Syfy
It’s always a gift when we get a new season of Resident Alien, even if we’ve been a bit short-changed as we were with Season 3. Season 1 was such a hit that Syfy ordered a massive 16-episode second season and … split it in two for almost five interminable months, killing the momentum the show was building. The series had been renewed for a third season, but to punish it for the drop-off in ratings due to the network’s less than stellar decisions, the episode order for the season was cut from 12 episodes to eight. That’s right, we got shafted by four episodes because the network took a Top 15 cable series and threw it all away with a bad decision. But at least we got these eight episodes (which were probably delayed by the dual strikes so it’s anyone’s guess if viewers came back in big enough numbers to secure a fourth season).
But what we did get this season was still quite a delight. The season picked up where Season 2 left off with the Alien Tracker being killed, and Harry still trying to put together the pieces of the Grays’ plan for Earth. The sheriff’s new deputy Joseph has also disappeared, Deputy Liv is ever more certain that aliens are at play in Patience, Max’s best friend Sahar has left to attend a school for gifted children, and Mayor Snowflake … erm, Ben and his wife Kate don’t know it but they are being abducted by the Grays while they sleep. Kate, though, does seem to have some vague recollections of odd things happening and the owl that keeps peeking in her bedroom window at night isn’t doing anything to ease her concerns (especially after her friends tell her that is a terrible omen and they need come cleanse her home of whatever it is that hangs over them).
This season’s biggest revelation has to be the abductions of Ben and Kate, particularly when it’s revealed that when Kate was pregnant she didn’t lose the baby … it was taken from her during an abduction, and her own abductions have been to give her a few moments to bond with her baby. Unfortunately, the Grays wipe her memory of the experience each time despite her pleas to let her remember. But she and Ben both begin to get a little concerned and suspicious after discovering odd little lumps, Ben’s on his foot and Kate’s on her neck. Ben even asks Harry to take a look at it — and he knows immediately that it’s a tracking device — but Harry tells him he can’t remove it because it’s too close to a nerve (of course Harry is actually hoping to learn something from Ben’s abductions to help him with the Grays).
Asta becomes deeper involved with Harry’s attempts to thwart the Grays’ plans, but she also get a welcome surprise when her daughter Jay asks if she can stay with her for a while since she’s had a disagreement with her adoptive mother. Asta is thrilled, but it begins to put a burden on the living arrangements and friendship with D’arcy, who begins to reach the end of her rope after Jay eats her yogurt and refuses to clean up. D’arcy prods Asta to speak up, but Asta is more concerned about being on good terms with Jay and really doesn’t want to rock the boat, even though she really is letting her (and her new girlfriend) get away with murder. But the friendship is starting to show cracks because D’arcy is still resentful that Asta kept Harry’s alien identity from her for a year.
But now that D’arcy knows the truth, she seems more than happy to be Asta’s sidekick and she even tolerates Harry, enough so that she forces her way into a plan to get into Joseph’s apartment to see what clues they can find … and promptly get imprisoned in a newfangled prison cell, forcing Harry to call in reinforcements in the form of Max, who has dubbed himself the new Alien Hunter since he new possesses Peter Bach’s electric cattle prod. Sadly, we didn’t get to see much of Max this season due to Sahar being written off. There was an attempt to set him up with a new group of friends from school — which he brought along to the apartment to prove he’s the Alien Hunter and knows a real alien — but this never went anywhere. Thankfully Sahar reappeared for the final two episodes. And did anyone notice how much Judah Prehn has grown since Season 2? That was quite a growth spurt in the show’s chronology!
Syfy
Harry got his own surprise this season when the Blue Avian appeared from a portal to inform him that he’s broken intergalactic law by revealing his alien self to humans, therefore he must vacate the planet immediately. Asta and D’arcy are having none of that and do everything they can to help Harry but the poor fool has fallen head over heels for … Heather (rhymes with feather) and is ready to pack it all in and leave with her to live on her home planet, Earth be damned. D’arcy manages to break the portal by throwing a banana through it (fruit and portals don’t mix) so Heather is stranded until the repairman can fix it. She and Harry fall deeper in love until … Joseph shows up and threatens her niece Kneez. He needs Harry’s DNA so the Grays can control the silver ball they possess (anyone who uses it besides Harry meets a gruesome end). Heather reluctantly agrees and helps Harry clean out his gills and leaves with the gunk (unfortunately she was spied by Judy handing the bag over to Joseph, who showed the video to Asta wondering why her ‘boyfriend’ was with Harry’s girlfriend). Harry and Heather communicate by carrier pigeon, but she has to face him in person because the poor bird is exhausted. She can’t admit to him what she’s done so she just leaves him with a broken heart, telling him she doesn’t love him and never did. But when Asta shows Harry the video, he realizes what she did so the Grays could clone him to carry out their plan to destroy Earth.
What is that plan exactly? Harry learns that they plan to blow up a volcano in Yellowstone after he invites himself on a family trip with Ben, Kate and Max. If the Grays can fill a massive underground cavern with enough water, the effects would be devastating for all life on the planet … except for them. That’s why they need his DNA, to use the ball to control the water. Harry’s plan is to build a bomb, get past the incredibly good-looking hybrids at Yellowstone, and use a portal to get on their ship to destroy it. But those plans go ever so slightly awry when Harry’s baby Bridget returns … to kill his father. Bridget shows up at the cabin assuming the form of the real Harry’s daughter, but it doesn’t take long for Harry to realize this is his baby. They have a fight but the baby gets away and just in time Sahar shows up, giving Harry the opportunity to use her as bait to lure Bridget back. Because Bridget actually loves Sahar. It works but Harry uses the cattle prod to kill the baby, which explodes into little piles of blue goo … which pick up any DNA in the room and reform into all of Harry’s friends who were at that party at the cabin last season. Sahar has a great line when she asks Harry if he ever cleans. (Even a pizza delivery guy who Harry let use his bathroom appears from the goo.) It takes a while but Harry finally destroys all of the clones, but Bridget is still able to return and Harry and the child finally realize they truly are a family and all is well.
But Deputy Liv is getting closer and closer to the truth, despite Sheriff Mike not wanting to go down that alien path with her. Her confidence is also shaken by her vile grandmother, and Mike finally gets Liv to grow a spine and confront her … which she does in a hilariously bleeped moment of blessed release that shocks the old lady so much she has a mild heart attack … giving Liv the opportunity to steal all of her recipes. But she is still convinced Joseph may be an alien or a hybrid and she and Mike hatch a plan to catch him, and that plan is violently interrupted by Ben who comes out of nowhere and plows Joseph down with his car, thinking he’s saving the officers. As they all speed off in his car, Ben suddenly has an attack of conscience and needs to return to see if Joseph is still alive. He seems to be because there is no body when they get back to the parking lot, just a little puddle of something. Mike still refuses to buy into the alien theory.
As the story comes to a head, Harry is about to reveal to Asta the bomb he’s built that he plans to give to General Wright to take down the Grays. Except … it’s gone. Harry believes Jospeh has stolen it but when Joseph shows up at the cabin and has no idea what he’s talking about, Asta realizes D’arcy has taken it. The night before she had visited Elliott and was behaving oddly. Her dad is in the hospital but he surprised her by telling her that she’s his hero and he’d support her no matter what she did. If it’s not skiing, it’s something else, doesn’t matter because she has to strength to do anything she sets her mind too. She told Elliott that she was destined to do something big and to remember her if she doesn’t come back. With Joseph and Asta by his side (and Joseph joined Harry when he realized the Grays’ plan would kill even the hybrids, leaving Earth for them alone), Harry needs to get to the cavern to stop it from filling up with water. Then he has to get on the Grays’ ship and blow it up. If there’s time he’ll look for D’arcy but he can’t promise anything.
They make their way to the cavern but are interrupted by a hybrid. Asta uses the fight as a distraction to steal a portal key and takes off to find her friend (and the two were not on the best of terms since Asta finally had to tell D’arcy she didn’t tell her about Harry because she’s a loose cannon and Asta feared she tell someone else, because she told Ben that he was being abducted even when Asta told her not to). Harry doesn’t feel the need to get into any phyicalities with Joseph and the hybrid, so he leaves the task of stopping the water to Joseph while he goes to the ship. Asta, unfortunately, is captured right away and taken to a cell next to D’arcy, which gives them time to reconcile. There’s another prisoner there whom we saw earlier biting off the head of another blue-skinned alien prisoner, and now he wants to eat D’arcy. Harry shows up in the knick of time and they manage to escape the prison cells but Harry still needs to find the bomb, and the others need to get to a ship to escape because the alarm system has shut down all the portals. They find an ally in Robert, Peter Bach’s son, who knows where the ships are but as they try to make their escape, Harry and Bridget have to take out a group of Grays and D’arcy spots Kate on the ship. She ducks out to see what’s going on.
Syfy
Kate had earlier visited Harry because she felt like she was losing her mind and he suspected she was also being abducted. Offering to help her, he hypnotized her to get information about the Grays and their ship, but when she also revealed her deep pain about the baby he decided he was going to awaken her with the suggestion that she would not remember anything. But he changed his mind and now that she knows the abductions and the baby are real, she hatches a plan and tells Ben the truth. They decide to have their trackers removed but after Ben had his removed, Kate said she was not doing it because she wanted to be abducted to save their baby, and she wanted Ben to just have a normal life after 30 years of being abducted. Ben was upset but understood and when they went to bed that night they just waited, and that’s how Kate got on the ship. She led D’arcy to the nursery where there were dozens of babies, all gazing at monitors of their mothers talking to them. Kate finally found hers but the Grays arrived and captured her, placing some sort of collar around her neck that lifted her up into an unknown section of the ship. D’arcy, however, managed to take the baby and she ran back to find her friends.
Asta and Robert had been waiting for D’arcy and Harry to return but Asta got tired of waiting and went to find D’arcy, and they both hightailed it back to the ship where Harry had already arrived but without Bridget, refusing to talk about what happened but it seems like it was something terrible. Just before the doors closed, Robert stepped out and back onto the ship, and the three … four counting the baby … made their escape with the Grays in pursuit. It’s then that we discover they weren’t on a ship … they were on a base in the Moon. With the Grays firing at them Harry says either the Grays shoot at them or they shoot at the Grays.
And then there was an odd piece of time missing, never showing us how they all got back to Earth. Harry and Asta are having breakfast at the diner, and for saving his daughter’s life Dan offers Harry free pie for life. He even brings Harry a fresh slice which Harry promptly spits out, signaling to Asta that he must really be upset about whatever it was that happened to Bridget. Somehow Kate is back home with Ben, and D’arcy is at their door with the baby, but we never see what happens after she knocks. Joseph has been captured by the General with the help of her newly reanimated Peter Bach, now encased in a metallic Robocop exosuit but his core memories suddenly come flashing back to him and he takes out all of the soldiers, demanding to know where his son is. The General tells Joseph she wants to kill him right then and there, and he says the Grays are going to do it anyway so she should do it first. She can’t because he has something she needs — a portal key. She gets it and opens a portal, walking through to parts unknown. Sheriff Mike has finally made up with Detective Torres and seems ready to not be such a man with her, but he gets a call about an explosion at the high school. He goes to investigate and hears footsteps. He springs into action and swings at whoever is coming up on him and sees that what he has punched out is … a Gray. Will this be enough to now convince him that Liv has been right all along?
And we finally learn what happened to Bridget — he’s in a prison cell back on the Moon … with Harry. Turns out the Harry now on Earth is that shape-shifting preying mantis-like alien (a Mantid) with a taste for heads. And that leaves us with a lot of questions, like how exactly did Kate get back home after she was seemingly imprisoned? How did Harry, Asta and D’arcy ultimately escape the Grays? Was they Gray Mike encountered one of the ones pursuing the others, crash landing at that site? How and when did the Mantid swap places with Harry? Did Robert know Harry wasn’t Harry when he got off the ship, and what’s he going to do about the bomb? And what will be the next move of the Grays? Let’s hope the folks at Syfy can still see some value in Resident Alien and gift us with a swift renewal for Season 4, and a not-quite-so-long break between seasons (and maybe a few more episodes as well).
What did you think of this season? Sound off in the comments below!
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