Status report on the networks'...
Status report on the networks' attempts to bring sci-fi/fantasy back to prime time: CBS'
Threshold is, sadly, history. NBC's
Surface will be history soon enough (at least for this season), with only a handful of episodes to go. But ABC's
Invasion — which triggered an outpouring of confused and worried mail when it disappeared in early December to be replaced by a couple of
Alias episodes — is finally returning this week (Jan. 11, 10 pm/ET) and is expected to play out a full season's worth of episodes.
I don't know if absence made my heart grow fonder, but Invasion has now invaded my psyche. With this week's episode, the show is kicking into high gear. It's gone beyond creepy to the realm of the absolutely gripping. Anyone who tuned out in the fall because the deliberate pace was too slow and the story too murky is in for an awakening and should give the show a second try. Invasion is a blast, and now that Lost, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica and 24 are all back with new episodes this month, I'm not sure how many more thrills a week my nerves can sustain. But I wouldn't miss Invasion for anything.
"The truth is just a little too complicated," says Sheriff Tom (the brilliant and enigmatic William Fichtner) — and boy, is he ever right. He says these words to the bewildered deputy Lewis (Nathan Baesel) who, last we saw, was taking a chainsaw to his own arm, having first lost the limb overseas at war, only to have it magically restored by an encounter with the glowing orange invaders that lurk beneath the swampy Everglades waters. Lewis, who believes in God even more than he trusts the sheriff, believed he'd experienced a miracle, but Tom thought otherwise and urged Lewis to self-mutilate to keep nosy interlopers (scientists and the like) from getting to the bottom of this "miracle."
Meanwhile, hunky ranger Russell (Eddie Cibrian) has indeed unearthed a piece of the truth: namely, that Tom isn't who anyone thinks he is — his skeleton was left in the water after a plane crash 10 years ago. He appears to be the first to have experienced the transformation that affected so many during the hurricane that launched the series' mysterious story arcs.
And now the beautiful and troubled Mariel (Kari Matchett), Tom's wife and Russell's ex, is caught in the middle of her own psychological storm and family conflict as Russell exposes her to the truth — which makes her wonder about her own mutation since the hurricane. I love how Invasion couches its sci-fi thrills through the prism of domestic drama (divorced parents and who gets the rebellious adolescent kids), rendering the show unusually realistic and emotionally resonant.
Fichtner, in particular, is riveting as he confronts the possibility that he may have lost control of the situation. If disillusioned deputy Lewis will no longer obey him, and his beloved Mariel will no longer trust him, where does that leave Tom, his family and his community-in-crisis?
I don't know what makes Tom scarier: the fact that he's an alien hybrid or that he's an enraged, threatened father and husband. Ambiguities like these distinguish Invasion from its peers and predecessors. It's an original, and now that it's telling a roaring good story to go along with the tone of ominous suspense that the show has sustained from the start, there's no valid reason not to watch.
