After watching Season 1, I was really enthusiastic about Resident Alien. But now, after having watched Season 2, it’s time for disenchantment. I still find this show highly entertaining, but it seems to have lost its ease.

Season 1 consists of ten episodes, which seems to be a perfect length for shows with an average episode duration of about 45 minutes. However, Season 2 comes with 16 episodes, requiring more dramatic composition. It feels like the writers couldn’t decide on one direction. Instead of building up to a tense climax, the show creates numerous loose ends which, fortunately, are eventually resolved. Most of them. There’s still room for a cliffhanger. There are many events happening in Patience, Colorado, but only a few of them significantly drive the plot. I am both glad and sad that Season 3 will only consist of 8 episodes.

But the humor remains on point and serves as good compensation for the tedious, lengthy parts. Once again, there are plenty of Easter eggs that make me smile, many of which others may not understand. I’m pretty sure I didn’t catch every reference.

Resident Alien Season 2 is fun to watch, but if it had been the first season, it wouldn’t have made me a fan.

Update: When I wrote that post, I had only seen the first season. Meanwhile, I finished season 2, and now I’m waiting for season 3 to come to Germany. So the following review only applies to season 1.

I hadn’t heard of the series before Netflix recommended it to me. With the familiar face of Alan Tudyk, it caught my attention. I know him from “A Knight’s Tale,” “Firefly”, and “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.” He’s one of the less commonly known actors, I guess, but I really like the roles he chooses, and I love how he brings life to his characters with little funny or absurd details that make the usual unusual.

The same goes for Resident Alien. The plot is pretty trivial: an alien crashes in the boring city of Patience (the name…) in Colorado (why do aliens always land in the USA?), disguises himself as a local outsider, lives undercover in a small-town community, and gets unwillingly to know the people. The alien replaces Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle, who happens to have the bad luck to meet the alien after the crash, and moves into his lonely cabin at a lake. Coincidentally, the local town doctor dies, and Harry gets called to the crime scene. And so the climax begins.

As the higher-developed aliens seem to know everything about the human species, they don’t understand why humans do human things. Again, this is not new: the super-intelligent, highly logical, and non-emotional alien 🖖🏻, but Tudyk just fills the role in his very own manner.

Also, not new: the aliens want to eradicate mankind from the surface of the Earth because humans behave like assholes and destroy their own home planet. Again. They’ve done that already multiple times, e.g., with the Mayas. As I mentioned previously: humans doing human things.

But then again, there is this thing with the feelings and emotions that are unknown to the alien species, but through Harry’s body copy, the alien suddenly is confronted with being human not only from the outside but also from the inside. That leads to questioning his mission.

Besides Alan Tudyk, the other members of the cast also form a great ensemble: Sara Tomko, Corey Reynolds, Alice Wetterlund, Levi Fiehler, Judah Prehn, Elizabeth Bowen, and many more.

And it’s the subtle details that make me smile, like the names “Patience” or “Mayor Hawthorne”, and that make Resident Alien a lovable show.