Alien: Earth (FX / Hulu Series)

I hated it unreservedly, which amazes me because it's Noah Hawley. The premieres of both Fargo and Legion knocked my socks off. All this did was remind me about everything I DON'T like about the franchise without any of the things I did. .

I hate the nihilism of the future of Earth. The evil corporations are protecting the Xenomorph, despite its only goal is to kill everything it sees because they believe it's some kind of perfect specimen which is just about the stupidest fucking idea you can imagine. It's hard enough to shut off my brain for that idea in the movies. Doing so on a weekly TV show will be a purely impossible ask.

I am going to watch the first season at least. But if I wind up liking this I will be shocked. It's all of the bad parts of Alien and none of the good 1 star.

Shocker. I liked the second episode. That being said, it's a cautious, mistrustful like. The things I like are very much in danger of being obliterated in the following weeks because this is a horror series.

But I like the team of synth human hybrids. I was very unhappy about the gruesomeness of the premise of these being dying kids who were transferred into adult bodies but I see the selling point now: The horror movie screams are more genuine than any other characters since Newt. They are kids and legit freaked out.

I also appreciated the fact that they didn't dick us around for weeks on end about Wendy being afraid to reveal herself to Jonathan. Kind of refreshing and I like anytime television hits us in the nutsack and loudly yells this doesn't have to be as hard as everybody else is making it.

Still having trouble with the corporation aspect of the show. The so-called "Boy Genius" is a sociopath I recognize from many real-world billionaire sociopaths.

The Cyborg continues to be the show's wild card. Is he good or bad? I'm guessing bad. The Android played by Timothy Olyphant also just became a wild card by apparently being reprogrammed by the same evil directives that fucked up Ash in the first film. Trouble ahead.

I like that this show uses the same old school tech as the classic movies. It raises questions about why humanity has backslid a bit from the Prometheus, but the fact that it has shows those aren't actually continuity errors, which helps the films in hindsight.

Was I wrong about the series after the first episode? Let me put it this way. I wasn't wrong about the first episode being bad. That's as far as I'll go at this point. 3 1/2 stars.