posted
We started talking about this show a little bit in the Threshold thread. After having watched the first season, I feel it's worthy of it's own thread.
I listed spoilers in the thread title, and I'd love to get into them, but I think for the first post I'll do a generalized review wihout getting too into the nitty gritty, but after that anything goes:
So there were all these thows on TV having to do with weirdness and water. Threshold and Surface seemed to be the one I'd heard of and then there was this touchy-feely other one of which I was only dimly aware that was clearly cowering under Lost's umbrella. There was also a The Triangle which I guess was a miniseries, but I don't really remember that and it wasn't trying to be a serial I don't think. But so over the course of the week I've watched Invasion and I think I'm ready to say that I liked it the best.
It's a lot smaller in scope than the other two shows, and so sometimes the production values are comically underwhelming. But where I felt both Threshold and Surface struggling to maintain the emotional dimension (despite the best efforts of their actors), Invasion seemed to automagically already there. The show's got heart.
It's set in the small town of Homestead, Florida which is evidently on the edge of the Everglades in the Southern part of the state. Perhaps not surprisingly the show starts just before a hurricane, and it is through this we are introduced to the main characters of the show. Our hero is a park ranger, Russell Varon and we soon learn that his barely-pregnant wife, Larkin, is a local news reporter and they live with her "between jobs" brother Dave in a house at the edge of town. Russell's kids, Jesse and Rose, are from his previous marriage to a local doctor, Mariel. Mariel has since re-married to the decidedly creepy Sheriff of Homestead, Tom Underlay, and Tom has a teenage daughter, Kira, from his former marriage.
It's probably silly to go on a sci-fi board and start talking about the touchy-feely aspects of watching this extended family of divorce cope with the ramifications of this catastrophe, but in very short order we discover that this hurricane is unlike any other. That in addition to the conventional destruction, something quite different has also made landfall with this storm.
The spark of this show (if you'll have it) lies not in discovering that something strange is happening, but in exploring the nature of what that strangeness is. And without giving too much away, I think the show-runners come at this kind of story from an interesting and oddly introspective direction.
Anyway, I've found some great performances and some tense drama here. The inherently unnerving sincerity of William Ficthner as the Sheriff really only augments the unnease and delicious eeriness of the show. While Eddie Cibrian as Russell is surely hunky and delicious, he's also displayed fits of temper and sub-rationality which only serve to make him more human (without quite crossing that line into hot-head). Kari Matchett as the ex-wife is a power player and really brings the conflicted emotions of the show to light, frequently while taking a bath, so that's a buy for me. Lisa Sheridan as Larkin plays anything but your average pregnant mom in peril. Tyler Labine as the paranoid layabout Dave might have been a throwaway exposition mouthpiece, but every now and then his competence and decency shine through dramatically, and it really takes things up a notch. Everyone is good, everyone has something interesting to bring.
All told, I liked this show. I want another season.
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Word is ABC has cancelled it, but there are rumors that the Frankenstein-like CW network is interested.
Anyway, what I like best, I think, aside from Mr. Fichtner, although I guess he's a big part of the theme I am about to describe, is how the hybrids are just people, and have no particular knowledge or plan. They've changed and they don't know why. Also I like the creepy mob mentality that arises from time to time.
I find myself wishing they could really film in Florida, though.
Have you watched all the way to last week's episode?
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by bX: It's set in the small town of Homestead, Florida which is evidently on the edge of the Everglades in the Southern part of the state.
From the way you wrote this, it sounds like you've never heard of Homestead? It was pretty much wiped off the face of the Earth in 1992 by Hurricane Andrew, and therefore got a lot of press coverage at the time. I would think that residents would get extremely jumpy at the mere mention of a hurricane, which should add to the overall tension in the premiere episode.
Well, probably not? First of all, no one has actually said that they're aliens. You've got weird, glowing, clone-making mind-copying manta rays that live in the water and seem to travel around in the wake of hurricanes. But there isn't any evidence that they're anything more than animals, alien or not, and thus nothing to say that they're even capable of having plans. Various people, once changed, have definite ideas about what the future ought to look like, (and also they can apparently sense when a hurricane is coming) but I don't think they can steer them.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Firstly, the only thing that Hurricane Andrew permanantly wiped out in Homestead was the Air Force Base (which had a bitching air show back in the day).
Homestead is the stereotypical Florida from TV and jokes- lots of retirees living in mobile homes that go no where and sleepy trailer communitties (not "trailer" in the white trash sense of the word though).
It's not swampland.
Unfortunately, God Allmighty forgot to tell Moses to pass along that he fucking hates mobile homes and occasionally sends a hurricane to scatter them like so many cockroaches when the light turns on. My uncle was in one of those mobile homes that got flattened by Andrew and, not having learned anything from almost being (literally) blown away, lives in another such "house" now.
Mostly though, Homestead now looks like any suberb in America- no nearby swamps or the 'ol "spooky shack in the Everglades" to be found there. No more aliens than usual for South Florida.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
This reminds me of that X-files episode where they also where in a hurricane in Florida, and transparent water tendrils occasionally tentacle-raped people into becoming water themselves. It was a so-so ep.
Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Firstly, the only thing that Hurricane Andrew permanantly wiped out in Homestead was the Air Force Base (which had a bitching air show back in the day).
I guess you'd know better than anyone else here. I just remember the impression given by the various news reports back then. And they would never blow anything out of proportion, of course.
posted
Which they touch upon in the show, actually.
Having just finished the entirety of Surface, I can now state definitively that I was most compelled by Invasion. Surface did really up the ante there in the last three or four episodes and maybe I'll start a thread about that assuming one doesn't exist, but, really there were so many DOA (for me) episodes, and the twists and plots came off less as inevitable machinations and more the dance of a sinking ship. During dramatic (ahem) interludes, I found myself wanting more of that humid strangeness from Southern Florida.
So when they show downtown on Invasion, it's very much like any other town and there's no fanboat parking outside City Hall or anything. It's just that Russell's house is out in the sticks and so, he's got some nearby swampage. And that makes sense as he works in the 'glades and one gets the feeling it's a ten or twenty minute drive to Tom's (in the suburbs). I do suspect there are maybe some innaccuracies which native Floridians would find comical. Such as a ranger putting up plywood--inside her windows, with nothing protecting the outside (or maybe that's how they do it down there, I wouldn't know). I'm sure there are others, and probably that's on account of them shooting it in sunny California. But little stuff aside, I think the most interesting thing about the show is exactly as Simon said.
Namely that the body-snatched aren't really certain what's happened to them or why it's happening, but desperately want to know. A bit Phil Dickian or Bradburian or something in this regard. And they play it off really well so you suspect that maybe some of them might know more than they're telling. And maybe they're not telling because it's a big secret conspiracy, or maybe they're not telling because they're afraid to know. And then some clearly haven't a clue. Pretty much everyone is looking for guidance and in this way many are perhaps more easily led by malicious forces. But so it's great to not only have this bizarre and terrifying invasion in progress on a massive scale, but moreover to have main characters of the show directly involved in this with a minimum of moustache-twirling and nefarious hand-rubbing. In fact, there seems to be a fair amount of head-scratching and definite concern about the danger they may pose to those they love.
$$SPOILERS FOR LATEST EPISODE: I am a little upset because the medium by which I was able to view this show cut off during a rather climactic moment in the latest (last?) episode. Larkin is clutching the children to her drawing back in horror as the panic of the crowd rises, the music crescendoes and Larkin says... [unintelligible]. Grrr.
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I believe she just says something about the need for them to stay together. They (the hybrids) had already begun forcing the crowd into the water at this point, yes?
Here is a specific question: Underlay is much unsettled when his daughter Kira wants to become one of them. Was this because he knew that she'd be rejected because of her heart condition, and presumably just die, or was there something more to it? I guess I'm still not sure whether he intended for his wife to be taken, for that matter.
(Speaking of unanticipated: one's interpretation of the show is likely to alter subtly depending whether or not one has seen the film Broken Flowers.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Firstly, the only thing that Hurricane Andrew permanantly wiped out in Homestead was the Air Force Base (which had a bitching air show back in the day).
I guess you'd know better than anyone else here. I just remember the impression given by the various news reports back then. And they would never blow anything out of proportion, of course.
B.J.
Well, the destruction was probably downplayed overall (as were the deaths) but in Florida land is at a premium and everything is quickly re-built. A lot of the devestation was due to extremely lax building code enforcment- entire subdivisions were wiped out because houses were built with sometimes only half the structural support state code required.
Still, I've seen shows supposedly set in Florida with cliffs in Florida (with out zero elevation) or with californian surf waves (which we have none either).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I know what you mean. Having grown up in north Georgia, I can tell the difference between the first three episodes of the Dukes of Hazzard and the rest of the series, simply by looking at the scenery. (The first 3 were filmed in north GA, the rest in LA.) In a similar vein, it always annoys me when Hollywood types try to fake a Southern accent. It always ends up sounding like they just watched Gone with the Wind, which is nowhere near a modern Southern accent.
posted
In a related story: Vivien Leigh, British (confirmed).
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: (Speaking of unanticipated: one's interpretation of the show is likely to alter subtly depending whether or not one has seen the film Broken Flowers.)
Which I have and, uh, wow. I mean for a such a petite little girl, she came out swinging for the fences. I found my reaction not dissimilar to Bill Murray's.
w/r/t the question of what Tom Underlay's intentions were towards his daughter or wife. I suspect that he did really want/intend for it to happen to Mariel, but definintely not for Kira. As to why exactly he doesn't want it for Kira, I'm not certain. I get the impression that while overall he looks at the change as a boon, I think he also realizes the intense psychological trauma that goes along with hybridization (and esp. young people, see Bonnie and Clyde Hybrids) and so maybe worries for his daughter. My pet theory on why it happened to Mariel is that she crashed her car and so was injured/unconscious when Tom found her and brought her to the cove, hence why she does not remember him doing so. Perhaps he knew something was afoot when Hurricane Eve hit as the other hybrids seemed to when the newer one struck, and so brought her for the ever-healin' touch of the glowy manta-rays.
posted
No, but, I seriously thought that was the end of the season with everyone getting pushed out into the water and Larkin saying somethin about family. I am shamed.
Final Episode: Pregnancy! Peril! If this is indeed to be the end of the series entirely, I'd be sort of disappointed. To begin with there is the hot, real-American hero gunplay against the super-human hybrid Army guys. I don't know a lot about what kind of training they were doing at the work-camp, but I'd sort of expected hitting a target at ten meters with your machine gun would be the sort Mr. CIA-training-a-force-of-extra-ordinary-magnitude would be teaching as part of his Cambrian explosion by force philosophy. Anyway I was sort of with it with Tom picking them off one-by-one, but when Russell came around the truck pistol blazing with Air-Force Tom backing him, well it was A) unbelieveable, B) silly and C) out-of-place in this show. Then the real Army showed up and things settled down fast except no one made any attempt to fish anyone out of the water.
Shortly followed by even more gunplay trying to get Szura. This was a little better and I even bought quick-draw McGraw's spider-sense in the back room. It's just that the show really shines with the more understated introspective action, and so when they go to the gun-place maybe it gets more mileage with the stare-down tension, "what-cha-gonna do" thing.
Which brings me to the one good thing with guns: talking down Jesse's friend (possessed of a gun), and yeah, OK, hot-head friend, but did it have to be guns again? Russell and Mariel are off taking an amazingly long time to drop a bunch of pregnant ladies off at the beach. But back at the Underlay compound. And then, of course the wrestling and the struggling and the bullet it goes right through the steel door and...
And as we all know, there's nothing so precarious as a wounded pregnant woman. And so I'm thinking, ooh, tension with Dr. Mariel fixing Russell's new wife and we can either save Larkin or save the baby, but it's more serious than that and so Tom does the only sensible thing a hybrid could do and takes her to the water. And while that does strike a melancholy sour note at the end (and I usually love that kind of shit) it's kind of boring because now both of Russell's wives likely are hybrids on account of Tom Underlay taking them to the water. And it's less interesting to have two even provided they would be different. Not to mention the inevitable "what did you do to my baby!" and "why did you go and do that, Tom!" and cetera. Not that they were doing a whole lot with Larkin, but the one thing I appreciated about this show was that it wasn't just always putting the damsels in distress with the big man coming in to save the day. Now had it been Russell who had to choose or Mariel or Rose that would have been miles more interesting for me.
My 2 cents. I think it's over. I guess if there's another episode on Wednesday I'll have more to say. Not that anyone other than Simon even watches this show...
Registered: Sep 2000
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The gun fight did seem arbitrary, and yet I was, I don't know, viscerally satisfied.
I wonder if, given that a new behavior was introduced for the strange glowing sea monsters (midwifing?), Larkin's experience might go differently than Tom presumably expects.
Registered: Mar 1999
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