"No Man is an Island (Aliens in America)", 10-08-2007

This is the second episode of the new show "Aliens in America", which follows "Everybody Hates Chris" on the CW.

Sidebar -- The CW stands for "CBS/Warner Brothers", which I found out on Wikipedia.

That sidebar might be the most interesting thing you read in this review. The premise of the show, according to the website at the CW, is that young Justin Tolchuk is a 16-year old kid trying to make it through school despite not being cool. When he learns that his family will be hosting an exchange student, he imagines some Swedish bikini model will show up and move Justin up on notch on the level of coolness. However, Justin finds that the exchange student is Raja Musharaff, a Pakistani Muslim who is an even greater outsider and who threatens to move Justin further down the totem pole due to the fact that Raja doesn't understand the unwritten rules of teen society.

In the most recent episode, Justin's English teacher is trying to lead a discussion on "Robinson Crusoe", a book which was on the class's summer reading list. (The teacher seems genuinely surprised that no one has read it. What was this poor idiot thinking? I never read any of that crap they tried to foist on me.) Chagrined, he gamely tries to lead the class into a discussion on Dafoe's work by asking what they would take with them if they were trapped on a desert island.

After two foolish answers, Raja gamely enters the discussion. He states that if he could only take one thing to a desert island, he'd take...Justin, since he couldn't imagine a world without their friendship. Unfortunately, the way he phrases it, he might has well have sashayed out in a cocktail dress and given Justin a big ol' smooch. Justin's popularity continues to plummet.

Furthermore, Raja is forming a friendship with "Small Paul", an 11-year old genius who goes to the high school and is treated as a general figure of scorn. Raja wants to invite Paul to hang out with Justin and himself. Therefore, Justin figures that he's not going to have any popularity at all by the time the year is over and gets advice from Claire, his popular older sister. Claire makes the obvious suggestion -- stop hanging out with Raja. Justin cuts off Raja to Raja's dismay, but when Justin falls asleep during a class, he wakes up to find the building closed -- no one even bothered to wake him up. He discovers he needs Raja's friendship, because, after all...well, better to have one friend than no friends at all.

The "B" plot is rather lame. Claire is a Quinn-Morgendorffer-in-training (if you've ever watched "Daria"), and Claire's mother, Franny, appears to be Quinn Sr. Claire has just broken up with a popular athlete by text message, and despondent, the athlete just sits on the family lawn. That's about it for humor. The father involves himself, but the interaction between the characters left so little of an impact that I literally forgot how the whole thing turned out.

There's one thing I know that American audiences might not know -- apparently in some world cultures (Pakistan, the Middle East), it is common for male friends to hold hands, hug each other, even kiss each other. Raja's flowery sentiments might have gone unnoticed in his home country, but in the homophobic United States Raja and Justin would definitely be pariahs.

What's odd is that with the "we hate Muslims" sentiment voiced loudly in some quarters of the United States, I'm surprised that Raja's religion combined with his "gayness" wouldn't subject him to a beating by one of the less-enlightened. Then again, this is Sitcom Reality we're talking about, not "real reality". Justin and Raja wouldn't have lasted two minutes at my Kentucky high school in the 1980s, and I doubt it's much different anywhere else today.

The problem with these "Wonder Years" comedies which rely on dramatic sweetness and "lessons learned" is that they can't decide what they want to be: a comedy or a drama. It reminds me of the final scenes from the movie "North Dallas Forty", where one of the enraged player pummels a coach. Everytime the player believes football is a game, the coach yells that it's more than a game. Every time the player acts like football is like life itself, the coach reminds him it's just a game. That coach rightly deserved to be beaten, and frankly, so do the writers of "Aliens in America".

However, Raja is an interesting character. When the school goons pick on Small Paul by taking his briefcase from him, Raja tells them that they're only making themselves look all the more pathetic. Raja is much more comfortable with himself than Justin.

Indeed, I find it hard to empathise with characters like Justin, or even with Chris from "Everybody Hates Chris". I don't want to identify with such schlubs. If I wanted to identify with an average joe, I would just longingly look at myself in the mirror...more than I usually do. I want to be entertained by the extraordinary, and not shows which celebrate boredom and failure as some sort of write of passage. I've not bailed on on the show, yet, as Raja promises the hint of some sort of extraordinary. But will that promise be realized?