Resident Alien made a splash when it premiered in 2021 mainly because of the multi-talented character actor Alan Tudyk. Now entering its fourth season, the series continues to exploit Tudyk’s talents, the ensemble that surrounds Harry Vanderspeigle in the town of Patience is pretty fun to watch, too.
RESIDENT ALIEN SEASON 4: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk) wanders around the Grey moonbase with his baby Bridget on his shoulder.
The Gist: Harry finds someone who looks like Pizza Joe in a cell, and opens the cell to see what kind of pizza he has. Of course, Pizza Joe turns out to be a shape-shifting Mantid, who locks Harry and Bridget in the cell, takes on Harry’s form and looks forward to going down to Earth.
Suddenly, time passes, as we see Harry with a beard. He has Robert (Paul Piaskowski), who is in the cell next door, draw him pictures of people on Earth so he can remember them. They’re of people he loves and admires, like Asta (Sara Tomko) and D’Arcy (Alice Wetterlund), as well as those he’s ambivalent about, like Mayor Ben (Levi Fiehler) and his wife Kate (Meredith Garretson).
Down on Earth, the Mantid version of Harry walks around Patience smoking and being a general jerk. The half-Grey, half-human Joseph (Enver Gjokaj) is back in town, and that makes things tough for D’Arcy, who is still caring for Ben and Kate’s alien baby. Ben and Kate are still looking for that baby, and wonder why other strange things are happening.
Sheriff Mike (Corey Reynolds) continues to be on medical leave, due to the “hallucinations” he saw on the job; his deputy, Liv (Elizabeth Bowen), keeps trying to tell him that the Grey he saw was real, but he’s not convinced. For her part, Liv has dropped a lot of weight, mainly because of the twice-daily hikes she makes to help the cybernetic version of Peter Bach (Terry O’Quinn), who’s hiding in a remote cave. Ben and Kate’s son Max (Judah Prehn), who is the only other person besides Peter who can see Harry’s real form, is trying to track Joseph’s movements, with the help of his friend Sahar (Gracelyn Awad Rinke).
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Way back in Season 1, we said Resident Alien had a live-action Family Guy vibe, and we stick with that, given that Chris Sheridan, who created the series based on the graphic novel of the same name, also wrote for Seth MacFarlane’s signature series.
Our Take: During the run of Resident Alien, Sheridan and his writers have valiantly tried to keep Harry’s experience in Patience as human as possible, with the cartoonish elements of him really being an alien not sending the show into complete silliness. Harry has grown to like a lot of the people he’s around on Earth, and he especially likes the food — well, at least the pizza, and that’s reflected in his longing to go back as he rots in the Grey prision.
While the ensemble has grown into a well-oiled machine over the first three seasons, Tudyk is still the one we like to watch in every episode. Here he’s playing the original Harry and the Mantid version of Harry, and Tudyk differentiates between them well. Somehow, the townspeople are looking at Harry’s current odd behavior and not making much of it, probably because Harry is odd all the time. But we know that the Mantid version of Harry is never going to think of humans as anything other than prey or potential mating partners, and that’s thanks to Tudyk’s ability to shape-shift, at least in an acting sense.
It’ll be interesting to see Harry dealing with an inability to transform into his native alien form, especially as it seems like Mantid Harry has the upper hand. But even as that struggle goes forward, there’s more than enough stuff going on in Patience, including a continuing rash of headless bodies being found around town.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: As Harry drives away with Asta, Max, Sahar, and an unconscious Mantid Harry, we hear his voice over talk about prisons, including “the hunk of skin and blood keeping you alive.”
Sleeper Star: Sometimes it feels like Liv, played by Elizabeth Bowen, is the only purely decent person in Patience.
Most Pilot-y Line: Both Sheriff Mike and Mayor Ben agree that if they tell Liv that she looks great that the assumption will be that she didn’t look great before she lost weight. Liv is likely a lot less sensitive than that. Besides, all she wants is a uniform that fits.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While the world of Patience is humming along pretty well in Season 4 of Resident Alien, we’re still here to watch Alan Tudyk do his thing.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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