Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! This Thursday, I will be reviewing Area 57, which was produced for NBC in 2007. The show can be found on YouTube!
Episode 1.1 “Pilot”
(Dir by Dean Parisot, filmed in 2007, never aired)
Col. Steven Isaac (Matthew Lillard) has been assigned to Area 57, a military base in the Nevada desert. Isaac is excited to read his orders and discover that Area 57 is home to an extraterrestrial. He arrives at the base. He meets by-the-book Lt. Irene Maloof (Jane Lynch). He meets the plain-spoken General Keller (Bruce McGill). He meets head scientist Dr. Annabelle Fermi (Kelly Hu). Finally, Isaac announces that he really wants to meet the alien.
Suddenly, Dr. Fermi emerges from her laboratory and says that the alien has died. General Keller announces that Area 57 is being shut down. All of the soldiers cheer. The general explains that the alien wasn’t always popular. Isaac still insists on seeing the body. With Dr. Fermi at his side, he gets his first look at the alien and accidentally spills his coffee on him. The alien (played by Paul Reubens) comes back to life. It turns out that he was just going through a sleep cycle. General Keller announces that Area 57 is not closing and no one is going home.
With the entire base still angry with him, Isaac still insists on meeting the alien. The alien asks him about his education. Isaac says that he attended college through an endowment. The alien says that many of the soldiers like Dr. Fermi. Isaac agrees that she’s attractive. The alien then announces to Irene that Isaac was making crude comments about Fermi and bragging about how endowed he was.
Isaac realizes the truth. The alien is a jerk. He also learns that the alien has been at Area 57 for 40 years and that, so far, the government has learned nothing from him.
That’s the plot of Area 57. NBC thought enough of the idea to commission a pilot, but the network never aired it. It’s available on YouTube. Watching it, you can see what the problem was. The alien is established as such a jerk that it’s hard to imagine anything else that could have been done with the character. Paul Reubens plays the role under a good deal of makeup, and he’s more off-putting than intriguing. That said, Matthew Lillard was genuinely funny as the earnest and idealistic Col. Isaac. He was so excited about meeting an alien that it was impossible not to feel sorry for him when the alien turned out to be a jerk.
If we ever do meet aliens, I have a feeling that something like Area 57 might be seen as prophetic. There’s a tendency to assume that alien visitors will be interesting, erudite, and worth knowing. I think that if there are aliens out there, they’re just as likely to be as annoying as the average human.
Area 57. The truth is out there!
