Fall TV Friday – 2005 – Invasion
Invasion – ABC – 1 Season (22 Episodes) – USA
ABC had a tough ask in 2005; it had to follow up what was arguably its most successful fall TV season ever. Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost – 2004 was a good year for ABC. Freddie, Commander In Chief, Hot Properties, Night Stalker, Invasion – 2005 was not. That’s how fickle television is, one season you’re on fire and creating tent pole shows that will prop up your schedules for the next half decade and the next you’re creating five new shows that won’t make it through the summer.
Naturally enough ABC was desperate to duplicate the success of Lost. Lost is the rarest of beasts; a show that when it debuted instantly scored a huge audience AND a massive cult following. Who wouldn’t want another one of them on your schedule? Just as many people may watch Cold Case, but nobody lies in wait for the next episode of Cold Case. It’s on, they enjoy it, they’ll tune in next week; but nobody hangs around the water cooler discussing what case they might have to solve next week on Cold Case.
ABC’s big push for ‘the next Lost’ was with Invasion. Invasion was a sci-fi series with an ongoing mystery that they debuted in the timeslot directly following Lost. Initially the strategy worked with Invasion pulling in massive debut numbers. Ratings that would put it as the third biggest show of 2009 behind NCIS and Dancing With The Stars. There would have been cheers from the ABC offices. Champagne bottles would have been popped open, and most importantly great big sighs of relief would have been heard around the network. Then the second week’s numbers came in.
From its first to second episodes Invasion lost 23% of its debut audience as they fled to CSI: New York and Law & Order. More depressing for the folks at ABC was the fact that Invasion lost 40% of Lost’s lead in audience. This meant that Invasion was on a quick slide down the ratings drain with cancellation always somewhere in its future. It was only a matter of time.
The problem with the Invasion pilot is that, well, it sucks. There’s not a lot going on that promises better times ahead. It fails as an invitation into a world that you quickly feel you’ve seen before and can probably do without seeing more of. To really get into why Lost’s pilot works and why Invasion’s pilot doesn’t let me do a quick break down.
Lost opened with the eldest brother from Party Of Five wearing a suit, with cuts on his face, and lying on his back in a forest.
Invasion opens with a plane flying through rain and clouds.
On Lost the man in the suit climbs to his feet, runs through the forest and comes to a beach. He hears some screams and runs towards them. As he runs past people, smoke and debris we start to get the idea that there’s been a plane crash. The man then sets about saving people. All of this takes place in broad, bright, sunny, daylight.
On Invasion we get a title card that tells us the plane is a ‘C-130 Weather Plane – Hurricane Surveillance Unit’. The crew of the plane are headed towards the eye of the hurricane. They drop something so they get readings on sea water pressure. They start to see ‘thousands of lights’ under the water which burst into the air and sparkle everywhere. We then cut to gloomy old Florida where a storm is on its way. All of this takes place in dark, cloudy, evening.
I watch the first five minutes of Lost and can’t wait to see more. I watch the first five minutes of Invasion and am certain I’ve seen it all before.
ABC had set themselves up for failure. They were victims of their own good fortune. If Lost had never existed Invasion’s dwindling numbers would have still been impressive for a mediocre sci-fi series. But Invasion wasn’t getting compared to ‘mediocre sci-fi series’ it was being compared to Lost and it never stood a chance.
The problems with Invasion’s pilot go further than just that it’s a gloomy looking trudge through swamplands compared to Lost’s exciting romp through brightly lit island locales. The characters of Invasion all stem from two families. There’s a doctor who used to be married to a park ranger, but is now married to the local sheriff. The park ranger who used to be married to the doctor is now married to the local television reporter. They live with the television reporter’s brother who is a conspiracy nut. The doctor and the park ranger have two kids; an annoying little girl and a goofy teenage son who just so happens to be around about the same age as the local sheriff’s teenage daughter.
I love it when two families manage to combine all of the important professions needed in a time of disaster relief and alien invasion. I know Lost conveniently had a doctor on the plane, and when an explosives expert was needed a science teacher just happened to show up, but there were a rock star, a con man, a lottery winner and a whole bunch of other less convenient professions also on board.
The cast are your usual hodgepodge of pretty people and familiar faces. William Fichtner plays the sheriff in what can only be described as ‘the way William Fichtner plays most characters’. You know, with a creepy edge. Tyler Labine, who will forever be known as Soc from Reaper, turns up as the conspiracy theory nut, and as always just plays another variation of Soc. The teenage daughter is played by Alexis Dziena who grew up to be that bizarre looking elf girl who dated E during the first half of the mostly awful sixth season of Entourage.
Invasion is filled with dodgy dialogue and forced plot points. Early on the annoying little girl wanders off into the hurricane to look for her cat, for no other reason other than so she can be the only person who sees ‘the lights’. Of course after she sees ‘the lights’ she then tells Soc so that the only two people who now believe there are aliens out there are the little girl and the conspiracy nutball. What’s the bet nobody is going to believe either of those two?
After the storm is over the doctor lady has gone missing, but then turns up naked in the swamp. It becomes pretty obvious to everybody but the cast members that she’s now ‘one of them’. In fact it’s also pretty obvious that the sheriff is one of them too, if not because he’s played by William Fichtner who always turns out to be evil in everything, but because his dialogue is littered with foreshadowing snapshots like these nuggets: Talking about how plants in the swamp destroy other plants he remarks: “It’s all about survival of the fittest.” And when asked about his wife’s recovery “By tomorrow I think she’ll be better than ever.” Because she will be ONE OF US! Dun dun dunn!
Lost works because you never quite know what’s going on. That’s helped by the fact it seems the writers often don’t know what’s going on either, but Invasion doesn’t work because you always know exactly what’s going on. I always feel that you should know as much about the mystery as the heroes. With Invasion you’re like three episodes ahead of everybody on the show. Soc is busy trying to figure out who the aliens are and we have to spend our time yelling at the screen “it’s the doctor! She’s an alien!”
As far as I could guesstimate half the cast are aliens. The obvious ones, and then I bet some less obvious ones as well. Like I bet once the teenagers start hooking up it’s only a matter of time before one of them becomes an alien and the other one is all ‘hey, you’re acting strange!’.
In the battle of the Lost clones which at this point in our journey through 2005 only include Surface and Invasion in a mini-battle of the water based alien monster shows I have to give the win to Surface. Surface is enjoyable on a SeaQuest DSV goofy dumb level, Invasion is too self serious for its own good. I don’t mind serious, as long as it backs that up with something more than a cheap Body Snatchers knock off.
I made it through three episodes of Invasion before I stopped caring. AV Club did however name Invasion one of the Top 10 One Season Wonders of the 00’s and quite clearly said “the pilot was kind of a snooze”, so you know, I’m probably wrong. I’m going to check out more of the season and get back to y’all, but early goings are a tough slog.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad
