Invasion Review: Contact (Season 1 Episode 8)

Though the title of Invasion Season 1 Episode 8, “Contact,” implies that something major is going to happen in this installment, that’s yet another in a long line of disappointments when it comes to this show. 

While Mitsuki does manage to figure out a way to use the wreckage of the Hoshi-12 to open something like a communication channel with the nebulously identified alien threat. It’s kind of a big leap to assume that the aliens are interested in communicating with us at all, given the destruction they’ve already caused across the planet, but, at this point, why not?

Of course, the idea that she manages to somehow “reach” the aliens by sending a metric ton of selfie videos of her presumed-dead girlfriend, like, describing flowers and the beauty of sunshine is so nauseatingly saccharine that I kind of hope it just makes them angry enough to destroy another city. 

This show has made me a monster, is what I’m saying. Will next week reveal that Hinata has been taken over by one of the alien creatures? We can only hope.

On the plus side, “Contact” is the first episode of Invasion that actually manages to bring two of its wildly disparate plot threads together. That it chooses two of the worst characters — autistic, alien vision having teen Casper and pointless American soldier Trevante — to pair up is…well, it’s unfortunate, but perhaps they’ll be less dull together? 

No matter what hijinks they get into together, it has to be more interesting than watching Trevante’s struggle to try to find a way back to America. (Like…does he think he’s the only soldier in England with a wife he loves that they’ve promised to get back to?) 

This episode has some more vague hints that something very bad happened in their marriage before he went on Afghanistan, but I’m not sure it’s possible for me to care much less about what it is. 

On the flip side, I’m glad that Casper has stumbled into some sort of adult supervision, especially after discovering the alien goo-encrusted dead body of his mother. (He is really having the worst day.)

I do have to side-eye, however, the bizarre way that Invasion is, well, depicting the alien invasion because, like many other aspects of its narrative, it can’t seem to pick a lane about what’s happening.

For every bleak panorama we see of a smoldering wreck of a major industrial skyline — the shot of London behind the iconic red phone booth Trevante is in is strikingly beautiful in its destruction — there’s also another shot of an eerily desolate wasteland. Just…where have all the people gone so quickly? Shouldn’t there be more bodies covered in the weird black good?

Hwo is it possible that we are eight episodes into this show and I possibly have less idea about what’s going on than I did before?

The award for most unintentionally hilarious subplot of the week has to go to the Malik family, and the weird love triangle the show keeps trying to push between Ahmed, Aneesha, and the cute if drippy Dr. Barton. 

Is there anyone watching who’s shocked or appalled that Aneesha kissed a guy who was even vaguely kind and attentive to her? Who treats her as a person in her own right? Who recognizes the talents she shrew away for a man who got another woman pregnant?

Does Invasion think that we’ve somehow forgotten what a dirtbag Ahmed is? How he literally tried to escape with a carload of neighbors rather than stay with his wife and kids in the series’ very first episode? Who in the world would be rooting for this marriage? Even the Malik kids deserve better than this. 

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• Sam Neill watch: Still nothing! Is this the greatest promotional bait and switch of all time or what? The show has never even gone back to the crop circle plot! Incredible!
• Full disclosure: I still 100% believe that the sheriff will return by the end of the season as the meatpuppet mouthpiece for the alien invasion. And probably die, just for an extra bit of fun
• Where does Luke keep getting these black alien daggers without any of the adults in his life noticing? 
• Has anyone else seen the “Arachnids in the U.K.” episode of Doctor Who? Literally, all I could think of during that brief clip of the squadron of soldiers shooting at the spider-like alien scaling a building.

What did you think of this episode of Invasion? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Invasion stream Fridays on AppleTV+. 

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