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Alien: Earth<\/a><\/p>\n Observation<\/p>\n \n Season 1<\/p>\n Episode 4\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 3 stars<\/p>\n ***\n <\/p>\n \n The Prodigy staff is starting to wonder if putting children in adult robot bodies was a good idea after all. After three straight episodes of fairly relentless science-fiction\/horror action \u2014 interspersed with a few quieter, quirkier moments of kid-lit fantasy \u2014 Alien: Earth slows down considerably for episode four. \u201cObservation\u201d is more functional than fun, seemingly aimed at setting up the back half of season one while also filling in some gaps in the characters\u2019 backstories. There\u2019s a lot about the Prodigy staff and their revolutionary hybrids that the Alien: Earth creator, Noah Hawley, didn\u2019t feel the need to explain when he started this story. Here at the season\u2019s halfway point, he takes a beat to clarify a few things.<\/p>\n Take Dame Sylvia. She\u2019s been a constant presence through the first three episodes, yet I\u2019ve barely had cause to mention her before. And until this moment, I had yet to mention her husband, Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl), one of the chief architects of Prodigy\u2019s hybrid program. The Sylvias have expressed some reservations about how cavalier Boy Kavalier has been toward the hybrids\u2019 mental and physical health. The Maginot mission has left Arthur livid. He has little respect for Kavalier\u2019s risk-taking, because to him it\u2019s \u201cnot science.\u201d (\u201cIf we did this wrong, best case we have a bunch of AIs running around thinking that they\u2019re human. Worst case? We killed six kids.\u201d)<\/p>\n Dame, on the other hand, is more of a nurturer by nature, to both Kavalier and the hybrids. But even she has concerns about how these children are adjusting to having immature minds dropped into high-tech, adult-shaped bodies. In one of this episode\u2019s best scenes, Dame tries to figure out what\u2019s wrong with Nibs, who has been spooked since encountering the scary aliens at the Maginot crash site. The Sylvias become alarmed when Nibs claims to be pregnant. When Dame tries to explain that pregnancy is a biological process beyond Nibs\u2019s mechanical abilities, the youngster at first waves off the sex talk \u2014 \u201cI grew up on a farm,\u201d she huffs \u2014 but then cites the counterexample of Jesus. (\u201cHis mommy didn\u2019t do that, and he was born.\u201d)<\/p>\n Then the conversation takes a darker turn, as Dame tries to get Nibs to admit that her new body is different. All Nibs will allow is, \u201cIt\u2019s big,\u201d and then when Dame tries to show her an actual diagram, Nibs kicks it angrily out of her hand. Dame then asks exactly what happened to her in New Siam, which prompts Nibs to jump at her and pin her to the ground. The sequence is incredibly disturbing, underlining the carelessness with which Prodigy has been treating these overgrown children.<\/p>\n Elsewhere on Neverland Island, Wendy reclaims her place as the most special of the hybrids by revealing the unique gift we\u2019ve seen from her across the past two episodes: an ability to hear and understand the Xenomorphs\u2019 language. While the Sylvias again are concerned about what this may mean \u2014 especially given Wendy\u2019s other unexpected power, to manipulate technology by touching it \u2014 Kavalier is excited to see where it might lead. He reminds Dame that she isn\u2019t Wendy\u2019s mother. (This is \u201can IT issue, not a gab session,\u201d he warns.) Then he takes a shot at the Wendy-bashing Curly, asking her if she can hear the Xenomorphs. (\u201cMaybe,\u201d she lies.)<\/p>\n As part of the \u201cgetting to know the characters a little better\u201d direction of \u201cObservation,\u201d we get multiple scenes with Kavalier this week, all emphasizing how he thrives on \u201cmove fast and break stuff\u201d tech-bro energy \u2014 combined, quirkily, with his Peter Pan obsession. When Wendy comes to talk to Kavalier, he points with his foot toward an empty seat for her, then proceeds to pepper her with questions about her Maginot experience, wondering whether fighting the Xenomorph was more like fighting pirates or Indians \u2026 or maybe a crocodile? (\u201cYou fought the crocodile and now you can hear the clock!\u201d) He also wants to know what she hears from the Xenomorphs and is unmoved when she describes their pain.<\/p>\n Kavalier is not an empathetic soul. He\u2019s a self-styled man-child, disdainful of society\u2019s moral codes. The show hasn\u2019t gone so far as to frame him as a villain (unless you\u2019re the sort of viewer who thinks of Willy Wonka as a bad guy), but neither is he being shown to be \u201cright\u201d in any particular way (unless you\u2019re the sort of viewer who roots for Lex Luthor). More than anything, he\u2019s the kind of oligarch who looks for high-minded, pseudo-intellectual excuses to do what he wanted to do anyway. And Hawley does seem to want us to draw some modern-day parallels. In other words: If Kavalier were a real guy, alive today in our world, he\u2019d probably still be a trillionaire. He\u2019s got an undeniably musky aroma.<\/p>\n During Wendy\u2019s visit, she argues that Kavalier should allow her brother to stay on Neverland Island, which the Prodigy boss agrees to very reluctantly. (When she makes a \u201cpinkie promise\u201d that having Hermit around won\u2019t distract her, Kavalier covers her pinkie with his whole hand.) As for Joe, he\u2019s not all that enthusiastic about being detained at Neverland, especially when Prodigy\u2019s gruff business manager, Atom Eins (Adrian Edmondson), tells him that he has no choice in the matter, since he owes Prodigy for the cost of his artificial lung. Atom also laughs off the idea that Hermit could just take his sibling home, saying, \u201cThe unit you call your sister is a product of the Prodigy Corporation.\u201d He calls her the next evolutionary step between \u201cour animal past and our trans-human future.\u201d<\/p>\n Also, not super-stoked about Hermit hanging around? Slightly, who complains it\u2019s not fair for Wendy to have a brother. (When Wendy defends her privilege by saying she\u2019s the oldest, Slightly notes that, actually, Curly is, since she was 12 when her consciousness was transplanted.) It doesn\u2019t help that Slightly is receiving messages in his head from Morrow threatening to harm Slightly\u2019s own family unless he arranges to sneak a human into the lab with the Xenomorph eggs, so they can do their face-hunting, alien-planting business. The obvious candidate for this is Hermit, whom Slightly already dislikes.<\/p>\n Even though all of these calmer, conversational scenes result in an episode without a lot of drive, the smaller moments do have a purpose, making one major point clear: that no one at Prodigy really knows how either their hybrid experiment or their alien studies are going to turn out. Both situations are moving very quickly, in directions no one could\u2019ve predicted. To the Sylvias, this is terrifying. To Kavalier, thrilling. And to Kirsh? Well, he just watches it all quietly, occasionally muttering, \u201cFascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n Anyway, after an episode with a lot of talk, Alien: Earth returns to its usual mode of unnerving suspense and gooey violence in this episode\u2019s final minutes. There\u2019s a lot of intrigue, as we see Kirsh remotely monitoring Slightly, and Slightly eyeing Hermit. Meanwhile, Wendy enters the lab to chat with the aliens, using a language that consists of clicks and sighs \u2014 like a swarm of insects nesting in a windswept forest. This eerie music eventually coaxes out the creature rooted in Hermit\u2019s amputated lung. That embryonic Xenomorph then shatters its container and leaps at Wendy, who pets it gently.<\/p>\n Who knew? It seems one of these hybrids may be capable of motherhood after all.<\/p>\n \u2022 For the first time since the season premiere<\/a> (at least by my reckoning), the opening-credits \u201cpreviously on\u201d imagery features something we haven\u2019t actually seen before: a creepy-looking doll\u2019s head washing onto a beach with the tide.<\/p>\n \u2022 In one of the clumsier bits of backstory filling, Curly asks Hermit to explain \u201cthe Five,\u201d and he mentions the corporations \u2014 Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Threshold, Dynamic, and Lynch \u2014 that took the place of world governments and democracy and \u201cfixed things.\u201d It seems unlikely that Curly wouldn\u2019t already know this, although I did like how Hermit just accepts that it\u2019s better for the corporations to be in charge, since he\u2019s never known anything else.<\/p>\n \u2022 My favorite Maginot menagerie beastie remains the multi-eyed crawling eyeball, who in this episode takes up residence within the eye socket of a Prodigy lab goat. Observing this process, Atom expresses concern about one of these monsters escaping, to which Kavalier says, \u201cGlass half-full, kid \u2026 we talked about this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 One of my favorite little bits of physical business in this episode is when Wendy shows Hermit around her bedroom \u2014 with a bed that\u2019s \u201cmore like a charging station\u201d \u2014 and she surreptitiously kicks her toys out of sight so the space won\u2019t look so cluttered or childish.<\/p>\n \u2022 Hermit poses some good questions to Atom about Wendy, like, \u201cShe has her memories, her sense of humor \u2026 doesn\u2019t that make her Marcy?\u201d He also asks, \u201cDid you really download her consciousness to that body? Is it her?\u201d Atom replies that answering those questions is the difference between a trillion-dollar business and \u201ca blanket with sleeves \u2026 an invention that no one wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 The hybrids don\u2019t need to eat in any conventional human sense,\u00a0but apparently the Prodigy engineers have concocted for them a kind of digital candy, which simulates the memory of flavor. Neat!<\/p>\n \u2022 Just like Curly last week, another one of the more intelligent and ambitious hybrids, Tootles (Kit Young), tries to impress the Prodigy bosses with his diligence and cleverness. He even has the nerve to ask Kirsch to call him by a non\u2013Peter Pan name, picking \u201cIsaac\u201d for himself, after \u201cthis scientist.\u201d (When he tells Slightly about the name change, Slightly asks, \u201cWe can do that?\u201d Isaac\u2019s nonchalant reply: \u201cDon\u2019t know about \u2018can,\u2019 but I did.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u2022 I\u2019ve been watching Rysdahl as Arthur for weeks now and at no point before this episode did I realize that I\u2019d seen him before in a Noah Hawley show, playing the sweet, meek Wayne Lyon in Fargo season five.<\/p>\n \u2022 Boy Kavalier cites that old saying about how, at a certain level, science is indistinguishable from magic. He credits it to Isaac Asimov. Does anyone at Prodigy have the courage to tell him that the quote is actually from Arthur C. Clarke<\/a>?<\/p>\n VULTURE NEWSLETTER<\/p>\n Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Patrick Brown\/FX\n <\/p>\n