The aylins changed their minds and went home. Unconventional for a pilot, really.
I saw a bit of Invasion but it didn’t do much for me. I don’t have any interest in watching the next few episodes.
Surface, on the other hand, I’m curious enough to watch a few more.
I didn’t see Threshold becaused Friday night is my Movie and BSG night.
Well-produced, but kind of annoying. It seemed unbelievable that Ranger Russell would insist his ex-wife drive away in clearly unsafe conditions. And I’d love it if I never again see the plot device of a little kid running off into horrific danger after a stray pet. (I’ve seen too many disaster movies in which bratty children only exist to repeatedly put themselves and others in deadly danger because they will not stay put.)
“E.B.E.”? “Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.” Isn’t that what the noun “extraterrestrial” already means in popular useage?
Overall, although I liked the acting, it’s hard to see how it’s going to do anything fresh with such a hackneyed premise. (Although I’d be impressed if it turned out that what’s happening is not aliens possessing/replacing people, but something entirely different, something we don’t see coming, haven’t seen before, and that still somehow makes sense. If Shaun Cassidy pulls that off, he should get an Emmy.)
Yeah, but the Art Bell crowd likes to keep ahead of the curve. “Biological entity” sounds sciencey, so it lends credibility. See?
Once the chinless hick shouting “Aliens!” became a cliche, they had to find something that sounded better, so they latched onto “extraterrestrial.” After Spielberg screwed that up, they had to up the ante.
In another five years, when “E.B.E.” is familiar enough to make people reflexively point and laugh, a certain type of person is going to need a new term.
Other people remain comfortable talking about seeing a B.E.M. or L.G.M.
Not just that.
If you want to get pedantic enough, “extra-terrestrial” could include anything not of this Earth - such as meteorites and the like.
-Joe
Not super important but I just thought I’d point out that E.B.E. is not a new term. It was a common enough label among “UFOlogists” at least 20 years ago, if not longer, if I’m not mistaken.
I was pretty interested in watching this show since I liked “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (both versions), and since it comes on right after “Lost”. But it just didn’t hook me fast enough, and I ended up watching only about the first 15 minutes. Maybe my brain has been too conditioned to expect an early reward…
Is the premier being repeated? I didn’t even record it, so it’s too late for me otherwise.
I’d agree that the little girl was very annoying and cliched. I mean, if nothing else how do you grow up at least part-time near a swamp and not know that there are things that might eat you out there?
Also, I felt that the “strangeness” of the ex-wife was underplayed, in that if the show didn’t tell you there was something up, you might not have known. The drama was kinda forced, IMHO. Surface I want to check out, though.
They considered moving the premiere by a week or two, according to what I read, but in the end elected not to, so as to hold on to the big lead-in audience they were hoping to get from “Lost” (which I think they did). They used the special warning because of the proximity to Katrina.
It first started appearing with any degree of frequency in 1992, and got a good boost a few years later, after that X Files episode.
It’s still a word that the Art Bell folks use to set themselves aside from “the people who don’t know.” When the term has penetrated far enough into mainstream culture that it’s familiar to everybody, they’ll drop it. I promise.
To be a little more pedantic, that’s “extraterrestrial” as an adjective. When it’s used as a noun (as in, “I just encountered an extraterrestrial!”), it’s almost always used to mean an extraterrestrial being.
Is Art Bell back out of retirement? Didn’t he vanish for a while (held in an underground bunker by black ops Keebler elves, no doubt)?
Good or not, with Shaun Cassidy as producer and writer, this one will probably suffer the same death spiral as American Gothic and The Agency. I think the guy has a sense of what’s good, and not necessarily what brings in ratings. Hoping he catches a break, but I’m guessing that it isn’t with this show.