Last night’s Star-Crossed
was really keen to make sure you were aware of the show’s central theme: That
Emery and Roman come from two separate worlds, and they can’t be together
because their worlds are separate. Here’s a handy 30-second compilation of every
moment where the show drove those themes home.
Spoilers ahead…
So Star-Crossed is
having the early stumbles and lurches that a new TV show often seems to have,
in its first few episodes. And hopefully this show is slowly going to trundle
towards watchability, the way Tomorrow
People (for example) has. For now, though, the show is really keen to
bludgeon us with its major themes, and also to try and push the nearly
chemistry-free romance between Emery and Roman.
So in the second episode, we deal with the fallout from
Emery’s dad shooting Roman’s dad, and Roman curing Emery’s friend Julia. And we
learn a lot more about Atrian culture and politics, as Roman makes a play to be
the new leader and deals with terrorists. But mostly, there’s a lot of adults
arguing seriously about whether to allow the aliens to go to the big school
carnival — and then what happens when the aliens do.
So yeah, the Roman and Emery romance has cooled since
Emery’s dad shot Roman’s dad. As you can see from the 30-second compilation
above, Roman and Emery do thaw somewhat over the course of the episode,
especially after they go to the carnival together and do some handpainting on a
rock — a cunning reference to Romeo and
Juliet’s pilgrim hand dance scene?
The tone of the episode is set by the somewhat bludgeony
scene where all the kids sit in their homeroom and taunt each other loudly and
openly. This show’s answer to Caroline says she’ll be a “megabitch”
if homecoming carnival is cancelled due to Roman’s dad’s death, while the
aliens retort that their leader is dead and that’s more serious. That one jerky
kid tells Emery her dad is a hero, right in front of Roman. It’s super tense!
The actual meat of the episode has to do with extremists on
both sides of the Atrian-human divide.
The Atrians have the “Trags,” who are like Atrian
terrorists who want to take over Earth or something — and not only do the
Trags blow up some guards and stockpile some weapons, they also have disguised
agents living among the human population and laying in wait — including Tahmoh
Penikett, playing his third non-trustworthy dude in the past year.
The humans have the Redhawks, who are basically the
anti-alien militia. They want to wipe out all the aliens, or at the very least
keep them from going to homecoming carnival. This is a militia that really has
a strong emphasis on carnival attendance prevention. The leader of the Redhawks
is named Crazy-Eye McWildbeard, and everybody takes him seriously. At the end
of the episode, Crazy-Eye tries to kidnap the big bruisery Atrian kid, but he’s
stopped by Grayson at knifepoint — only to have it revealed that Grayson is
secretly a Redhawk as well. Whoa.
Meanwhile, the Trags are a bit more subtle, using an
explosion as a cover for weapons theft. And they scheme to kill Emery, using
the aforementioned secret undercover agent Tahmoh, who’s now in charge of the
human guards since Emery’s dad stepped down.
A lot of the action this time around has to do with Roman
trying to stop the Trags — because Atrian society is apparently undemocratic
and runs on a hereditary leadership principle, Roman is in line to be the new
chief of his tribe, but everybody thinks he’s too young and puppyish to handle
the responsibility.
So Roman’s uncle Castor volunteers instead. Castor is an
ex-Trag, and Roman says 100 times he doesn’t trust Castor, until the end of the
episode when he suddenly does. He asks Castor to stop the Trags distributing
weapons, and then takes Castor’s word for it that this happened, and then says
“OK, you can be leader after all.” Meanwhile, Roman also walks up to
the Trags and says “Show me your weapons cache, I’m on your side,”
and they say, “OK sure.” The Atrians are a trusting bunch.
My favorite bit in last night’s episode is probably when the
Atrians are talking amongst themselves and one of them says, “If the
humans ever learned that the mystical plant Cyper when mixed with our blood has
healing properties, that would be a major plot point.” And everybody is
like, “Yes, you’re right. That would indeed be a plot point that would
lead to plot complications.”
Oh, and there is fallout from Julia getting healed — for
one thing, Emery now has two dorky friends at school instead of one. And for another,
Julia’s arm glows blue when Roman comes near, indicating she’s got some
lingering effects from his miracle cure. Woo.
