TV: "Invasion"

The two big new prime-time sci-fi shows this fall are Surface and Invasion. Both seem to be water themed alien invasions involving a number of loosely connected characters. Okay, to be fair, in Invasion, the characters are essentially a modern family a divorced and couple remarried to other people and you'll need a chart to keep straight which kids belong to whom since nobody resembles anyone else.
In Surface, characters are connected like this; remember my mention in my Surface rant about a show named Probe that was on in the '80's? It starred Parker Stevenson, Kirstie Alley's ex husband (Okay, I shit you not, Look who's talking JUST came on in the other room AS I'M typing this... anyway), well Parker was one of the Hardy Boys in the 70's TV series. The other Hardy boy, created, produced and wrote Invasion.
If I have to put these shows head to head though, they're so similar and their strengths and weaknesses are exact opposites. Invasion is a better show by far for one big reason; good actors playing GOOD characters. I'd rather see these actors and this type of character work on Surface... Invasion's plot my bring some good geeks out there to recall the War of the Worlds TV series, or any other Body Snatchers rip. Not bad though for a child of a Partridge Family member.
Actually my only real GRIPE isn't about the show, it's the warning label they put on it for the pussies in this country. They had a warning about the fact that the show dealt with the aftermath of a Hurricane, and it may be traumatic to some viewers because of recent events. Okay, I don't mean to be Mr. Insensitive, but FUCK THAT.
More people are screwed up [during their childhood] by divorce than hurricanes, and they didn't include that in their warning. I've never seen a warning in front of ER, but everyone who has ever had to go to an emergency room probably wasn't really happy about it. It was probably even traumatic. TV... hell, STORIES are supposed to deal with things like this. We've all had parts of our life screwed up by nature, disease, death, and relationships with other human beings. They don't need warning labels, they just need to be. there were probably a number of cave paintings of mastodon hunts where the guy scribbling it on the cave wall had seen some messed up shit, and needed to work it through his head, or maybe help a friend work it through his head. It's as old as art... After 32,000 years of human expression, I swear if you wimp out NOW, we'll pee in your Diet Pepsi!