"Freaks and Geeks." "My So-Called Life." The list of shows that nailed high school on the head -- and failed in the ratings -- is a long and illustrious one. Let's hope "Aliens in America" doesn't join it.
At least in terms of quick cancellation, because this new CW half-hour is too sharp in too many ways. Like its returning lead-in, "Everybody Hates Chris," this narrated comedy-drama finely observes the particulars and peculiarities of teen life, both in the family its narrator is trying to outgrow and the high school pecking order he's hoping to rise in.
These seemingly hopeless tasks face Wisconsin geek-supreme Justin Tolchuck (Dan Byrd from CBS' baseball drama "Clubhouse") as he heads into junior year without his braces (finally!) but with too much help from his concerned mother's "normalizing" efforts. Mom (Amy Pietz, with her own ace Wisconsin accent) decides to import an exchange student, hopefully a blond Viking type, to juice Justin's cool quotient. Instead, the family gets Raja Musha.raff (newcomer Adhir Kalyan) -- a "real, live Pakistani," as a teacher tells Justin's class, who practices "Muslimism."
This being TV, and The CW, and an early airtime, and an amiable comedy, "Aliens in America" presents its community reactions to this "alien" not as deliberate discrimination but as ignorant discomfort, expressed in self-embarrassing ways. The Americans just don't get it. Confronted with something -- someone -- they don't understand, they act up and out with offensive-defensive be.havior.
Sort of like high school.
Raja turns out to be a great guy with no parents, a wise-beyond-American-teen-years import who unfortunately fails to grasp the nuanced impact of, as we see next week, teen boys professing devotion to each other. (Especially while naked in the locker room.) But the host folks are fated to learn from Raja, too, when it comes to loyalty, open-mindedness and the satisfactions of hard work. Justin's wry llama-raising dad (Scott Patterson of "Gilmore Girls") hopes to teach his chore-friendly new "son" the further joy of dry wall.
The main message, though, is to just be yourself. Justin, who "always felt like an outsider and a weirdo," meets someone further out on both counts, and begins to realize maybe neither is such a bad thing to be. Yet "Aliens in America" is no moralizing "lesson." Creators Moses Port and David Guarascio (NBC's short-lived John Larroquette sitcom "Happy Family") provide a panorama of characters on varied steps of the social ladder to portray all sorts of full-bodied authenticity. Even Justin's suddenly popular (meaning newly busty) sister Claire (Lindsey Shaw -- Moze on "Ned's Declassified") gets an unexpectedly multifaceted storyline with her equally "alien" (as in black) boyfriend.
Everybody is just far enough off-kilter to be distinctive while remaining relatable. Perhaps we're all aliens, one way or other.
ALIENS IN AMERICA. Pakistani Muslim exchange student arrives in baffled, white-bread Wisconsin, and the axiom "life is like high school" has never seemed so pertinent. Smart single-camera comedy series premieres Monday at 8:30 on The CW/11.
Posted 27 September 2007 - 03:48 AM
hilarious but yeah theres alot of stereotypes 
And it's cool to see Moze all growed up on this show haha.
