Star-Crossed has
been a show about race and racism from its very first episode. But with last
night’s outing, the show acknowledged that fact more openly and groped its way
towards telling real stories about race, with no easy answers.
Spoilers ahead…
In general, the further Star-Crossed
gets away from being a show about romance, the better it gets — largely thanks
to the general lack of romantic or sexual chemistry among pretty much all the
show’s leads. This is similar to what happened with Tomorrow People, which really tried to lean on the Stephen-Cara-John
love triangle for its first batch of episodes before mercifully letting it
drop.
And just like Tomorrow
People, Star-Crossed seems to be
at its best when it’s dealing with questions about authority and power and
conformity — and whether minorities, like aliens or mutants, are able to live
peacefully with society. The two shows are sort of opposites, in a way — in Tomorrow People, the mutants are secret
and “the authorities” are trying to remove them from society. In Star-Crossed, the aliens are public
knowledge and “the authorities” are trying to integrate them into
society. But both shows are grappling with a lot of the same issues, filtered
through the murky lens of teen alienation.
After episodes about terrorists and bombs and viruses, last
night’s Star-Crossed saw a welcome lowering of stakes — the whole issue is
purely whether Roman’s sister Sophia (whom I keep wanting to call “Lal“) could join the swim
team.
Is Lal’s alien biology, with her ability to breathe
underwater and her secondary respiratory system, an unfair advantage? Is she
too different to be able to compete on a level playing field? (Early in the
episode, one of the other aliens suggests that they’re not
“different,” they’re “superior,” and this is the question
that sort of hangs over the episode.)
But then somebody brings up the question of class privilege
— the opposing swim team comes from a school with tons of money and resources,
which can afford to recruit the best athletes from all over the Gulf Coast.
So is Lal’s alien biology an unfair edge, or just leveling the playing field?
In general, this episode — written by Deep Space Nine/Andromeda
emeritus Robert Hewitt Wolfe — goes a long way towards fleshing out a bit
about the aliens and their different biology. The Atrians may look human, but
inside their bodies are arranged completely differently, beyond the two hearts.
(But nookie is still on the table.) And the Atrians have weird weaknesses, too
— like they can’t handle caffeine, which is how Lal is poisoned, and nearly
removed from the swim team permanently.
The parallels tointegration and the story of Jackie Robinson are laid out explicitly, in
case anybody missed the idea that this is a proxy for race in America. But
the questions raised by Lal’s desire to swim with the humans aren’t that simple
— is someone who can breathe underwater purely like a talented human who
happens to be a different race, or is the difference more fundamental?
In the end, the kids from our high school unite to beat up
the kids from the other high school — in a major victory for tolerance.
But meanwhile, the extent to which the Atrians are
second-class citizens is underscored when we learn they’re not even allowed to have phones. Roman’s dad hid a phone in
their apartment, and this is a huge code-red emergency and a potential reason
for Roman to be locked up in Alien Gitmo forever. Roman enlists the aid of
Lukas to find out what’s on the phone. And we learn that Roman’s dad was
communicating with Secret Alien Teacher, and they had a son together. (Was it
Roman? I couldn’t tell. Roman wasn’t born on Earth, so it seems unlikely.)
In any case, the goal of integration for Atrians seems a
long way off when they’re not even allowed to use basic communication devices,
or join in when the other kids are talking about their new apps. How do the
Atrian Seven update their Facebook statuses? All worthy questions.
All in all, I kind of want to see this show delve deeper
into the questions it’s brushing over right now — like, maybe we could meet a
human who mistrusts or dislikes the aliens, who’s articulate and sensitive and
not an idiot? Maybe we could see more of the reasons behind the weird levels
oppression the aliens face, but also more of the ideology behind the Trags?
This show is going to sink or swim based on how multi-layered its political
analogy is, and right now, it’s just about treading water.
