Viewers keep finding a wondrous “Alien” world

Gradually, it seems, people are finding “Resident Alien.”
They’re finding it on Syfy (10 p.m. Wednesdays) and Peacock and Netflix. They’re finding that it’s odd and funny … and really quite busy. “I started re-watching the show from the beginning,” Chris Sheridan, the show’s writer-producer, told the Television Critics Association. “And I’m reminded at how much story we’ve done up to this point.”
And that’s in barely 30 episodes. “Resident Alien” (shown here) aired 10 in 2021, 16 in 2022 and zero in 2023, before returning on Valentine’s Day of 2024.
That day fit the show. “Season 3 is sort of the teenage years of Harry,” said Alan Tudyk, who stars. “He really falls in love.”
That’s where the show is now – Harry wallowing in love and lust (March 13) with a bird-creature in human-woman form (shown here), then feeling its afterburn (March 20 and 27).
Except this isn’t really Harry. The real oe was a doctor, living aloe in lakeside Colorado. Then an alien, assigned to kill all Earthlings, crash-landed, killed him and assumed his body, When the town needed a doctor, he was pressed into duty; he’s a fast-learner on technical/medical things, a slow-adapter on social niceties.
That would have been enough to propel a comedy series, but Sheridan wanted more.
“If you remove the alien for a second,” he said, “and figure out what’s going on in the town without (him), it forces you to create more three-dimensional characters.”
He populated a town and added science-fiction sub-plots. “Sci-fi fans – we love lore,” said Alice Wetterlund, who plays D’Arcy, a bartender and former skiier. “A good sci-fi show does that slowly, in terms of character development.”
Harry (as we call the alien in Harry’s body) kind of likes Earthlings now and doesn’t want to kill them. But some “gray aliens” do.
Gradually, others have learned Harry’s secret. That includes Asta (Harry’s nurse) plus her dad, her friend D’Arcy, the mayor’s son Max, his friend Sahar and two veteran alien-hunters – Peter Bach (who, like Max, has the rare gift of seeing through an alien’s disguise) and Gen. Wright.
Those last two are played by sci-fi favorites – Terry O’Quinn of “Lost” and Linda Hamilton of the “Terminator” movies. “I was geeking out when I got to work with” O’Quinn, said Sara Tomko, who plays Asta.
For Asta, the stories get more personal, involving her biological mother and her own daughter (now a teenager), whom she gave up for adoption as a baby. Other stories range from the mayor and his wife (unaware of being abducted by aliens) to the sheriff and his deputy, forever searching for clues about aliens.
Characters collide in fresh ways. Harry and D’Arcy even had one date: “It was the opposite of a meet-cute,” Wetterlund said. It was “a meet-gross.”
Which brings us to Harry’s current avian amour. “One of the themes of our show,” said Corey Reynolds, who plays the sheriff, “is: Love is messy. Love is like three-fourths beautiful and one-fourth garbage.”