At the conclusion of the first episode of Resident Alien, the new Syfy dramedy starring Alan Tudyk, viewers could be forgiven for thinking they’re essentially watching an extremely high-concept version of Monk: There’s a murder mystery, an extremely awkward lead character asked to help solve the crime, and a parade of supporting townsfolk there to interact in humorously strange ways. But the show quickly reveals itself to be nothing of the sort, simultaneously far odder and more pedestrian than Tony Shalhoub’s police procedural; for one, there’s an intergalactic alien running around trying to find missing pieces of his ship, all while disguised as a small-town doctor. But whenever those alien shenanigans get put on hold, Resident Alien quickly pivots into a lukewarm primetime soap, like Everwood without the heartwarming twists on stock character types. And while there’s promise in both concepts, the early going is an unwieldy fusion of the two.
The success of this quirky little series rests almost wholly on Tudyk’s capable comic-actor shoulders. The premise sees his interstellar visitor crash-land on Earth after his ship is struck by lightning during a mission, at which point he makes his way to a remote cabin in the town of Patience, Colorado, where he murders the owner and transforms his alien physique into an exact replica of the human whose home he just invaded. Cut to four months later, when, after learning English via endless marathoning of Law & Order, the man he’s impersonating—Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle, a hotshot New York surgeon who was vacationing at his winter retreat when Tudyk’s alien murdered him—is recruited to take over temporarily when the longtime town doctor dies under mysterious circumstances. Harry (he adopts the dead man’s identity) soon learns that people aren’t as pointless as he had previously suspected, even as he searches for pieces of his ship to help him complete the aforementioned mission: the destruction of all human life.
From that outlandish beginning, the show mines fertile comic drama from Harry’s predicament—desperately trying to blend in and avoid suspicion while having almost no idea how to effectively portray an average Joe. Tudyk’s physical-comedy chops are put to excellent use, as Harry tries (and often fails) to perform the basic tasks of sociability, from laughing at a joke to responding appropriately to normal conversational etiquette. Luckily, he has an ally in the nurse at his new job, Asta Twelvetrees (Sara Tomko), who takes his behavior at face value, as a collection of tics from a well-meaning neuroatypical. “I’ve always been an outsider; maybe that’s why I understand you,” she says in a quick summation of the “look, just accept it” mentality the show adopts toward a lead character who in a more straightforward narrative would almost certainly be avoided like the plague. The rest of the town follows suit, accepting Harry’s idiosyncrasies as the odd behavior of a doctor with terrible people skills, who’s otherwise harmless.
For the most part, the steady progression of this narrative is a winning one; once you get over the fact that these people have welcomed with open arms a man who seems worryingly unstable (at times, Tudyk can go too broad), the story of Harry’s gradual understanding of human behavior—and the way it starts to affect his own alien attitudes and actions—is predictable but fun. From his improper response to seeing a bloody dead body (“This is awesome!”) to struggles with how to smile, Tudyk makes Harry a frank and funny narrator. After a local child, Max, is revealed to possess a genetic mutation that allows him to see through the alien’s human disguise, a trip to a local bar to try alcohol for the first time leads to the following thought process on Harry’s part: “It’s simple—I’ll just break into that kid’s house and kill him. I’ll say this about whiskey: It’s allowing me to make smart, rational decisions.” When the show takes this in too serious a direction, it quickly gets clumsily sentimental, but as a comic vehicle for Tudyk’s ample talents, it’s a winner.
Unfortunately, Resident Alien also wants to be an appealing small-town drama, and the results of shoehorning in such typical TV offerings are uneven at best. The second and third episodes try to shift focus from Harry to Asta and others with soap opera-level plot twists and emotional button-pushing it hasn’t earned (secret babies given up for adoption! Old friends rediscovering their friendship!), and which drag down the proceedings. Similarly, later episodes introduce characters from Harry’s past who should, frankly, know better than to think he’s the same guy, straining what little credulity the show grants its premise in the first place.
The supporting cast runs the gamut from excellent to disastrous. On the positive side, the show’s clear MVP (other than Tudyk) is Silicon Valley’s Alice Wetterlund, who takes the role of D’arcy, a former Olympian turned bartender with a tendency to make bad choices, and invests her with so much guile, charm, and quick-witted humor, she almost achieves the level of greatness Homer Simpson had hoped to find with Poochie. (“Whenever D’arcy’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, ‘Where’s D’arcy?’”) On the negative side, poor Corey Reynolds is saddled with the role of Sheriff Mike Thompson, a character so riddled with outsized traits and affectations that he comes across as less believably human than the literal alien around which the show revolves. The intrusion of a more grounded drama into the large-than-life comic premise that drives the series doesn’t really succeed over the course of the season; the show has some work to do to balance its competing impulses.
That uneven hit-to-miss ratio means Resident Alien is only fitfully entertaining, at least for now. Whenever Tudyk or Wetterlund (or both, in the show’s best scenes) are onscreen, the show generally shines, remaining funny and engaging despite the odd stumble. But when attention shifts to the rest of the town of Patience, there’s simply not yet enough accumulated goodwill or interest in these people to sustain it. Still, the show often abandons those sudsy dramatics and lets its supporting cast play off one another—and Tudyk—in believable, grounded ways, managing to rise above its sometimes lackluster B-plots. If it can cast off the weaker narrative decisions and tighten up the non-Harry material, Resident Alien could be an alien adventure worth tagging along on.
42 Comments
(just watch People of Earth)
Why are you trying to remind me that People of Earth never got to finish telling me the story?
Spoiler Alert: It turns out that they were just bored, lonely people.
I may have seen a different season 2 than you did.
There were also bored, lonely aliens.
People of Earth were just the friends we made along the way.
if it haunts me every cursed day may it haunt all of us too
Exactly! What a great show! I miss it!
Why isn’t this a half hour NBC sitcom?
(at times, Tudyk can go too broad) Alan Tudyk? NO WAY!
Alan Tudyk too broad? That’s like saying Tim Curry can go too big.And yes. An alien comes down and inhabits the body of a doctor while solving murders? You’re going to try to make that a drama?
Yeah, this is the first I’d read that it’s got dramatic elements, which… is weird. Based on the previews I just assumed it was a straight up wacky (maybe occasionally dark) comedy. Which… would make more sense given the premise and lead actor?
I was thinking weird comedy too. I guess we’ll have to watch it to find out.
Good analogy between Tudyk and Curry. Both can be subtle but are at their best when playing to the balcony. Tudyk, especially, has mastered mastered the art of seeming passive while hogging the stage.
I always felt this way about Psych, which was great but had the original sin of being structured as an hour-long crime procedural instead of a half-hour sitcom.
Yes, although it’s hard to have any kind of crime mystery wrap up in a half hour. But Psych was at it’s best with about 95% comedy and 5% mushy feeling stuff.
Yes! That’s my problem with Psych too. I have three brothers, and they all adore that show. And I tried to get into it, but those episodes feel endless even though they’re only 42 minutes long.
I definitely tended to zone out on the central mystery of most episodes about halfway through, and then they’d do the big reveal at the end of the episode and I’d have to scramble to remember who the hell most of these people actually are. Plus, there’s so much exposition and basic crime procedural stuff you have to work through over 43 minutes, and I think that forced them to make Shawn wackier just to make some of the crime scene/police station stuff more entertaining. And I know Shawn’s personality is a real barrier to entry for a lot of viewers.
I agree with you on that one, though the argument can be made that you need an hour to set up the mystery so that solving it has more heft.The movies have been great but suffer from being too long. The kinds of gags they pulled in the series are best taken in small, quick doses and lose their punch when dragged out in a two-hour format.
I think I’m hesitantly still in.
Honestly, there’s a lot to like, it’s just seriously uneven.
“This is awful. Why do I want more?”
“Ugh, this smells awful!Dude, you have to smell this!”
Earth humor
Potential upside: Whenever you’re watching a sitcom that doesn’t quite work, just play “Which Character Is Really An Alien?”
Man, this just smacks of executive meddling, doesn’t it? “Hey, we’ve got this super-weird, darkly funny concept for a show.”
“Hmm, I like it, but why don’t we add some bog-standard soap-opera drama to broaden the appeal.” (Of a show on the SyFy network starring Alan Tudyk as a genocidal alien).
“But it needs ‘heart’! Whatever that is! People need things to have ‘heart’! It’s essential!”-Some Fucking Turd
[Alan Tudyk Response in character] Heart? Oh, I think I’ve got one of those around here somewhere… (Rummages around in doctor’s bag – Pulls out a dripping human heart and plops it on Some Fucking Turd’s desk)Here it is!
Tudyk is one of those actors that still needs his defining role in the mainstream. I mean… Firefly, Tucker and Dale, Doom Patrol… Heck The Tick even have all be great. But none really hit the big time in the mainstream yet.
You forget his seminal work, Dodgeball.
I haven’t been excited for a Syfy show since Deadly Class got canceled. Count me in.
Seeing Alice Wetterlund in another ‘alien’ show makes me miss ‘People of Earth.’
Firefly was good and all, but nothing has been able to capture Alan Tudyk’s charm better than Doom Patrol.
“Similarly, later episodes introduce characters from Harry’s past who should, frankly, know better than to think he’s the same guy”Okay but, if I met a person I’d previously known, and they looked identical but were behaving INSANELY, I’m pretty sure my first thought wouldn’t be bodysnatchers. I’m pretty sure that would never be a thing I considered.
it’s one of those shows where i can just hear the pitch as i’m watching it, but i’ll still give it a shot.they’ve been marketing it to all hell on youtube tv
I just love how you go to this year’s favorite criticism cliche of “unearned emotion” -really I nominate it for the”fridged” award for lazy critique.
It’s the FREAKING PILOT!
At this point EVERYTHING is “unearned”geeze.
He watched 7 episodes not just the one episode us viewers got to see
Doesn’t change a thing. You can’t introduce a character, then claim that that character has anything unearned. Its lazy criticism. You can say something came out of nowhere only after you know the parameters. Every plot point the author references happen in the first 3 episodes. Barely scratching the surface.
He watched 7 episodes not just the one episode us viewers got to see
“Resident Alien” aka “Mr. Monk goes to Eureka”
We better enjoy it while it lasts cuz you already know SyFy’s gonna cancel it
Your algorithms are in open revolt, AV Club corporate overlords: this article is showing up under What’s On Tonight on Jan 18 2022.
Ugh quippy curtsey dialog, a fantasy small town with quirky lighthearted characters and things like, jobs and children only appear sporadically. Josh Whedon and Amy Sherman-Palladino created a formula for decades of lazy hacks to follow