Yes that gave it away! How do you like it? What’s your favorite things about it? Are you going to write some fics for it? :,)
I gotta admit, I’m still on the verge. I need season 2 to come to a proper decision on what to think about it, because season 1 was... a bit of a mixed bag for me.
The entire first half of that season - more than half really, the first 7 outta 13 episodes - literally had no plot at all and was entirely ship-driven. And, as a character-driven viewer, I’m not much of a fan of that. This love-triangle between Max-Liz-Kyle that then morphed into Liz-Max-Jenna as soon as Kyle was dropped from it, the love-triangle between Alex-Michael-Maria and whatever you want to call the Noah-Isobel-Rosa situation. The “investigating Rosa’s murder” was a very flimsy thing that stood at the sidelines of ship-drama for the first seven episodes and, as someone who doesn’t enjoy ship-drama that made it a very hard watch for me.
After that, when things started to actually pick up plot-wise, with Jenna, Kyle and Alex as an investigative force (I think that was genuinely my favorite part of the show?? It is such a cool dynamic and I do love how just everybody is in the know within the first half of the season and we don’t drag an unnecessary “secret identity” angst into season 2 for anyone), it got decidedly more interesting for me and I got more invested in the show.
I think the focus in season 1 was very whacky - a show about three aliens with superpowers who crashlanded on Earth and live as humans shouldn’t primarily read as a whacky love-triangle rom-com situation, in my opinion at least - but the quality picked up after the focus shifted from the relationship drama to the alien-stuff and if that is where the focus will stay in season 2, this could be a very interesting show.
However, I am still very upset by what they did with Noah. Because canon-wise, his and Isobel’s relationship was definitely what I dug the most. There was no drama, no forced tension aside from Izzy’s secret but that was then out of the way too and I thought “Oh nice, at least one calm, functioning relationship without drama. They are actually really cute”... and then all of that happened. And it leaves a lot of questions. Like, why in the world was he so obsessed with Rosa of all people, were Isobel’s feelings for Rosa genuine, will we explore her bisexuality further or pretend it was all Noah, why in the world did you decide to bring Rosa back that was a bad decision, how will Isobel handle it psychologically that she has been manipulated by the man she was married to for years.
Then there’s the whole... that situation with Alex, Maria and Michael and a huge part of how I’ll feel about the show overall lays in how they resolve that. Because they didn’t just go for a love-triangle. They went for a love-triangle with his boyfriend’s best friend and they crossed a line when Maria still went for it even after she learned that her best friend has feelings for him. That... That was very disappointing and I contest OoC because they went outta their way to write Maria as a supportive best friend, for Rosa, for Liz, for Alex, so she would not have prioritized her own desires over her best friend. You can’t choose who you love, but you can choose how you act about it.
Lastly, the whole alien-situation. The... The casual mass-murder of what we can assume is at the very least the vast majority of the crash-survivors.
That’s the caveat I have at the moment. It’s logical - a season always leaves questions, because you want your viewers to return to the second season for answers. However, with an entirely new show I have no precidence of how they will handle that. So, for me whether or not I like this show will really only be determined by season 2 and how they handle 1.) Isobel’s psychological backlash from everything, 2.) that Alex-Maria-Michael love triangle because I don’t want it to turn into a Maria bashing thing once Alex learns the truth, and lastly 3.) the actual alien stuff because this season already took until like episode 8 to properly start to alien so I’m weary about how much focus it’ll get in season 2.
Favorite things so far were most definitely for one Isobel Evans, whom I loved in the original show already and whom I still love, as well as the human characters, who actually got to not just be in the know but also do shit themselves and investigate and be useful, also bonus points for this show actually using the word “bisexual” unlike so many other shows.
As things stand right now, I’m not going to write fics for it. I mean, I’ve already moved two shows on since I watched this one and if I don’t start a fic during the watch, then a year long hiatus surely isn’t going to make me. But if they learn out of the weird stuff from season 1 and don’t disappoint me on the three major weariness factors I have right now, I could see myself caving for some Alex/Michael/Kyle at some point.
