3rd Rock from the Sun: Reprobed
I’m introducing a new feature for this website entitled, “3rd Rock from the Sun: Reprobed”, wherein I will watch each and every episode from the aforementioned television sitcom and then write an article with my thoughts on said episodes. Why am I doing this?
For one, I’ve seen a few other blogs do the same thing with “Star Trek” and “Dawson’s Creek“. “3rd Rock” was one of my favorite shows growing up in the 90′s (aside from “The X-Files”) but, since the show came out in 1996, I was ten at the time so my attention span towards the show didn’t hold up too often.
That and, throughout the show’s five year existence until 2001, it’s time slot changed a total of 15 TIMES.
Therefore, now that the entire series of “3rd Rock” is on Netflix Instant Watch, I have decided that now is indeed the best time to get reacquainted with an old favorite and finally, after all these years, I’ll get to actually watch the series as a whole.
I’m sure I’ll remember some episodes, while others will be new to me, but either way I’m going to go into them with a clear mind and come out with an article detailing my thoughts for each episode.
Enjoy.
SEASON 1, EPISODE 1: “Brains and Eggs”
The show starts off with the main cast, four aliens who have come to Earth disguised as a human family in order to observe mankind, sitting in a Rambler in a secluded mountain setting that (while obviously a terribly low budget backdrop) overlooks the area below like a sort of “make-out” point; in fact, next to them, there is indeed a couple making out.
The aliens are Dick (played by John Lightgow), the “High Commander”, Sally (Kristen Johnston), the “Lieutenant” aka the “Security Officer”, Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the “Information Officer”, and Harry (French Stewart), the “Transmitter”.
The first thing that is mentioned on the show by the aliens is when they’re checking to see if they’ve “fully formed”, as Dick asks. To their supposed relief they have, “ten fingers and eleven toes”.
What I find funny is that, since they are fully clothed (how and where they got said clothing is never revealed), they are presumed to be also wearing shoes. How they could check and see how many toes they have without actually looking is beyond me, but then again I’m not an alien.
Also, this “eleventh toe” is never brought up again in the course of the entire series.
One other hint that we get about their true forms (which we never get to see, and clues towards them are sparingly at best through out the series) is that they are saddened to find out that they cannot turn their heads 180 degrees in order to “lick their backs”.
After spying on the couple making out in the car next to them, and being asked by the couple, “don’t you have a home?”, they decided that such an idea would be ideal.
This is the first time that we not only see the aliens’ new home (which is the main set/location for the entire series) but also their landlady, Mrs. Mamie Dubcek (Elmarie Wendel), an eccentric old lady who’s thirst for alcohol is only eclipsed by her sex drive.
As this is the first episode, and (technically) the pilot for the show, the apartment changes after this episode in a drastic way. As you can see from the picture above, they enter the apartment via a doorway on the right hand side but, in all subsequent episodes, this door instead leads to Dick and Sally’s bedroom and there is a flight of stairs under that window where, as of this episode, there is none.
This is not the only set change that there will be between this episode and the rest of the series.
Dick, somehow (it’s explained that Tommy, the “Information Officer”, was able to falsify records and forge papers), gets a job as a physics professor at the local university. The set for his office here is vastly different than it is in the rest of the series, namely how small it is in the first episode.
Dick asks Tommy if he has “downloaded the information from the university’s mainframe”, but Tommy says that he was distracted watching the girl’s volleyball team practice in the gym; he was mesmerized by them “jumping up and down… and up… and down.”
This is where a main theme of the series is set, more or less, which still confuses me after all these years.
Why would aliens be attracted to humans? I don’t just mean this in the context of this show, either, I mean why would any alien find another alien attractive? Granted, they are IN human bodies and these bodies, and their minds, must be affecting them in someway as they come to terms in dealing with them, but still, they find humans attractive?
All I can think about is Captain Kirk having sex with aliens.
Speaking of having sex with aliens, we meet Dick’s will-be-and-soon-to-be-off-and-on-again-flame Dr. Mary Albright (Jane Curtin). Their first meeting goes immediately sour as Dick looks over her thesis (which he stole from her desk, that he broke into as it was locked) and mocks it for being “the funniest thing he’s ever read.”
In a way, this is the backbone of the series: the aliens not understanding humans, even though that’s what they’re supposed to be doing on this mission, and how it often leads to trouble.
In this case, Dick pisses off Mary from the get-go by not exactly making the best first impression.
The next scene is just another disc in the backbone of the series as Sally tries to make meatloaf but, upon finding out that the meat in question is ground up cow, she reacts negatively and runs out of the room screaming.
This is often an interesting character trait of Sally’s character. While she is the “Security Officer” and she mentions, on a few occasions, that she’s seen a lot of “action” in terms of battles and wars, she often over-reacts to the most simple of things while a human on Earth.
Is it, once again, the human body she is inhabiting affecting her in this way? Especially when you consider that she is, essentially, a man trapped in a woman’s body? That, in and of itself, is another can of worms to be reopened time and time again over the course of the series.
Another disc in the series backbone (after all, this IS the first episode/pilot so a lot of the series’ conventions get established here) are the classroom scenes wherein Dick tries to teach his students (who, by the end of the series, you really feel bad for) the most advanced and incomprehensible physics imaginable, but by the end of these scenes it’s usually the student who teach Dick something.
In this case they teach him that “feelings are an important part of the human experience”, as Dick doesn’t know why Mary was mad at him, to which Dick soon realizes his mistake in dealing with Mary at the beginning of the episode by not considering her feelings.
Therefore, soon after, Dick and the rest of the aliens attend a party that another professor from the university is having at their house and Dick apologizes to Mary.
Dick, feeling this emotion of regret and redemption for the first time, feels it overly stimulating which sends mixed signals to Mary who takes it that Dick is hitting on her and, as we’ll learn why later in the series, she easily gives in to him and they start making out in the bathroom during the party.
At the end of the episode, the aliens are in the rambler as they discuss the events of the episode and Dick admits that he is falling in love with Mary, much to the dismay of the others, who wonder if he “probed her” or not. This will become another staple of the series except that, throughout the rest of the episodes, they will do this “end of the episode recap” on the roof of their apartment.
Again, just one more thing different in the first episode as compared to the rest of the series; but, we’ll get to all that soon enough.
