Harry: I would've said good‐bye, but I didn't want to – I didn't want to.
Asta: It's good to see you're still such a huge weirdo. And your talent for unleashing chaos in my life is strong as ever. But I think I'm better having known you.
Harry: You're weird, too.
Episode description: "Harry copes with jealousy when the mayor hires an annoyingly perfect new town doctor."
Actually, Harry's jealousy is just a small part of the episode. There's another track, which catches us up on the government (and others) hunting aliens. You have to make sure you notice the dates, as it's mostly not simultaneous with what Harry is doing in Patience. It starts by going back 50 years, when Eleanor Wright was a young girl, and with her father, when they lived in a lighthouse on the coast of Maine. They see an alien spaceship; young Eleanor snaps a Polaroid of it. This accounts for her interest in the matter. In a flashback – only four months ago, shortly after Harry's spaceship crashed – we see her recruit two others to her off-the-books mission.
Something that stands out in this show is how it juxtaposes the profound with the ordinary. David Logan, who has just been placed on medical leave due to "stress" – he was talking about how teleportation was the only possible explanation for some recently observed phenomena – gets in his car to find General Wright sitting in the back seat. His first impulse is not to wonder why she is there but to wish the car were cleaner. Resident Alien always does this well.
A new doctor arrives in Patience, meaning Harry may have less to do with the residents and especially Asta. Harry is immediately jealous of the new doctor. I mean, Ethan is handsome, was in the Olympics, nice, and has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières. When D'Arcy wakes up in his bed, she goes downstairs (in his beautiful home) to learn he has made her blueberry pancakes and quiche Florentine. He seems too good to be true: what is he doing in Patience?
Harry's not working at the town clinic means much less time with the other residents in Patience. His good-bye to Asta is especially moving as she is the human he cares most about. Instead he gets to spend more time with his wife, something that she's keen on but he is not.
It's a relief that in this episode, alien Harry is less and not more attached to Isabelle. Although Elvy is a good enough actor and more glamorous than most of the people in Patience, I don't really like her character, and I don't like her relationship with Harry. He is brutal to her, encouraging her to drink and slipping her sleeping pills so that he doesn't need to deal with her. Something's wrong with me, because I'm cheering for alien Harry and not for human Isabelle, but there you go. The show is doing a good job, making me sympathize with an alien instead of a human.
Sheriff Mike and Deputy Liv are following up on the murder of Sam Hodges, now that they know it was botulism poisoning. Harry, after being upstaged by Ethan (who is a real doctor, not someone learning it all, as needed, on the internet), gives the local cops the lead about the missing prescription pad. We have Sheriff Mike trying to hog all the glory again – he does both the bad cop/good cop! – while leaving Deputy Liv outside the room. Liv talks to other students and gets useful information, which Mike acknowledges. She also comes up with a good theory about the murder – that the murderer put the poison in Sam's insulin – and again, Mike acknowledges it. He's a jerk, but not a total jerk.
The alien hunters, in the scenes we see, make progress. They locate Harry's ship, find it even though it's cloaked, move it to another place, but keep a watch on the crash site. The episode ends with Harry driving to the crash site.
Title musings. "Sexy Beast" is the title of the episode. It's also the title of a movie that I have never seen. The writers were kind enough to have Harry explain what the title means: a man who works on engines. He gets other things wrong (see the quote below). Sexy beast can also refer to Ethan Stone, the town's new doctor, who certainly is easy on the eyes. There's also a great bit of dialogue, with Harry describing sex between him and Isabelle in the most animalistic terms – not in order to seduce her, but to distract her as he waits for the sleeping pills to work. The title shows effort, and as I never saw that movie I may be missing additional allusions.
Bits and pieces
I like the new version of Lost in Space but the original had its charm. Danger, Will Robinson!
General Wright is played by Linda Hamilton who plays Sarah Connor in the Terminator movies.
I love how Harry gets mad at Dr. Ethan Stone for not liking Law and Order. It's so easy to get mad at someone for not agreeing with our tastes.
I am against Nespresso pods too. They just seem like a lot of extra packaging, and we already have too much on the planet. On the other hand, I just saw a demonstration of how they are going paper-based, which would be a great help.
For many years we said UFO, unidentified flying object. Now we say UAP, unidentified anomalous phenomena.
So, a random question: anyone out there reading this ever have a close encounter? I have not. Dead people, maybe, but aliens, not to my knowledge.
Quotes
Harry (to self): They have a term on Earth for a man who works on engines: sexy beast. That's me. If these humans ever saw me actually flying my spaceship, I'd have women beating me off with a stick.
Please note the mistakes in the last sentence. I admit I didn't catch them until the rewatch.
David Logan: General? If I knew you were coming, I would have cleaned my car.
General Wright: Lieutenant, I would like to introduce you to Lisa Casper, your wife.
Lisa Casper: Hi, sweetie.
General Wright: You two are gonna find me that ship – and whatever was flying it.
Harry: You shouldn't have to clean that up. Get Jay to do it.
Asta: Well, Jay is not here, and she won't be coming back for a while.
Harry: Because she discovered you lied about birthing her?
Asta: Yeah, 'cause I lied about birthing her.
Ellen: I saw the new doctor, and he is gorgeous.
Asta: Ellen, that's inappropriate. Just as long as he's a good physician.
Ellen: Doesn't hurt to have something nice to look at for once.
Harry (to self about the new doctor): Now I understand "douchebag."
Deputy Liv: I want one of those Nespresso machines, but sheriff won't let me get one.
Sheriff Mike: Hell no. Those things freak me out. I mean, think about it... a whole cup of coffee in that tiny little pod? That shit there's gotta be the devil's work.
Isabelle: Ooh, get that away from me. That stuff knocks me out. Do you want another art walk in Chelsea?
Harry: Maybe just one little glass.
Sheriff Mike: Exactly, and I'll be good cop and bad cop while you wait out here and guard the perimeter.
Deputy Liv: They call the dealer "the pharmacist."
Sheriff Mike: What? Who told you that?
Deputy Liv: A couple of kids. Nobody knows the dealer's name because distribution is so complex. You leave money behind the third tile in the handicap bathroom, and then you find a locker combo taped underneath the student of the month board, and, finally, there it is. It's a prescription written by a dead man.
Sheriff Mike: Okay, now you see why I left you outside of the door, right? Thinking, like, six steps ahead.
Overall rating
An amusing episode, but without the satisfying conclusions of the previous episode. We move on the Sam is murdered thread (he was poisoned) and the prescription pad thread. My problem is I don't care a lot about either of these, although I did enjoy the Mike-Liv banter. We do make promising moves on an important thread, the humans who are tracking down Harry's ship. Three out of four Nespresso pods.
Victoria Grossack loves math, birds, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.
I really enjoyed that they cast a sci-fi icon as the General. :) And I really dislike Isabelle, too. I wonder why?
ReplyDelete