Please, oh please, let the final moments of Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 6 carry over to the next.
The idea of Harry on acid is just too rich to rush.
As it turns out, an alien in New York City is pretty damn entertaining.
We’ll get to that soon enough. This episode was an embarrassment of riches from start to finish.
Right out of the gate, the humor was on point with Ben’s reputation sullied by the ghastly 59 play from Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 5.
While he was pouring over the article about it, Sheriff Mike was perusing the news about Jessup. He handed Ben a great idea on a silver platter that Ben could not understand.
But I get it. Asking the town if they want a resort could be helpful, but it would also tip off Jessup that Patience was hoping to steal the resort out from under them.
Mike: I’m just tired. You know, Cletus is in this humpin’ phase. I had to spend half the night defendin’ my easy char. Speakin’ of, you know anything about gettin’ stains out of couch cushions? I mean deep stains.
Ben: Nope. Know anything about gettin’ disgusting images out of my head?
Honestly, when Mike goes off on those tangents, it makes my whole day.
Mike’s story finally got a lot deeper when Liv handcuffed him to a park bench so he’d eventually spill on what was dragging him down.
It became too much when Liv found it hard to believe that Mike wasn’t sweating their missing time as much as she was.
After that sliver of hope they were on the same page, Harry intervened with his implanted memory, so, for the time being, Mike is down with Liv’s insistence aliens abducted them.
Deputy, look. I appreciate mythical creatures; I really do. Well, except for mermaids. You know, where do they get off sittin’ up on the rocks all high and mighty, expecting you to ask them out on a date. I mean, why they so stuck up? I mean, if you half fish, you gonna smell all like fish, you understand?
Mike
But when he pushed her out of the way during an incident with a bad guy, Liv realized it was time for her to intervene.
Losing a partner would be nightmarish, but losing a partner who was your best (and first) friend from the age of six is indescribable. No wonder Mike is still bowled over by grief and guilt.
It also explains why he was so standoffish with Liv the closer they appeared to get. Mike has been weird since they had that beautiful Resident Alien Season 1 moment of singing a duet together.
He began giving Liv the respect she deserved, but he stopped short of friendship. In his place, who wouldn’t? He feels he sent his best friend and partner to his death. If Mike lost Liv, he would break into a million pieces.
Still, Mike can’t hold everyone at arm’s length for a perceived error on his part. He didn’t cause Jesse’s death. Someone murdered him. Sending him in a different direction as he’d undoubtedly done a million times before doesn’t make him guilty.
Of course, he knows that. Finally, confronting it with Liv’s help opens an entirely new future for their story, and that’s what we needed.
We also got some more background on D’Arcy and Ben, especially when it comes to why Ben is still into his childhood friend.
D’Arcy: Shit, I didn’t think of it. I should have told you to bring Kate. She would love this.
Ben: Oh, she, uh, took Max to her mom’s for a couple nights.
D’Arcy: Oh, Benny all alone. Let me guess, cartoons and cereal for breakfast, cartoons and cereal for dinner.
Ben: The definition of a perfect day. And with Kate gone, I don’t have to worry about holding in my farts.
D’Arcy: You don’t fart around your wife. What’s the point of being married if you can’t fart around your wife?
Ben: [chuckles] Eh, I don’t do a lot of things around Kate.
D’Arcy: What does that mean?
Ben: I don’t know. Sometimes I feel I can’t be myself in front of her. Can’t do the things that I want to do.
D’Arcy: I thought you guys were getting along great. The way she talks about it, your place is all handcuffs and frozen dildos.
It shouldn’t have been too difficult to suss out that things weren’t great between Kate and Ben, but it never crossed my mind. Their BDSM play is a cry for help, it seems, for them to find some common ground and a place where they’re excited about their marriage again.
Going to those lengths out of nowhere should have been a good indicator, but until Ben shared how he felt with D’Arcy, it wasn’t so easy to see.
Kate and Ben are entirely different. D’Arcy and Ben, though, have a long, storied past taking them back to childhood. After Ben married Kate, they might have lost their closeness, but those earlier feelings never die.
Ben envies D’Arcy because she is who she is without caring what others think. On the other hand, Ben can’t even be comfortable around the woman he married.
fart quote
The best relationships you have will find you sharing everything, from farts to children to wall hangings to sex. We don’t have Kate’s side of the story, but Kate’s insistence that Ben doesn’t hang live, laugh, love on the wall suggests he’s not far off in how he feels.
To Ben, D’Arcy is a hero who stands up for what she believes in without a care in the world what others think. But D’Arcy is struggling, too. She drinks too much and feels misunderstood.
But after their day together, it’s hard not to imagine that they might be each other’s person.
And that brings us to the continuing mystery about why real Harry killed Sam.
The best I can tell is that they got involved in something that they couldn’t get out of easily, and Harry was in deeper and more willing to engage in his darker side.
Harry’s got a money bag that’s been keeping him afloat financially, and at the bottom of the bag were the clues to what happened.
Of course, even with a money bag, Harry couldn’t stop thinking about the coupon for free ice cream, so he never even dug to the bottom of the bag. I guess he wouldn’t have gotten to the bottom of it eventually.
Pizza guy: You pay for your pizza, or get out.
Asta: Of course.
Harry: Here, have some closet cash.
They needed the money for their trip to New York to find Harry’s fellow alien. Leaving town gave Asta plenty of time to toss around what she’d discovered in her head, and it carried over on their trip.
I wonder if the Galvan/Powell Group will wind up tied into aliens and the situation that tangled up Harry and Sam. It sure seems like it’s pointing in that direction.
Can it be a coincidence that the Galvan/Powell Group’s headquarters were in New York, not far from Goliath’s work?
At first, I thought the gallery owner was Goliath but unwilling to out herself without knowing about Harry. I mean, she even realized that Harry was an alien. But since Harry didn’t recognize her as family, it made more sense that she was involved with Goliath, whoever that may be.
Like any good tourist, Harry found the very best of NYC was its food. He ate like a horse. There was pizza, pie (just like cake but made with real food), and a tray of appetizers. But his excitement over culinary delights also sapped some of his intellect.
Asta was left holding their trip together, as is often the case when they’re investigating something. Based on his paintings, she realized that Goliath had been on earth for over a decade.
Harry had been picking out shirts with worry over how the alien would react to him, an alien with burgeoning humanity, but it’s likely that Goliath is even more entrenched in it than Harry.
I mean, did Goliath use the alien distress call as Harry did, thus alerting the gallery owner to Harry’s presence as one, too? Aliens on earth wearing a skin suit will experience the same oddities.
Yes, an alien in New York City is well worth the wait.
There were many scenes evoking laughter, beginning with his senses being ravaged by the smelly city air. But as anyone who mistook a stranger for someone they knew as little kids, Harry’s reaction to Not-Asta in the street did a number on them.
With food getting the better of him, he was an easy target for illicit street drugs. As Goliath seemingly revealed herself to the pizza guy, Harry was on a mind-bender, wandering the streets unattended.
I need to see where he ends up and what else he gets into on that mind trip. Because, as Harry says, “this is some bullshit” if we don’t pick up right where we left off.
And now, let’s take a moment to wish Number 42 safe travels to the netherworld.
Yes, we said goodbye to the talking octopus much too early because Harry wouldn’t listen to his friend. If he had only listened when Number 42 said not to leave Murphy in the same room with him, he’d still be alive today.
Harry: I will never forget you.
Number 42: It was an honorable death. Honor my life by eating my dead body in a butter sauce with a nice chardonnay. [takes his last breath]
And what a way to go, shaken to death by a dog as if he was a chew toy. It was so shocking that Sahar didn’t even flinch when the octopus shared his goodbyes with Harry.
Aliens are just another part of life in Patience these days.
Harry even took Number 42’s advice for his after-death celebration, settling down with a nice glass of chianti (OK, it was Chardonnay, but you get the connection, right?) to send his tasty friend into his gullet, therefore carrying a piece of him with him forever — or until he took a crap.
Was there a single misfire from “An Alien in New York”? If there was, I sure didn’t see it. It’s easily the best of Resident Alien Season 2 so far and right up there with some of the best from Resident Alien Season 1.
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Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.