Okay, I admit it, I was totally not interested in checking out “Aliens in America” when I first heard about it. Neither The CW nor its originating networks – The WB and UPN – have ever been very good at their attempts to make me laugh; in fact, the only exception to that rule in recent memory has been “Everybody Hates Chris.” Even when I heard that the show was going through the dreaded re-casting process, replacing the show’s original dad with Scott Patterson, late of “Gilmore Girls,” I just thought, “Oh, God, if they’re retooling it, that can’t be good…”
But, then, I saw the talent working behind the scenes: co-executive producers Richard Day (“Arrested Development,” “The Larry Sanders Show”) and Michael Glouberman (“Malcolm in the Middle”).
Suddenly, I found myself reconsidering my initial brush-off.
I haven’t seen the entire pilot episode yet, and even doing so wouldn’t give me the full picture, since the original actor playing the dad – Patrick Breen – is in the pilot, but what I saw in the preview leads me to believe that “Aliens in America” might actually be worth watching. The premise involves Justin Tolchuck (Dan Byrd), a shy teenager, being thrust into a new friendship when his parents, desperate for their kid to develop social skills, decide to host a foreign exchange student; instead of getting the Nordic youngster they’re expecting, however, they end up with Raja (Adhir Kalyan), a Muslim from Pakistan. Justin’s parents – played by Patterson and Amy Pietz – are originally hesitant about this change, but, as these things work in sitcoms, the end of the episode finds Raja here to stay.
Will American / Muslim relations make for good comedy in this post-9/11 world of ours? Producer David Guarascio doesn’t see why not.
“I think that we’re sort of actually excited to push the envelope a little bit,” he says. “The best way to be funny is to not be afraid to be edgy and to take some chances and not be afraid to miss. But when you hit it, maybe you can sort of be funny and poignant at the same time. It’s not an indictment of the American psyche, but it might be helpful for some people to sort of potentially think about their own prejudices and whether they really know something or whether it’s just sort of ingrained. I think you’ll probably see, over the course of the series, that we’ll have people react to Raja in a variety of ways…and, certainly, we start with the Tolchuck family, where they’re all sitting around the dinner table together at the end of our 22 minutes. So I think we’re sort of making sure that all viewpoints are being expressed in that way.”
Guarascio also acknowledged a debt to one of the best high-school shows of all time, one which definitely places “Aliens in America” in good company. “‘Freaks and Geeks’ has definitely been a show that we thought was fantastic and admired and loved the honesty with which it sort of portrayed the high school experience, and that was definitely an influence in how we approached ‘Aliens’ and just wanting to be honest about the high school experience and still be funny. And that’s why — you know, it’s, looking back on it, some of the things that seemed quite terrible 20 years ago, you can sort of laugh at now, and that’s sort of the approach that we took.”
I’m withholding final judgment ’til I see how Patterson works within the context of the show – he’s absolutely nothing like the guy he’s replacing – but, at the moment, “Aliens in America” is looking to be amongst the best new sitcoms of the fall season.
