“I’m keeping a list; what makes Kyle an alien.”
- Josh
Now that Kyle is getting settled in with the Tragers, we learn that he doesn’t really understand the concept of sleeping. He sees everyone else doing it but he’s so drawn to exploring the world that he just can’t do it. So late one night he gets up and explores the fridge. I know the hilarity of the fish out of water scenario won’t last forever because he does eventually acclimate to society but goodness watching him eat pasta and pickles and bananas (the wrong way) is just hilarious. Then the boy discovers Sour Patch Kids and is in heaven. Oh and when the family wakes up to the sound of a kung fu movie playing, they find Kyle expertly imitating the movements and speaking Chinese. This leads Josh to the conclusion that Kyle is in fact an alien. Throughout the episode Josh take notes on things that Kyle does that are odd. He tries to eat a tea bag at one point, there’ the lack of a belly button and he likes to stay underwater in the bath because it feels weightless. Well he’s not exactly wrong about the bath part but we’ll get to that a bit later.
While Kyle is getting checked out by a doctor, Lori is being an annoying teenage girl with issues and her friend Hilary is encouraging her to use Kyle as a way to make Declan jealous. Whatever. Lori in the early days was just really irritating. At the doctor’s office Kyle gets examined and it physically fine. The doctor thinks maybe he can’t sleep because he’s trying to process everything that’s happened. Kyle also can’t answer the detective’s questions about where he came from and why he was naked in the woods. As a therapeutic approach, Nicole suggests Kyle draw. And boy does he. He just keeps going and going and I kind of wish I could get some of his drawings because they are so interesting the way he does them. Nicole also gives Kyle some chamomile tea and he gets a bath (which is also pretty hilarious) but he still can’t sleep (even with the sleeping pill prescribed by the doctor) so he goes to explore outside. What he doesn’t quite realize is the man in the truck is following him and that’s a bad thing. Kyle encounters a dog on his late night wandering and that’s enough to scare stalker man away. It also gives Kyle a chance to have a little chat with Amanda before going home. He gets there to find Lori trying to sneak out but of course both of them get caught and Lori is not happy. Josh wakes up when Kyle goes back to bed and Kyle says he went outside to look at the stars (sort of parroting something Amanda said) and that further fuels Josh’s alien theory.
Stephen ad Nicole’s next plan is to just exhaust Kyle out so that he’ll have to sleep. That plan sort of backfires because Kyle is a crazy fast runner and tires Stephen out. Nicole then suggests they watch Kyle in shifts that night but that’s an even bigger disaster. Not only does it derail Josh’s late night Xbox playing but Lori can’t go out with Declan and she kind of yells at Kyle because he’s ruined her night. Kyle doesn’t sleep at all but he’s counting down from some incredibly high number when Nicole wakes up after 9:30. Stephen had a big meeting that he missed because they both overslept. Kyle overhears them arguing about him staying there since Nicole had said it would be temporary and it’s now turning into a more permanent thing. So Kyle disappears.
Everyone is feeling a little guilty about Kyle taking off but they’re at a bit of a loss as to where to look to find him. Nicole does finally put the drawing he did of the forest together with Josh’s alien theory and she drags the family out into the woods late at night on a hunch that he would go to the only other place he’s felt at home. Sure enough they find him standing on a stump staring up at the sky. As he puts it, he’s waiting for his family to find him. Which of course was an ‘aww’ moment for me when Stephen said they did find him. I know it’s kind of cheesy but I like feel good moments in my shows. Especially ones that are about family.
They manage to get Kyle home and he is finally exhausted. Stephen tells him to find where he’s comfortable and so Kyle ends up sleeping in the bathtub with the radio on static. He’s perfectly content to be there devoid of any thoughts and just existing for a while. The rest of the family is glad that he’s asleep, too, even if the kids are a little inconvenienced by his sleeping choice. Nicole and Stephen are glad he found a way to get to sleep because they need the sleep themselves.
This was a pretty solid second episode. It had some good laughs and some interesting points to address about family and acceptance. And I like that they are feeding us little bits of mythology each episode because we end back in the forest focusing on a skeleton. Like I said in my first post, it’s been a while since I have watched these episodes so I don’t quite remember how far we get into the mythology this season but I am very excited to see just where we end up at the end of episode 10 this summer. A part of me kind of regrets not watching this show when it was on originally (I was just starting college and didn’t watch a lot of TV). I think 18 or 19 year old me would have really enjoyed this. Not to say 20 something year old me didn’t enjoy it the first time but I wonder if I would have connected a little more with Lori and Josh had I been closer to their age at the time I discovered the show.
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