Noah Hawley set some big challenges for himself when he signed on to run Alien: Earth. To begin with, it takes nerve, bordering on arrogance, even to try putting any personal stamp on a franchise as well known as Alien. Then Hawley’s decision to introduce “hybrids” with synthetic bodies and human minds — and to make the human component of those androids children — amped up the difficulty level. It’s hard to write dialogue for kids, even when they’re part robot.
“Emergence,” the penultimate episode of Alien: Earth’s first season, is hybrid-heavy, mostly for the better, though occasionally for the worse. It’s a short episode, primarily concerned with setting the stage for next week’s finale. Much of its entertainment value comes from how well the characters set up the rest of this season’s story. Hawley and his credited co-writer, Maria Melnik, mainly spread that task among four of the hybrids, following the darkly comic misadventures of Slightly and Smee and the slick superhero thrills of Wendy and Nibs.
As I mentioned in last week’s recap, Slightly and Smee are the hybrids whose childlike nature can, at times, feel forced and even a little grating. I don’t blame this on Adarsh Gourav (as Slightly) or Jonathan Ajayi (as Smee). They both bring a lot of commitment to the scenes where they have to titter at using swears or geek out over monsters, like refugees from some Goonies-esque ’80s kids movie. They have a few such moments in this week’s episode, ones that would be tough for any actor to sell. Like when Slightly has to explain what happened in the lab and he stumbles over his pronunciation, muttering that there was some kind of “cont-animation.”
On the other hand, there’s a real sweetness and sadness to the way Gourav plays Slightly’s mounting understanding that the grown-ups don’t really respect him. At the start of the episode, Slightly’s doing his best to keep Arthur Sylvia alive — including comically trying to slip some sustenance into his mouth by sliding a straw under a face-hugging Xenomorph — because he still believes what Morrow told him: The alien’s host will have a pretty bad day before the monster suddenly goes away. But when Smee shows up in Slightly’s room and immediately spots the comatose Arthur sloppily hidden under Slightly’s bed, suddenly, everything “the man in my head” has been saying seems ridiculous.
The situation turns worse after the face-hugger abruptly detaches. Though Arthur seems relatively normal at first, he does question what the Lost Boys are doing, recognizing immediately that they’re not telling him the full truth about what just happened. (“Children have to learn how to lie,” he says. “And you two are still learning.”) Just when Arthur’s reassuring Slightly and Smee that nothing they’ve done so far is irreversible and that he can help them get out of whatever fix they’re in, he doubles over in pain. Inevitably, a baby Xenomorph bursts out of his chest. Smee’s traumatized both by Arthur’s sudden death and Slightly’s dishonesty.
Nevertheless, the two trek on to the beach, corpse in tow. Morrow then arrives, leading a platoon of soldiers in an amphibious landing on Neverland Island. A distraught Slightly cries, “You didn’t tell me there was gonna be another monster!” Morrow’s troops then unceremoniously dump Arthur’s body into the water and march on to look for at least one of the island’s Xenomorphs. The deal Slightly made with Morrow, to save his family? I don’t think Morrow ever intended to honor any part of it.
While all this is going on, back at the central Prodigy facility, Kirsh and Boy Kavalier are still cleaning up the mess left behind by the alien specimens that attacked Isaac and implanted in Arthur. I’ve noted before how unnerving it’s been to see Kirsh’s muted reaction to all the alien mayhem. (It’s as though he’s quietly calculating whether or not it’s worth trying to lend the humans any aid.) But Kavalier’s response to the chaos is telling as well. He’s initially glib about Isaac’s role in the lab disaster — joking, “I’ll send him to bed without any supper” — until he hears that his $6 billion dollar is so damaged that he can’t even “reboot and restore” him. Kavalier sees Isaac’s loss as a debit on a balance sheet. (It’s also telling that he refuses to call this Lost Boy anything but “Tootles.”)
Wendy is so appalled by this that she uses her Xenomorph language skills to make one of the creatures her attack dog. After balking at the news about Isaac — “But we’re premium!” Wendy insists, parroting Prodigy’s own promises — she escapes the facility with her brother, Joe Hermit, and Nibs, who is the only hybrid she can get to come with her.
The Wendy-Nibs-Hermit scenes are some of the episode’s most exciting and emotionally affecting. There’s an especially unsettling moment where the escaping party finds the graves for all of the sick children whose minds went into the hybrids. When Wendy defiantly argues, “We’re still here,” Nibs absently replies, “I don’t think I am anymore.”
As they make their way to a boat that could get them off the island, shadowed by the Xenomorph, the trio has to fight their way past multiple waves of soldiers (Weyland-Yutani’s and Prodigy’s), who are all insufficiently respectful of the hybrids’ autonomy. Nibs, in particular, does not take this well, and goes into “stone-cold killer” mode, prompted in part by some dumb grunt tossing away her stuffed ostrich, “Mr. Strawberry.”
Wendy, aided by her ferocious alien pal, follows suit, as Hermit watches with mounting horror. As is the case throughout “Emergence,” the violent action is both thrilling to watch and amusingly grotesque, with a level of gore that could be described as “excessive” if this weren’t the goo-friendly Alien franchise. The final fracas leads the episode to a cliffhanger, as Hermit shoots a stun gun at Nibs, leaving Wendy surrounded by armed troops, screaming at her brother, “What did you do?!”
But let’s end this week with the pointedly named Boy Kavalier. In our own (real) world, it was Hawley’s idea to make half of his cast be children in synthetic adult bodies. In the Alien world, this was all Kavalier’s idea — and it’s worth unpacking why he made this choice. Was it really just because young minds are more malleable? Or is there some element of smug vanity here, as our self-styled “boy genius” mocks his older tech-lord peers by building an army of preadolescent Lost Boys?
One thing we know for sure: the hyperintelligent Kavalier is fascinated by the very idea of intelligence, be it artificial or organic. In this episode, after Kirsch points out that the eyeball/sheep-thing intentionally startled and trapped Isaac — and not for its own benefit, but to assist another alien — Kavalier decides to have a conversation with the beast, starting by asking it to recite the digits of pi. The eyeball makes its sheep host stamp out two of pi’s digits. Then it shits.
This excites Kavalier, who wonders what would happen if they coerced the eyeball into inhabiting someone who talks … and who, um, uses the toilet. “Someone with a low IQ, so we can see the difference,” he suggests. He claims to know just who to use.
Roger Ebert’s “Law of Economy of Characters” leads me to believe that he’s probably thinking about Hermit, who is the only “low IQ” human Kavalier has bothered to pay any attention to this season. If so, can he create this new human-alien hybrid before his preexisting premium human-robot hybrid stops him? As someone who cares about the Hermit siblings, I hope not. As someone who thinks the eyeball monster is cool and loves when TV dramas get messy? I’m on the edge of my seat.
Screaming, Hearing, Etc.
• Wendy: “What happened to Isaac?” Kirsh: “Science.”
• One of the big things I’ll be watching for in the season finale is where Kirsh’s loyalties ultimately lie. He’s clearly one step ahead of everyone (perhaps even us viewers!), as evidenced by the way he waves off Slightly’s attempt to explain what’s been going on with Morrow, curtly saying, “I know that,” before advising Slightly and Smee on how best to escape to the beach. He also clearly (maybe?) has some affection for these mechanical doofuses. After they mess up the whole Xenomorph-hatching scheme and get captured by Morrow, Kirsh saves the day, surrounding and then locking up Morrow’s troops, before growling, “You two are grounded.”
• Though I’m often left cold by Smee’s clumsy boyishness, he does have one of this episode’s funniest lines. When Slightly yells at Smee to go away because “I’m busy,” Smee says, “What are you talking about? We’re never busy.”
• Charmingly goofy visual gag: the giant dustpan the Prodigy cleaning crew uses to sweep up the killer bugs in the trashed lab.
• A chilling Nibs prediction: “We’re all gonna die here, and then the bugs will crawl in and we’ll all be ghosts.” See you next week, everybody!