1st Season Invasion - Us or Them - 5 star poll

"Us or Them"
1-11-06 Invasion

5 stars (Team 49ers 1989)

0-1 stars (Team 49ers 2005)

Ian J. Ball...

First full episode of this that I've watched. Not bad.

3.75

Hey who played Bath Tub Girl? She looked familiar...

David B...

4.75. Finally the show is going somewhere.

Grey Wolf...

4 stars

I liked that Marial was showing some real emotion finally.

Ian J. Ball...

I just noticed this. This year's '9'ers is not the worst team there's
ever been. I think c. the late 70's was worse than this year's team
(which showed improvement toward the end of the season).

Anthony Cerrato...

4.9 stars. Coming to significant closure on the nature of
creatures and their functioning (2 stars alone for new
girlchick in Bikini and long, wet swims and bath .) Also
nice that the characters/ personalities of Sheriff and wife
are becoming clearly differentiated--the deputy too, and
others, showing the hybrids are all unique individuals
(separating the good guys from potential baddies!) The only
bad thing 'bout this now is that now we'll probably be
perusing a more standard type action plotline, with chases,
shooting, govt. conspiracy, and so forth. We'll see how it
goes in future--we also still don't know exactly what the
origin and intentions of the pre-hybrid aliens are.
...tonyC

Ken from Chicago...

"Us" vs "Them".

The survivors are definitely cliquish and there are hints of telepathy
amongst them.

Rob Jensen...

5.0 -- And I've *hated* most episodes of Invasion since it started.

Just check out my grades on my ever-updating post at GoldDerby's
Report Card Thread, I've given this one several C's and D's. American
Gothic is the only reason I stuck around this long, but these past
couple of episodes where Cassidy has finally gotten to the point have
gotten me hooked. Even thought the slog through the first six
episodes *wasn't* worth it, the most recent three episodes *are.*

I think that ABC made a mistake and broke for the holidays one episode

Ken from Chicago...

But that is the direction of the show.

early. The ending would have made a *great* cliffhanger to leave the
audience hanging with for six weeks.

IMO, Cassidy probably worked backward from at least the basic plot
(and at least a couple of images) from this episode when he was
developing the series, it's just waaaaaaaay too vividly realized.

Mariel's inner conflict was well-played by Kari Matchett, who finally
had a good script to play with.

The subplot with Jesse and the weird hot girl -- sure, it spoon-fed us
the whole "Us Vs. Them" theme, but it was interesting *despite* that.

The soapiness of the whole set-up of the two families -- Russ's and
Mariel's -- is now totally justified. I just wish they could have
compressed the first six episodes of nearly unwatchable dreck into
three so that they could have gotten to this a *lot* sooner.

So far, my theories about the Pod People:

1) The Swamp-Thing-But-With-Aliens-Instead-of-Plants Theory -- the
most likely one, of course, they're aliens who think they're their
human templates. This is almost certainly the real set-up.

2) The They're-Still-Human-But-Better Theory -- I want someone to
examine the Tom-Skeleton's skull *on-camera* again to check for brain
matter, whatever. I still think there's a distinct possibility that
they could be the actual people put into these new superbodies by the
Aliens for their still-undisclosed plans. If they're still the
humans, they could still be pre-programmed sleeper agents,
supersoldiers, super-hippies, whatever the Manta-Cylons' (hee) plans
are.

In any case, Mariel has shown that whatever the nature of the
still-undisclosed programming, it can be fought. The obvious question
is, for how long? The show *desperately* needed to bring this
ambiguity into the Pod Peoples' natures, to give us a reason to root
for Mariel and maybe even Underlay himself, or else, in the long run,
the show wouldn't have had anywhere to go. Now it's got a *lot* of
potential.

-- Rob

1st Season Invasion - Us or Them - 5 star poll - SPOILERS AHOY !