Invasion 1.1: "Pilot"

Written by Shaun Cassidy
Directed by Thomas Schlamme

In which Hurricane Eve hits southern Florida, affecting the members of an extended and complicated family, and when the storm is over, not everyone is still the same…


Pilots are a tricky business. “Lost” delivered one of the finest pilots in recent memory last season. This season, “Supernatural” made more widely acclaimed series like “Threshold” and “Surface” look like amateur hour. And then there’s a series like “Reunion”, which had a pilot that simply relied on a gimmick to overcome horrible writing and acting.

“Invasion” leans more towards the “Lost” end of the spectrum. There are still a few hiccups here and there, but given that this is a drama about a complicated family dealing with extraordinary circumstances, the pilot only had to establish the key relationships and the beginning of the central mystery. In that sense, while I don’t think the characters are as vivid as those in “Lost” or “Threshold”, the pilot served its purpose well.

I didn’t catch all the names of the characters (my brain was all but filled after the “Lost” premiere, after all), but I certainly picked up on the relationships and the various conflicts. The series is based on the sense of isolation and threat to family that any human being can empathize with, so the details can take their time to unfold.

Shaun Cassidy seems to have taken a number of thematic undertones from his cult classic “American Gothic” and updated them for this series. There’s the sinister sheriff, apparently already possessed/subsumed by the unknown creatures in the Everglades, who seems to be a relative of Sheriff Buck. There’s the young child who knows more about what’s happening than anyone else (I have to admit, though, that the girl bugs me). And then there’s the almost incestuous nature of the extended family, where everyone is way too familiar with everyone else.

What I like are the “everyday” natures of the characters. None of them are too damn pretty to be real, and when they do stray towards the photogenic, there’s a reasonable explanation for it. The best looking woman is the reporter, and in that field, it makes sense. Certainly the cast isn’t ugly, but the realistic casting makes the whole situation much easier to believe.

As far as the mystery goes, there were things I liked and things I didn’t. I personally think that the “evil alien invasion” thing has been done to death, and it might be interesting to do something more complex. For instance, “Threshold” seems to be presenting their aliens as pure invaders. This series has more potential to develop these apparent aliens as something other than an invasive force.

In terms of Merrill’s slow response to these changes, the process is certainly one that modifies the individual affected. But does it need to be a bad thing? Or at least, couldn’t the cost/benefit dynamic be explored and taken into intriguing and even disturbing directions? Apparently not, if the aliens are attacking people and driving spikes into them. Of course, there’s still time for that to be self-defense or protection of whatever it is that they need to take people over for.

Time will tell, and it seems as if the story will center more on the mystery’s effects on the family than the mystery itself, in keeping with the direction that “Lost” has taken. That character dynamic should be fun, but I hope that the mystery is more than what it seems now. It is does become a lot more complex, then this could be the perfect companion to “Lost”.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 8/10