Given I couldn’t watch the Fox channel last night see either the Panthers/Arizona game or the first episode of the new X-Files (read all about it), I finally checked out the first episode of Colony which has been on my DVR for the past couple of weeks.
Starring Josh (Lost) Holloway and Sarah Wayne (Walking Dead) Callies, the pilot for this series was intriguing but, at this point, I’m far from willing to be committed to continuing with it.
On the plus side, the show is well done. The acting, cinematography, and special effects (though not all that many of them) were solid if unexceptional. The story itself, involving a vaguely defined alien invasion and the subsequent subjugation of the human race, is far less interesting…at least so far.
Basically, we have a Nazi Germany metaphor going on here, with the unseen “overlords” having invaded Earth at some point in the past (Or did they? Could there be something more going on? Check out the trailer below and pay particular attention to that last bit of dialogue in it) and in California where our protagonists live, an ominous wall has been built which separates parts of the city of L.A.
When the show opens, Will Bowman (Josh Holloway) is having breakfast with his family. All appears relatively normal but we soon realize that parts of the city are destroyed and we see people are mostly riding around in bicycles. There are also some rather fearsome looking soldiers/police monitoring people’s activities and busting down those who may be guilty of something/anything.
Will leaves his family and smuggles himself into a cargo truck headed to the other side of the wall. He’s in search of a son he’s been cut away from because of the wall. However, the smuggling run is sabotaged by a resistance bomb which takes out the truck he was hidden in and Will is imprisoned.
Meanwhile his wife Katie (Sarah Wayne Callies), unaware for now of her husband’s fate, is shown going through a typical day. She tries to get her hands on insulin for a neighbor’s child but the people offering it for trade are obviously trying to give her an inferior -and potentially dangerous- product and she is forced into near violence to get out of the situation with her bargaining chip (a bottle of liquor).
As night falls and Will doesn’t return home, the family becomes very preoccupied that something has gone wrong.
Will, meanwhile (redux redux!), is taken from prison and meets with the “Mayor” of subjugated L.A. The man has discovered Will was once an Army Ranger (a no-no) and had hidden his identity. Normally army officers are subjected to the alien’s “law” but because of his “skills” at finding people, the Mayor offers Will a choice: Either be subjected to that law and be sent along with his family to a labor camp (or worse) or collaborate with him in finding, and identifying, the leaders of the resistance.
There is, of course, no choice at all.
The show ends on a “twist” I completely saw coming and I suspect most viewers will too. It is the predictability/familiarity of the subject matter along with the grim, depressing tone that have me very ambivalent about whether I want to continue watching the show.
Again, Colony is a reasonably well done show which has potential but if things don’t pick up with the next couple of episodes, I don’t think I’ll stick with it.
Your mileage, as they say, may vary.