Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 4 Radio Harry Review- Family Matters

Harry finds a reason to save everyone and he may not be alone in a poignant Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 4 that reminded us the importance of community.

Syfy’s fish out of water story has always had as many jokes as it did heartfelt moments. It’s one of the best things about the series. Watching Harry navigate the strange new world mostly in goofy, ridiculous ways is entertaining. The best beats, though, come when he sees what makes humans redeemable. We are flawed, messy creatures who often do more damage than good, but there are lovely people among us, and there is hope in the communities we call home. Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 4 showed the best and worst relationships in a surprisingly emotional episode.

We finally know what has been going on with Dr. Ethan. He has been held in the secret military facility for sixty five days along with anyone else General Wright thinks might be an alien. She keeps tabs on anyone who claims to have been abducted to pump them for information. It is her mission to prove her father right. We now know this is personal for her, making her even more dangerous.

Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 4 is about trust, love, and family. Now that Harry has assembled his radio, he has one chance to get the message to his people. Once a year, Earth is within range of a transit station on Mars. He must hike up the mountain to ensure the cleanest signal. When Max and Sahar put doubt in Asta’s mind, she elects to go with him to ensure he won’t blow up the world instead.

There has always been a small throughline of ecological jabs in Resident Alien. Being a more advanced race, Harry doesn’t understand why humans are such selfish consumers. Although his analogy about setting your house on fire but continuing to live in it is funny, there is more than a little truth to it. Some of the smarter jokes come from these moments. As with most comedy, truth and pain are embedded in the laughter.

Harry and Asta visit the reservation to check on Sonny and visit with her cousin, who is back from the city, before hiking out the next day. Harry likes the reservation because he feels the most at home there. These are people who live with the land and respect its gifts as opposed to only taking from it. They also deeply care for one another, and the sense of community is palpable. For Harry, who is missing home and struggling to understand why all of Earth deserves to be saved, it brings an epiphany. Children are our legacies. All of our hopes and dreams are tied to them.

He learns a valuable lesson from watching them. Although Resident Alien is a silly sci-fi show, it is one of the few series on television that depicts Native American life as anything other than a spiritual enigma or a ruined society. To be fair, there are problems(arguably created by western expansion), but there is also a lot to be gained by listening.

Sherrif Mike continues to be a wellspring of emotions and backstory. The man who initially presented as a loudmouth misogynistic blowhard is actually very deep and suffering from an immense amount of guilt. There are nuggets of pain he reveals between all the talk of tampon usage and ’80s slashers. He hasn’t always lived on Patience, and as we suspected, he is trying to outrun mountains of grief. Whatever happened in Washington DC to his partner, Mike blames himself. Corey Reynolds does an excellent job seamlessly weaving the many facets of Mike’s personality together into a believable and likable character.

The Mayor and Kate are quickly becoming my favorite duo. Kate is smart, capable, and fierce. When she convinces Ben to give the neighboring town Jessup a chance, she has no idea what she is in for. The Mayor of Jessup isn’t just trying to bolster his town. He is a nasty piece of work who gets more than he bargained for in Kate. They may have special water(it’s just tap), but Patience has The 59, and sacrifice matters. You just know it won’t be long before Kate is practicing law again.

When Harry turns on the radio and sends the message to his people, Asta is relieved because she doesn’t completely trust Harry. However, that relief is short-lived when she learns that Harry’s message told his people to wait fifty years and then destroy all life on Earth. His rationale is Asta will be dead. He fails to consider that we are all connected, though. Asta is a spiritual person who values all life. He finally understands this after he and Asha deliver Sonny’s baby surrounded by her supportive family.

Our parents are our rudders. They are our lighthouses, our guides through the good times and the bad. We learn from them, are strengthened by them, and unfortunately are sometimes harmed by them. D’Arcy isn’t self-destructive just because of her skiing accident. She was damaged long before that by parents who talk at her instead of to her. Her father seems to mean well, but he is constantly trying to fix something in D’Arcy instead of accepting her as she is.

D’Arcy’s mother is even worse as she delivers one toxic barb after another. Her terrible dinner with her folks bleeds over into the rest of her life, and after walking out of dinner in a spectacularly explosive style, she stands up Eliot. As much as she would like to ignore her parents, she can’t. She doesn’t feel worthy of anyone’s love or anything positive and probably never did.

We learn our behaviors from our families, found and biological. Without a lighthouse to guide us, we become less than we could have been. D’Arcy’s parents have all but destroyed her self-confidence and self-worth. For Mike, his partner was family, and he has run across the country desperate to avoid his pain.

Lastly, Harry got a message in his language from New York City. General Wright intercepts a message and could have sent the one to Harry from New York to trap him. It just as easily could be another alien on Earth, though. A second Harry, color me interested. Find all our Resident Alien coverage here.

Stray Squid

• White buffalos symbolize abundance and hope. The birth of one means the struggle for survival isn’t necessary if the right action is joined with prayer. Harry seeing one is indicative of his journey to understand the importance of life.
• Nightmare on Elms Street 3 Dream Warriors is the best one. Sherrif Mike is right.
• No one likes mosquitos. Harry can kill all of them.
• Teal crocs and truck nuts are entirely useless. I would also put gluten-free bottled water and the ropeless skipping rope on this list.
• Did Harry’s memory wipe do more damage to Liv than he intended?