I’m a Perfectly Normal Human

Alan Tudyk is a delight. The actor, who became famous playing a number of quirky characters (Wat the squire in A Knight’s Tale, Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball, and, of course, Wash in Firefly), can be solidly reliable in anything he plays. He doesn’t really seem to care how silly or strange the character might be. In fact, I’d say strange characters are what he’s drawn to. He very rarely plays normal characters (Doc Potter in 3:10 to Yuma being one of the few exceptions). Being normal, frankly, is too staid.

Resident Alien is the perfect vehicle for the actor. It’s a show about an alien who comes to Earth and, due to circumstances beyond his control, has to try and pretend he’s human. The show lets Tudyk do what he does best: play strange. He gets to be the least human person on the show, acting weird, with a distinctive vocal and physical performance. We know he’s an alien, the show doesn’t try to hide he’s an alien, and yet everyone around him acts like he’s human. It’s brilliant, and the show mines a ton of laughs out of this performance. That’s the power of Tudyk.

It’s interesting because it’s not like Tudyk is the kind of actor who you’d automatically expect would be “stuck” in character roles (not that I think he’s stuck, as he obviously absolutely enjoys them). On a different career path, with his solid acting chops, his charisma, and his leading man looks, you could have seen him as some kind of A-list, Hollywood action types. The kind of guy that would charge into a building full of terrorists to “do a Die HardThe 1980s were famous for the bombastic action films released during the decade. Featuring big burly men fighting other big burly men, often with more guns, bombs, and explosions than appear in Michael Bay's wildest dreams, the action films of the decade were heavy on spectacle, short on realism. And then came a little film called Die Hard that flipped the entire action genre on its head.”. Instead, he’s known for these kinds of characters, the weirdos on the fringe, and it’s helped him to make a career doing work that he really likes. Resident Alien really is perfect for him, but then he’s perfect for the show, too.

The show picks up in Patience, Colorado, with the death of the local doctor, Sam Hodges, under mysterious circumstances (he’s stabbed in the neck, seemingly by himself). Since the local doctor is dead, the town sheriff, Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds), and town mayor, Ben Hawthorne (Levi Fiehler), go to the cabin of reclusive doctor Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk), to get his help with the autopsy. There’s only one issue: Harry isn’t Harry. Months prior an alien crash landed on Earth, killed Harry, and took over his form so he could go around pretending to be Harry. He’s been hiding in the cabin for months simply so he could learn how to blend in and act like a human (mostly by watching Law & Order reruns).

Harry, the alien, doesn’t want to get sucked into the life of the town. He mostly wants to watch Law & Order and search the mountains for the wreckage of his ship. He wasn’t flying past Earth by chance; he was here on a mission to wipe out all of humanity. We, the humans, haven’t been treating our world too kindly and, at this point, the aliens (the Octopodiformes) think it would be better if humanity were wiped out. But the crash not only took out his ship, it broke his device, and now he has to find it, restore it, and set off the bomb that will kill all of humanity… including all the people that, because he’s been sucked into the life of the town, he’s now come to care about. Like his friend, Asta Twelvetrees (Sara Tomko), the nurse at the local clinic. Or D'arcy Bloom (Alice Wetterlund), the local bartender (and former Olympic skier). Can he really kill everyone he's gotten to know?

I won’t deny, the first season of Resident Alien has a tough hill to climb. Harry (or, we could call him “Harry”) is an alien that wants to kill all of humanity. That doesn’t exactly make him the easiest protagonist for the show. There are times where the bad guy can be compelling to watch, but there has to be some kind of moral lesson to be learned (think like American Psycho, where it might just be that Bateman is allowed to get away with his awful actions because he’s a yuppie banker in the 1980s, which is a pretty clear way to push home that corporate American satire). Otherwise the story has to find some way to redeem the character and make them likable. That’s the course that Resident Alien takes.

The show has two fronts to its strategy to redeem “Harry” and make him the likable lead that we need. First, of course, is the performance by Alan Tudyk. The actor is great in the role, not just from the fact that he’s committed to the verbal and physical performance but also because we find his character oddly charismatic. He’s sarcastic, he’s nasty, but there’s a weird little heart within the alien body, something that we can identify with and enjoy. His troubles are pretending to be human mirror the troubles many of us have simply blending in among “normies”, and we feel for him as he tries (and often fails) to act like a perfectly normal human.

The show also gives him a friend in Asta. She’s the nurse at the clinic and, with the doctor dead, “Harry” fills in at the clinic (as a doctor, “Harry” has no reasonable motivation to say “no”), and the two, over time, strike up a nice friendship. He may not like most of humanity but he does enjoy Asta’s companionship and, once he realizes he would want her to die when all of humanity is taken out, he starts trying to find ways to have his cake and eat it too… and barring that, maybe not going through with his mission after all.

Of course, staying safe is easier said than done as, along with all the politics of the town, and the struggles “Harry” has trying to blend in, there’s also a government agency chasing after “Harry”. To be honest, this is the weakest part of the show. While it makes sense that the government would be searching for signs of alien life, the whole plotline (featuring a couple of agents roaming the country in an RV until they’re lucky enough to stumble on Patience, CO) feels underbaked. It’s like the show felt there had to be a villain in the series and did trust that “Harry” was villain enough. These sections of the episodes could have been excised as I really don’t think they add much to the series.

Which explains why, for the most part, their section has been drastically cut down in the second season of the show (which I’ve already started watching). Good, really, as this gives us more time to focus on what works.

Honestly, there are other characters I would scale back some if I were writing this show. The creators clearly want Patience to be a “quirky little small town” and they kind of push that idea hard. The mayor’s character is pretty one-note and he doesn’t add much of value. The sheriff is way over the top in comparison and he pulls the show too far in the other direction. There are a lot of small-part characters that get their time but don’t feel well developed. If they aren’t characters related to “Harry” or Asta they really aren’t worth the focus of the show, but we get to spend time with them anyway even as they add nothing to the central plot.

The show really is “Harry learns to be a human,” and I can appreciate that. It’s a better hook than some shows, and having it based around an alien that was sent to Earth to destroy it, only to learn some (not all, but some) humans aren’t so bad, is a decent story to tell. That, backed by Tudyk’s fantastic performance, and a fair bit of humor, helps to sell the show despite some other flaws with the material. When Harry and Asta are on screen everything comes together. When they aren’t the focus, and we have to deal with storylines about the mayor trying to drum up tourist dollars, or the sheriff worrying about his dog, the show drags.

I like this series a lot, but I can see why some might tune out. It’s good, but with a little more focus and a lot of work, it really could be great.