“Aliens in America” — Pilot
“Fudge is so delicious and yet they keep… on… laughing.” - Raja
Talk about a show of the now. Aliens In America, the new comedy that premiered last night on The CW, couldn’t be any more relevant. In fact, as I was watching it I kept thinking about how this series started up at exactly the right moment in history. Any sooner and it might have come off as culturally insensitive or even borderline repellent. Had they waited, the issue might have lost some of its sting. The issue in question: what happens when a family gets a foreign exchange student for their very uncool Wisconsin son only to have said foreign exchange student be Muslim, not the talk, blond British kid they saw on the pamphlet. More after the jump…
Aliens In America seems to be the perfect response to our countries zenophobic tendencies, of course none of this would matter if the series sucks. Fortunately, it doesn’t.
The first act followed Justin, our less-than-cool hero, on the first day of school. Over the course of my life I’m seem what seems to be thousands of back-to-school scenes in television and movies and so I’m always impressed when one seems to be able to bring something new to the table. Well, maybe not exactly new, but certainly different ways to explore student humiliation. Here, Justin ends up on a list, compiled by the schools most awesome seniors, of the “The Most Bangable Girls.” His sister, who also happens to be on that list, though for different reasons, wisely asks, “Bangable? Is that good?” Her friends seem to think so.
Once Raja, the Pakistani exchange student, shows up the attention is pulled away from Justin, but not for good reasons. On his first day at school a teacher introduced him to the class and then asked how everyone felt about Raja being there. One girl raised her hand and said, “I guess I feel angry because his people blew up the buildings in New York.” That is an awfully bold punchline for 8:30pm on The CW. By the end of the episode Justin had warmed up to his new friend in their shared social seclusion and was even joining him in his prayers to toward Mecca, which caused great distress to his mother (though not as much for his dad, who liked the fact that Raja cleans up after himself, unlike his own children, and that foreign exchange committee gives the family $500 each month).
Raja and Justin are obviously portrayed as the most sympathetic characters on the series, with much of the rest of the town being crazed, how-do-we-know-he’s-not-a-terrorist Americans, and in our ignorance the comedy blossoms. It’s a really good show, and perfectly paired with Everybody Hates Chirs as a hour-block of social outcast comedy. I hope the show succeeds as I’m curious what they would do for a second season, since Raja would theoretically have to go back to London (he’s from London, which is where some of the confusion began) at the end of the school year.
It isn’t often we see sitcoms plugged directly into the hot-button issues of the day outside animated fare like South Park and The Simpsons, but it is something I’d like to see more of.
