TV: Invasion

Third of this year's alien invasion shows, and the best first episode of the bunch. Creepy, with lots of mysteries to be figured out -- a very nice companion for Lost.

The show's creators would surely have wished for better timing for their first episode, which is built around the arrival of Hurricane Eve in Homestead, Florida. The show quickly introduces a large group of characters. Russell is a park ranger in the Everglades; his ex-wife Mariel is chief of staff at Homestead Hospital. They have two kids, 15-year-old Jesse and 7-year-old Rose, and Russell's new wife Larkin, a TV reporter, is pregnant with their first. Larkin's chronically unemployed brother, Dave, lives with them. Mariel is now married to Tom, the sheriff, who has a 16-year-old daughter, Kira, from his own first marriage.

Rose gets caught in the storm, looking for her cat, and sees some mysterious lights sinking into the lake; she and her uncle Dave go out the next day to explore, and Dave finds what he believes to be evidence of an "EBE" -- an extraterrestrial biological entity. Russell doesn't take that too seriously at first -- Dave is, after all, a bit of a conspiracy nut -- but when they are attacked by a large creature (which we don't get to see) in the lake, he begins to believe.

Mariel gets lost in the storm and is found by the lake the next morning, naked but otherwise unharmed; we are led to believe that she has been somehow changed in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers kinda way. ("Mommy, you smell different," says Rose.) A local priest seems to have gone through a similar transformation, and a bit of ambiguous dialogue at the end of the first episode raises the possibility that sheriff Tom is also possessed and has been for some time, suggesting that he is some sort of advance scout for the aliens who arrived during the hurricane. (Tom is played by William Fichtner, who has just the right sort of "is he a creep or isn't he" face to heighten the ambiguity.)

Are there aliens in Homestead? Can Dave and Russell figure out why they're here? What has gotten into Mariel? Is Tom a bad guy? (Yes; eventually; the aliens, natch; of course he is -- if you ask me.) All will no doubt be revealed, very slowly, and with any luck, Invasion can keep the suspense ratcheted up with as much success as Lost has had.