Aliens in America - Season 1
Premieres: Monday, October 1st at 8:30 p.m. EST Network: CW
Creator(s): David Garascio, Moses Port
Starring: Dan Byrd, Adhir Kalyan, Amy Pietz
Website: CW.com
If you think being the biggest geek in high school is tough, trying being the only Muslim in a school full of people who think Pakistan blew up the World Trade Center. That’s what Medora, Wisconsin teenager Justin Tolchuk (Dan Byrd) learns when his mom (Amy Pietz) plans to host a foreign exchange student in order for her son to finally have a friend. While she images a tall, blond German kid, what she gets is Raja (Adhir Kalyan), a Pakistani Muslim who is friendly but unaware of how controversial his dress, his religion, and his home country can be. As two outcasts, though, Justin and Raja instantly bond, and help one another navigate the minefield of high school.
This is one of those shows guaranteed to “get people talking”, given that it even dares to have a Muslim character who isn’t trying to blow things up on 24, but Aliens in America seems much more like a classic family sitcom than anything else. The O.C.-esque setup-- a geeky kid gets to live with a new friend-- is promising, and all the actors, based on some trailers available on YouTube, fit their roles nicely. The whole “controversy” thing will likely fade out, if the show heads in the conventional direction it seems to be headed. Whether or not it can do conventional well-- at the moment it seems entirely possible-- will determine whether Aliens in America gets to be the coolest kid in school. For me personally, I probably won’t watch unless some buzz lives up, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate someone willing to make a comedy out of the greatest culture clash in America today.
