police procedural and crime drama is back. For twenty seasons Law & Orderdelivered the best “ripped from the headlines” twists and turns, featuring the best shifting casts, long-term regulars, and returning characters. Its split episode format with two detectives and assistant district attorneys blended the best of all the cop shows before or since with the #1 series ever created about lawyering (it helped get me through criminal procedure in law school two decades ago, and I’ve seen each of its 456 original episodes at least four times). Well, now the best is back, with a mix of familiar faces and some promising new ones, beginning with this week’s first episode of its 21st season, a twist on the infamous Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein cases. It’s the return of the best two assistant district attorneys in the history of the show. And it hasn’t changed a bit–a good thing–like the series kept going after we last watched it way back in 2010.
Another pandemic delayed production finally makes its way to TV audiences this week. It’s the Syfy Channel series Resident Alien, based on the crazy-good Dark Horse Comics sci-fi/crime/mystery mash-up comics by Peter Hogan (2000 AD, Tom Strong) and Steve Parkhouse (Milkman Murders, Doctor Who)–first reviewed here at borg back in 2013. Airing Wednesday nights, the show stars Alan Tudyk as the extra-terrestrial hero who survives a ship crash on what was supposed to be a quick mission to Earth, Coneheads-style. Taking on the part of Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle, he is able to mask his appearance using his otherworldly powers. Like E.T. he just wants to go home, but he must wait until his friends come to find him in the town of Patience, Colorado, an Everwood-style small town full of medical crises that he must attend to after the town doctor is found dead. He gets pulled into a murder mystery, which he takes to like Agent Cooper in the town of Twin Peaks. It’s this police procedural drama-meets-sci-fi blend that is taken forward in the story.
It’s always a big surprise when the holiday episode of Doctor Who is a critical not-to-be-missed episode. When we last saw the Doctor, she was trapped millions of light years away in an alien prison. The New Year’s Day 2021 special Revolution of the Daleksis not a filler, out-of-continuity holiday showpiece, instead continuing after ten months have lapsed for the Doctor’s companions back on Earth, and after the Doctor has been imprisoned for years in that same relative time span. If you missed this episode you missed: the return of John Barrowman’s universal fan-favorite character Captain Jack Harkness, another Law & Order/Law & Order UK crossover/reunion, the last we’ll see of some major characters, a new Prime Minister, a preview of a new companion, and one of the best Dalek episodes in the 57 years of the series. As the studio releases word that Jodie Whittaker will be soon leaving the series, Revolution of the Daleks reflects that both her performance as the 13th Doctor and Chris Chibnall’s running of the series has finally arrived. It’s a timeless story full of important, lovely emotional beats, fantastic new sci-fi special and visual effects, and a return to the classic framework and themes of the show’s past.
Let’s take a look at why this episode was superb and offer up some candidates for the 14th Doctor…
Life in California is not all that sunny for everyone. The fourth and last of our reviews of the initial release of graphic novels from new publisher TKO Studios looks at Goodnight Paradise, a peek into the day-by-day drudgery and dim chance of survival of the homeless. When a homeless girl is found dead in a dumpster, the man who found her has enough information to find her killer. Unfortunately his mind is addled through a rough life, alcoholism, and mental illness, and he’s struggling to put it all together.
Readers are introduced to a story “ripped from the headlines” like an old Law & Order episode, as real-world tech corporation Snapchat makes new millionaires and billionaires, and outside its doors across Venice Beach the poor and the homeless are getting shuffled away, the culture of the town turned upside down as real estate shifts and the past culture of the area is squeezed out. The people living in the alleys all are at the end of their ropes, just to varying degrees. As more young people hit the streets without income sources, those with mental illnesses run out of their prescription drugs to keep them in control, compounding their struggle as they spiral into confusion and anger. Enter Tessa, a young woman who leaves home to come to the coast to see the ocean. She befriends a small, tight group of people who protect each other. When she videotapes a woman being drugged for sex by one of the new rich types at a party, she’s hunted down by his thug to protect the guy’s reputation. But is everything as it seems in Goodnight Paradise?
Writer Joshua Dysart(Unknown Soldier, B.P.R.D.) creates a deconstructed superhero of sorts out of his homeless protagonist. This man is like DC Comics’ Oliver Queen, but stripped of his money and his sanity, yet his sense of right and wrong remain intact. Artist Alberto Ponticelli(Unknown Soldier), with colors by Giulia Brusco (Scalped), introduce readers to layered characters in scenes not using sleight of hand so much as revealing the realities of perception and bias. Scenes that seem one way at first only are rediscovered by the reader to have their meanings changed when seen and explained from the perspectives of other characters–in a way Ponticelli shows the comic book medium can take advantage of.
If you aren’t watching this season of Major Crimes, last night you likely missed the best episode of television this year, which made us do a double take as to whether this was a midseason finale special cliffhanger ratings booster. It wasn’t. Likewise, it was the best TV pilot we’ve seen in ages (more on that later). And add to that one of the most satisfying conclusions that The Closer and Major Crimes writers James Duff and Mike Bercham have concocted yet.
Directed by The Closer, Major Crimes, Dallas, and NYPD Blue director Michael M. Robin, the episode “Two Options” took an almost Dragnet approach to a police procedural and crammed more drama into an hour of TV than we thought possible. And the climax might have caused someone to claim it as the best stand-and-cheer moment since Eowyn killed the Witch-King at the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Reviewers write about new seasons and finale episodes all the time, but it takes a great hour of regular programming to cause you to stop in your tracks and tell everyone about it, especially in the week full of press briefings leading up to Comic-Con.
For regulars of the series who haven’t watched the episode yet, we’ll just note that everyone gets his and her moment–Sharon, Louie, Andy, Mike, Julio, Buzz, Amy, Taylor, Rusty, Dr. Joe, Cooper, and even Fritz. Although if we worked in the actual district attorneys’ office in Los Angeles we’d probably not be too happy with the portrayals of last years’ Deputy D.A. Rios or last night’s D.D.A. Gloria Lim.
That brings us to our prediction. Allow us to summon the ghost of Carnac the Magnificent. (Drum roll, please).
