Wednesday, May 10, 2006

one more thing

I am astonished at how good Invasion has become.

Early in the year, they pulled all these stupid little stunts, jump scares and set ups with no payoffs. Now, it's one payoff after another, boom-boom-boom, and tonight's episode was as heart-wrenchingly terrifying as anything I've seen on network TV. Hybrids rounding up the humans and separating parents from children was horrifying to watch. The "maternity ward" was almost as bad.

Seriously, things are looking very, very bad for our little family of intrepid humans. Since they've done such a great job of filling out these characters, we really do care about them.

No word yet on renewal, but it should come soon. Ratings haven't been stellar since the hiatus, but with this powerful a storyline, and the return of new episodes of Lost giving it a good lead-in, Invasion will I hope be able to make a strong enough showing to get green-lighted for another year.

On 24, we have to suspend our disbelief at all the magic technology and the invincibility of Jack Bauer. On Lost, we have to put up with the ever-so-slow revelations about the island, the infinitely intertwined backstories, and the fact that every single character on the island is an idiot. Invasion is firmly grounded in the here-and-now, and every character has his good and bad sides. Yeah, sure, there are alien hybrid pod people running around, but even that issue has been consistently handled. I know I bitched about how stupid things were earlier in the season, but once this show got rocking, it just got better and better.

If ABC has any brains, they'll make eps of Invasion available for download, too, as they have done with Lost. There's a lot of potential here, and I hope Shaun Cassidy & co get a chance to work it out.

1 comment:

Ross Ruediger said...

I never gave INVASION a shot after the pilot (this happens a lot with me), but maybe someday I'll return to it.

I was a massive fan of Cassidy's other series, AMERICAN GOTHIC. Did you ever see that?