Resident Alien :: Heroes of Patience

Syfy

Alien Harry is finding his situation growing more dire as the ‘men in black’ are searching for him, and D’Arcy has brought Sheriff Mike and Deputy Liv to the cabin to show them that the man she loves is dead in the freezer in the basement. So they’re all surprised when Harry answers the door and there’s nothing in the freezer but meat. Somehow he knew that the body was about to be found so he hid it in the rafters above the living room area. D’Arcy has to admit to herself that it was probably some illicit substances that caused her to imagine a body in the freezer. But Liv did find something by the edge of the lake — a boot. Could it belong to the foot?

None of this really concerns Harry though, but a conversation with the dead human has rattled him. Dead Harry rages, as best as a dead body can, at how much Alien Harry took from him. Not just his life and all the little joys that came with it but his wife Isabelle as well. Dead Harry tells Alien Harry that she loved him, and he loved her, and what the alien did destroyed her. Alien Harry says he too loves Isabelle, but his conscience tells him that’s just remorse for what he did, and tells him he’s become that thing he’s trying to destroy — human. But the alien device is now fully charged and once he pushes the button, all humans on Earth will cease to exist. But … pizza. Alien Harry will miss pizza, and an ad on the radio reminds him of this so he goes to enjoy some pizza, bringing several boxes home with him for the trip back to his planet. He also uses the device to eliminate his biggest problem, Dead Harry, but he also get a shock when doing so, literally. The device shocks his finger. It’s not supposed to affect his people so this is concerning. Perhaps Dead Harry was right and he is becoming too human. If he sets off the device while he’s on the planet, it will kill him too so he has to get to his ship to get off planet.

But he faces many complications when Asta realizes that D’Arcy was probably telling the truth about the body and that Harry killed the real Harry Vanderspeigle, especially when Liv asks her for the foot to see if it matches the boot. The tell-tale mole triggered Asta’s memory of seeing Harry’s left foot while his right leg was regenerating. She knows now that her alien friend killed the human Harry. And she let’s him know how angry she is, telling him that they are no longer friends. This hurt Harry deeply, more than he could have imagined, even drawing a tear from his eye. Mmmm, salty. What Asta doesn’t know, nor does anyone else but us viewers, is that the real Harry is … the killer of Dr. Sam Hodges (my apologies to Mrs. Hodges for pointing the finger at her). In a top of the episode flashback, we see that Vanderspeigle was the one who tampered with Sam’s insulin, five months before he was killed by the alien. The question we may never get an answer to is why. Did Vanderspeigle want to be the new doctor in Patience? It will be interesting to see if this is ever resolved.

Alien Harry’s other problem are the people looking for him. Max and Sahar know that the woman in Max’s room have the piece of alien tech Max was hiding and they know they need to warn Harry so they stage an elaborate scheme to misdirect David and Lisa. The pair see Max leave his house on his bike and follow him, but as the two argue they hit the bike. Getting out, they see it’s not Max, but Sahar and she wants $100 or she’s calling the cops. The plan is thwarted, for now, and Sahar planted Max’s mother’s cell phone under the bumber so they could track the car and warn Harry. But the tracker is not moving. In fact, it’s right outside Max’s house. They’ve been caught in their ruse.

With Max’s dad on his way home from work and mom running on the treadmill upstairs (with headphones), David and Lisa get into the house and threaten Max and Sahar unless they tell them where the alien is. Sahar says she can scream louder than Mrs. Hawthorne’s headphones, but the kids finally give in and reveal the identity of the alien after Lisa finds one of Max’s drawings of an alien in a white jacket — it’s the town’s doctor. Kate unexpectedly comes downstairs and sees David and Lisa, and they lock her in the pantry. Ben gets home and sees what’s going on through the window and calls the sheriff, but it’ll be five minutes before he and Liv get there. Ignoring Mike’s advice to not go in the house, Ben does anyway to take matters into his own hands. Kate gets out of the pantry and the couple attack the unwanted guests and give them a good pummeling, sending them scurrying.

But they scurry to the clinic and kidnap the town doctor … the new town doctor, Ethan Stone. General Wright and a bunch of SUVs show up to retrieve the doctor and she reveals to David that they aren’t men in black, and no one calls them that. But who are they and who does Wright actually work for? The only thing David learns is that Lisa is on Wright’s side and they leave him standing there in the parking lot to fend for himself.

Syfy

Alien Harry has made it to his ship, using his device to clear any humans out of his way. He doesn’t know that David was able to convince Max and Sahar that the alien was there on a mission to kill them all, or that Max and Sahar had a little chat with Asta, sharing their little secret. Max did get in touch with Asta to tell her of the alien’s plan and they too make it to the site of Harry’s ship just as he’s about to take off. But he forgot the pizzas so now he’s going to have to go back and get them. Before he can do that more SUVs show up and begin firing at the ship. Harry sees Asta and Max in the warehouse and his humanity takes over again, exiting the ship to help them. After the dust settles, Asta tells him that they are friends and makes him admit to himself that he has become more human. Alien Harry can’t kill everyone now, so he decides that he must get the device safely away from Earth, and himself, before it goes off. He also tells Asta she can have the pizzas in his freezer.

They say their goodbyes and the alien ship seems to phase through the roof of the warehouse. In space, the alien jettisons the device and it explodes safely in the void. But he hears something in the ship behind him. It’s Max. ‘You’re taking me home, right?’ he asks. The alien’s reply: ‘This is some bullshit!’

And thus ends the first season of Resident Alien, one of the highlights of the TV season. With a great cast headed by the brilliant Alal Tudyk, the show had everything: drama, comedy, and most of all, heart. In these times when it seems like we’re all fighting to understand what it means to be human, this series really gives us a nice lesson from the perspective of an outsider. The alien says in this episode that humans like to kill each other simply to be superior to those they’ve killed, but he also sees great love and compassion in the human race, and he experienced that himself, especially at the end when Asta said that they are friends. The alien became a little more human living in a human’s skin and under our ‘roof’, so maybe it’s time to understand we’re all human, no one is better than anyone else. Killing doesn’t make anyone, human or alien, superior to anyone else. Let’s live our lives with compassion for others and maybe the world will be a little better place when ‘Harry’ returns.

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Resident Alien will return to Syfy for a second season.