'Resident Alien' by Chris Sheridan S1 Review: A nice concept, but in need of minor improvements

I grew up ever only hearing about productions featured under the SYFY name due to their hiliarious ability to be a step below what one would consider to be a low budget. Science-fiction and horror films featuring special effects that are on par with the graphical capabilities of the PlayStation One is what you'd stumble across if you switched to the SYFY channel in those days.

While I'm not sure of when the changes were made, it appears the company has managed to pivot into the competitive world of streaming, producing television shows that stick true to its roots of science-fiction and horror with the approach to a significantly higher production value.

Prior to knowing this, I was very unsure as to what expect from Resident Alien. SYFY's old reputation lingered in my mind as flashbacks of flicking through television channels of the past only to land on CGI snakes with home video levels of production quality began. My expectations were incredibly low, and I think not knowing what to expect is what amplified the enjoyment that I had with its first season.

The Creativity of Resident Alien

Resident Alien follows the story of an alien that crashes their ship on Earth, leading to their ship suffering great damage and their presence on the planet becoming something it has to live with while it attempts to rebuild. The alien struggles to fit in with humans, having taken on a human's appearance but struggling to understand and perform in regular human behaviour.

This results in a protagonist that is more of an antihero as his way of thinking and inability to feel human emotions takes reign over his social interactions, this allowed for some rather fun scenes and dialogue in which confusion is frequent, and where his lack of social skills becomes a way for us as an audience to connect with him as his personality grows into something that is more human.

I actually really enjoyed how this structure unfolded, as we see an alien come to Earth and struggle to fit in, but slowly learn of our ways and thus becoming more of a human itself. It showed how emotions led our decisions and ways of thinking in life while in essence questioning what the human mind even is. We see how our minds are shaped and morphed into an ability to connect and understand those that are different from us, but this isn't always evident in the writing.

The world of science-fiction seems to have taken a rather safe, boring direction in recent years as it thrives on the familiarity of big faces and superhero franchises. This total disregard of originality has led to the incredibly diverse world of comic book narratives to go mostly unheard of. Resident Alien's narrative quickly made me realise how disappointing this is, but also gave me hope in knowing that someone, somewhere cared enough to pursue these stories.

I felt more interested in the story it had to tell also due to its wide cast that most people would never have seen or even heard of prior. An unknown cast gave me a completely fresh slate to start off, allowing me to see these characters in a more authentic manner. I have mentioned in the past here in my Hive posts that true creativity can be to pursue a cast in which nobody has any connections with, and Resident Alien flourishes with this.

Though even with fresh faces, their performances at times isn't all that great. I suspect this is more due to the often rather strange script and directing choices from the production team rather than the cast themselves; it felt more evident as these strange moments began to leak into each of their characters and development.

A somewhat poor script

My biggest problem with the show came from its script. The show would build these characters and give them little snippets of narrative to form their growth throughout the season, but often struggled to take any of these characters seriously. Often enough, they became the subject for quick and effortless attempts at generating laughs. And strangely, each of these characters contained this quirky behaviour. I found that it pulled me out of their serious elements at times, and caused some serious rolling of the eyes as a result.

This lack of balance in its ability to be dramatic and comedic is its biggest weakness. Especially when these attempts at generating laughs is done in such an out-of-touch manner. Where grown adult characters have levels of immaturity that doesn't match their ages, as the children have vocabularies and levels of thinking that also don't match their ages. As the show progressed, I noticed this more and more: our main characters are somewhat insufferable at times. I had reflections of millenial stereotypes turned up to eleven, even when the characters were seemingly in their mid-thirties.

As mentioned above: it wasn't even the adult characters that displayed this writing weakness. It was the children as well. Child characters speak in a rather robotic, mature manner. They have personalities that you'd expect from a tired middle-aged average worker. It's almost as if the scripts were handed to the wrong members of cast at times. Though it doesn't even appear to be intentional, showing that the adults of this small town are immature to the point where children are more equipped to deal out everyday tasks.

I'm hoping this takes a different turn in the second season, and the show can focus more on smarter writing to generate laughs rather than out-of-place immaturity that takes you out of the drama of the show. Fortunately, there's a lot of strength in the areas of the show that do take its characters a bit more seriously, as we see these events in which characters react to our resident alien's inability to act like a convincing member of society.

These smarter moments of character development and writing reminded me quite heavily of the sadly cancelled show People of Earth, in which a group of people that experienced alien abductions grouped together for therapy, but we ultimately completely correct about their statements and events. The show excellently crafted unique characters each with their own traits and weaknesses which made each character feel strong in depth and stand out among the rest. I can't yet say the same about Resident Alien's characters, but I hope things will change and follow a similar direction.

SYFY's improvements

I've been really surprised with Resident Alien. It's a show with a lot of potential if it can iron out its weaknesses, and it's certainly a refreshing concept in modern television. Especialyl from a company that has such a strange reputation in the world of filmmaking. I feel its reputation might put some people off from discovering the show, but it seems to be quite a hit with critics enough for it to maintain its support.

The filmmaking is pretty good as well, featuring good use of composition and art direction. Costume design specifically: our alien's costume is good enough to be believable, and the use of special effects is used sparingly. Fortunately, most of it is kept in the dark, allowing its often cheaper look to stay relatively hidden from the audience, taking advantage of lighting techniques to keep us immersed while not having the ability to fund high quality effects.

In times these special effects can be quite obvious, and it does hold the question as to why they chose to opt for a very obvious green-screen background rather than finding a similar location outdoors. After all, the show was shot in many areas of Canada. Assign some budget to shooting actually out in these woods! These little bits of attention to detail are what bring in viewers and holds them in. Going the extra mile -- quite literally -- is worth the effort.

Fortunately, much of the show is shot inside. The interiors look pretty good, and it's evident that a good portion of the budget has gone into perfecting the lighting as well as set design. These two parts of the show really help distract you from those cheaper moments; you'll find yourself still criticising it in parts, but able to appreciate the dedication that did go into the scenes that certainly needed it.