Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 4
"Observation"
Writers: Noah Hawley and Bobak Esfarjani
Director: Ugla Hauksdóttir
Cast: Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, Kit Young, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille, Adrian Edmondson
We open on a doll's head awash in the surf. One wonders whether Newt's bedraggled doll, Casey, has been manufactured yet, much less decapitated. It's a fitting memento mori for an episode concerned with childhood's end.
What's the Frequency, Wendy?
Wendy stirs from sleep but can't make out what Arthur, Sylvia, and Kirsh are saying. They deactivated her audio processors after she collapsed in the lab. Kirsh recalled that Wendy was drawn to the sounds the xenomorph was making, though no one else could hear it. Kavalier arrives with Curly in tow because it's Bring Your Ambitious Little Would-Be Girlboss to Work Day. He summarily dismisses Kirsh and Sylvia, reminding the latter she's not Wendy's mother. Before he and Arthur can investigate the hybrid's exciting ability to pick up xenomorph radio, Eins appears with Joe, who's looking hale and hearty for someone so recently impaled.
"Oh, good," says Kavalier, "It's the brother."
Wendy, though, is delighted to see Joe in good shape. Again, my man was impaled by that xenomorph tail. We learn Joe's been fitted with a new lung. Thankfully the old one with the alien larva in it is not waiting to be put back in his chest, so that's a relief. Joe gives off lovely big brother energy here, but is alarmed when he realizes his boss's boss's boss's boss (once or thrice removed) brought the aliens to this same facility. It's like learning the drunk driver that T-boned your car is just down the hall getting stitches. Except the drunk driver also impaled you with his tail.
This is also the point where I pause and check IMDb for a third time to make sure the guy playing Eins isn't somehow Lobot from The Empire Strikes Back. He's not, but I'll continue to check.
Arthur gradually dials up Wendy's hearing, just enough so she can hear him. She describes her experience, likening the sound of the xenomorphs to bugs rubbing their legs together. As she got closer to Kirsh and his egg dissection (which I suppose is technically just scrambling), it turned to screaming. This is Clarice and the lambs all over again! Arthur promises to figure out how to stop her having to hear these noises, but both Wendy and Kavalier object. She believes the aliens have chosen to speak with her. Hearing antiquated cash register bells, Kavalier presses Arthur to continue adjusting the audio levels. They find it and Wendy has Arthur dial it back down so it's not so overwhelming. Kavalier asks Curly if she can hear it, too. She tries lying, but nobody's buying it.
Next he asks Wendy to replicate the sound for the humans in the room. When she questions her ability to do that, he compares it to her hacking into surveillance footage to look for her brother.
Brief aside: Kavalier also attributes (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law — "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." — to Isaac Asimov. Nobody calls him on this, but it feels like the kind of gaffe Elon Musk would make at history's worst party, so it's probably intentional?
Wendy does her best, and she has a future as an EDM artist. Joe finds it pretty unsettling and begs for a break. Kavalier reminds him Wendy runs on a lithium ion battery that could power a city, but he agrees, partially because he's not sure how to exploit this just yet. One thing's for sure: he's not surrendering the samples to Yutani.
Joe asks Wendy for a tour of her room, which looks like the type of mock childhood bedroom where a therapist would speak to a child who's been scribbling in all black crayon in a Blumhouse movie. Wendy's art is much more colorful though. She asks if he is mad at her, for making him go to a cemetery when they faked her death. He says he's only mad at Prodigy for not letting him see her, or know she's alive for that matter. He's here now though, and that seems to quiet any abandonment issues for now.
Boy Kavalier has a streaming setup, because of course he does. He broadcasts a live reading from Peter Pan, presumably to the whole island but potentially just to the Lost Boys' audio processors? Which sounds like a feature I'd immediately look up ways to opt out from. Though I suppose it's better than opening your music library to find a new U2 album you didn't ask for?
"Rextitution"
Morrow — whose first name we learn is Kumi — continues creepily communicating with Slightly from a remote location, preying on the hybrid's fear and need for companionship. This is a little more nuanced than Ice-T learning something new about online predators in a legally distinct Club Penguin scenario, but the subtext is very much the same. Kids in 2120 or 2025 are subject to indoctrination by charismatic cyborgs who want them to lure a human close to the big egg so they'll become an unwitting incubator to an alien parasite. They'll play to the minor's sense of justice, framing the egg as stolen property and the human sacrifice as restitution for theft of property.
In all seriousness, this subplot is legitimately scary, positioning Morrow as a charming villain employing textbook grooming techniques on an adolescent boy in a young man's body. Slightly the synth may be incredibly strong, but Aaurush the boy is woefully vulnerable to suggestion. Morrow teases his birth name out of him and uses that to track down his mother, using her as leverage to entrap Slightly in a conspiracy. He wants to smuggle a living xenomorph out of Neverland inside a human host.
It's worth noting that Kirsh notices Slightly's anxiety, maybe even clocking that he's compromised. That android is observant af.
Babies Having Babies
Arthur ushers Sylvia out of the labs and into the green, hoping that's enough to escape Kavalier's hearing. Not likely. He's increasingly anxious about their boss's forcefulness in pushing the hybrids into the deep end. She defends Kavalier's behavior as necessarily bold, even if she shares her husband's view of their charges as children. It sounds like Sylvia is willing to abide by all this because she views herself as a guard rail. We're left to wonder whether her intentions are mostly noble or if she, like Kavalier, is more than willing to pursue this well past the bounds of ethics … yeah, we've long since left all that in the dust, huh?
As the couple assures each other they're on the same page and they haven't killed six kids only to create and endanger six more, Nibs rolls up with a bombshell. She's pregnant.
Stroking a plush emu, Nibs explains she grew up on a farm and understands how babies work. She believes she's carrying a girl. Alone with the girl in her office, Sylvia makes several attempts to gently reason through her stubbornness. Nibs is adamant though, stomping a diagram of her new synthetic anatomy from Sylvia's hands, perhaps understanding it will disprove her pregnancy. To add another wrinkle, Nibs brings up the dogma of immaculate conception. Oh dear.
Obviously (though maybe not), Prodigy did not design the hybrids with the ability to reproduce, and Nibs prevents Sylvia from outright saying so. The girl may even comprehend on some level that Sylvia's insistence on treating her as mostly human prevents her from shattering this delusion. Trying a different tack, Sylvia questions what happened at the crash site. The eyeball alien happened, but Nibs refuses to talk about it and lunges at her when pressed. Sylvia deescalates and manages to trigger an alarm. Security arrives to escort Nibs to her room where she's to be detained.
As sex talks go, I'm giving it a 4 out of 10.
Speaking of Eyeball Monsters
Something untoward did in fact happen to the sheep and it was indeed the eyeball monster. What it likes to do is forcibly rip out another animal's eyes (specifically the left eye, thus far) and root itself in the open socket. Kirsh and Tootles — sorry, "Isaac" — observe a change to the sheep's recorded brain waves, reflective of increased problem-solving and concentration. The eyeball monster is highly intelligent. As a nice touch, we get some POV shots from its multi-faceted orb as it looks right back at the synths.
Kavalier beams with excitement. He engages the zombified sheep in a staring contest. I know who my money's on.
Pinky Promise
Eins spells it out for Joe. They gave him a lung. He belongs to Prodigy now. If he really does want to part ways with them, they'll be having their proprietary organ back. As for his sister, there's no way she'll be going with him. His only real option is to stick around and behave. This feels less like a metaphor for our broken healthcare system and more just a preview for its natural trajectory.
Kavalier has a similar chat with Wendy, though he's preoccupied smoothing out the Peter Pan allegory, asking whether the xenomorph is a pirate or Indian. He's tickled when he lands on the crocodile with the ticking clock motif. I make this same face when I stumble on my own ham-fisted analogies, trust. Remembering the purpose of this chat, Kavalier agrees to a pinky promise. So long as he doesn't become a distraction, Wendy can have Joe around as a playmate. In return, they'll learn to speak xenomorph together.
Later, Joe gets to know the other hybrids, who impress him with their ability to learn new skills. Tootles — sorry, Isaac — has been downloading zoology, Matrix style, in order to help Kirsh in the lab. Joe tells them they deserved to have parties rather than funerals, in fact they still do. Smee and Slightly think they should ask — no, demand — to see their families again, to show them what they've learned. Curly and Isaac are opposed, not wanting to rock the boat. They're respected here, or so they believe, and don't want to risk being sent away and losing that.
Wendy excuses herself to the lab where she peers at Joe's old lung in its aquarium tank. The larva, matured to a glossy black chestburster, explodes through the glass. It circles up on her, rearing up like a cobra. Wendy cautiously puts out a hand to caress the creature. They regard each other with something like curiosity. Mutual respect?
Elsewhere, Joe studies his surgical scar; you'll recall he was impaled recently. You'd think Prodigy could do neater work. Slightly watches from the shadows, sizing up a potential sacrifice to the voice inside his head. I only wish the camera had pulled out even further to reveal Kirsh watching him. Dude's like Downton Abbey staff, observing folks like it's part of his programming.
Next week, will Slightly give Joe a hug — a face hug?
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