Drama
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Based on novel by Jenny Han, this series follows the complex love life of Belly, a young girl caught between two boys who are childhood friends as she joins the world of debutantes.
In 2122, on a return flight from a deep-space expedition, Ellen Ripley and the rest of the Nostromo crew were awakened by their ship’s computer, Mother, to respond to a distress signal from a nearby planet. There, they encountered the Xenomorphs, an alien race with seemingly no other purpose than to kill and reproduce. None of them ever saw Earth again.
But that wasn’t the first time humans had encountered the Xenomorphs.
Roughly 30 years prior to Ripley’s unscheduled stop at LV-426, humanity had dealt with an earlier evolution of the Xenomorphs on the planet LV-223. That series of events resulted in the crews of two other ships, Prometheus and Covenant, never returning home.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to deter the greedy Weyland-Yutani Corp. from journeying to distant worlds—hence Nostromo’s untimely demise. But the events that occurred just two years prior certainly should have been enough to give everyone fair warning.
In 2120, Earth and other planets within our solar system are controlled by five powerful corporations, each competing in a race for human immortality.
Some believe that immortality will be accomplished by cybernetically enhancing human beings, creating cyborgs. Others think the answer lies in artificial intelligence, or synths. Most of these corporations have launched deep-space science vessels to explore other planets, collect samples of alien lifeforms and search for anything that might extend human life.
But Boy Kavalier, the kid genius behind the newly formed Prodigy corporation, believes hybrids are the key: fully synthetic beings that have been downloaded with a human’s consciousness.
Wendy is the first of Kavalier’s hybrids. She was a terminally ill child when Kavalier scooped her up. Adults couldn’t survive the process, he told her. Their brains were too “stiff.” But Prodigy scientists told Wendy she wouldn’t just survive, she’d thrive. Her new synthetic body would make her fast and strong. More importantly, it wouldn’t break.
Soon after, four other sick children join Wendy, receiving synthetic bodies of their own.
It’s a good start for Kavalier. But the true test comes when the USCSS Maginot (a ship owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corp.) crash lands in New Siam, a city controlled by Prodigy.
Wendy convinces Kavalier to send her and the other hybrids to the crash site to help in search and rescue efforts. However, she has an ulterior motive: Her brother, Joe, is among the military units already onsite. Wendy hasn’t seen him since before her mind transfer. In fact, Joe doesn’t even know Wendy is alive. Prodigy told him she had died. And Wendy will do whatever it takes to protect her big brother.
Of course, Kavalier has an ulterior motive of his own: He secretly programmed Wendy’s synthetic body with a supercomputer. Combined with her human thoughts and memories, this gives Wendy the strength of a cyborg, the brain of a synth and the compassion of a human.
The Maginot crash gives Kavalier the opportunity to see how his hybrids perform in the field—not to mention gaining an upper hand on Weyland-Yutani by stealing whatever the Maginot’s crew brought back from space.
I won’t blame Kavalier or Prodigy for what happens next—after all, it was Weyland-Yutani piloting the vessel. But whatever Wendy and the other hybrids do or don’t accomplish will either result in humans reaching that lofty goal of immortality or … exterminate the human race entirely.
If you’ve seen any of the films in the Alien franchise, then nothing of what I’m about to tell you will come as a surprise.
First off, we’re dealing with alien lifeforms and evolution. There’s no mention of God or a belief in any higher being. Everything that humans believe is based on science—which is perhaps why they seem to be so obsessed with immortality and creating the “perfect” being.
Xenomorphs, as already mentioned, truly live only to kill and reproduce. They are creepy. And when they kill, they like to do so in a shower of blood. “Facehuggers,” a type of Xenomorph that injects alien embryos into human bodies to gestate, make a return. And we see evidence that some baby Xenomorphs have burst out of people’s chests.
Foul language is another standby of this series (and franchise). So if you dive in, you can expect multiple uses of the f-word and more.
As of writing this review, there’s no notable sexual content—although sensual scenes have made an appearance in some Alien films. The crew of the Maginot talks about one man’s “creepy” vibes toward his female crewmates. And Wendy is weirded out by her adult synthetic body, since she still has the mind of a child. I didn’t get the sense that that would turn into anything gross or weird, but some viewers might not feel comfortable with it.
FX’s Alien: Earth revisits well-established Alien lore while adding a ton of new elements, too. But really, it’s just the latest graphically violent entry to the already graphically violent Alien franchise.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
On a remote island, a sick, young girl undergoes a procedure to transfer her consciousness into a synthetic body. Meanwhile, a science vessel crash-lands on Earth’s surface after alien lifeforms escape captivity and kill the crew.
We learn that there are five corporations ruling the galaxy. Each one is searching for a way to make humans immortal. This introductory episode introduces us to characters who are cyborgs (cybernetically enhanced humans), synths (artificial intelligence robots) and hybrids (robots that have been downloaded with human consciousnesses). We hear that in order for hybrids to keep their humanity and not just become synths, human experiences (such as puberty) must be artificially simulated for them.
When a space vessel (the USCSS Maginot) crashes, it kills hundreds, perhaps thousands of people on the planet. Platoons of soldiers are sent to the crash site to help with search-and-rescue efforts. A medic marks bodies he finds as either dead or alive.
Before it crashes, we see several alien specimens in containment chambers on the Maginot. Someone notes that they lost a lot of good men obtaining them. A woman feeds a dead rat to two bug-like aliens.
Later, one of the specimens, a Xenomorph, escapes captivity, attacking everyone onboard. A woman begs the ship’s captain, who is a cyborg, to let her into the ship’s panic room. Instead, he uses a cybernetic attachment to weld the door shut. We see the Xenomorph kill the woman in a series of flashing lights. It also tries to attack the captain, but it’s unable to reach him.
Elsewhere, the bug-like aliens from before burrowing their way into the necks of two soldiers, draining them completely of blood. More evidence shows us that some other aliens escaped containment and killed humans on the Maginot even before it crashed. Pieces of buildings continue to fall as soldiers attempt to evacuate the Maginot’s crash site. Two people debate whether to kill a scorpion. There are several jump scares throughout the episode.
The Maginot’s crew comes out of cryogenic sleep wearing tank tops and underwear (a few male crewmembers are shirtless). The crew talks about a synthetic man who used to watch some of the female crew members as they slept, though he was reprimanded by the ship’s captain for this behavior. (We see him leer at other crew members who are still sleeping.) A man calls a woman “Gorgeous” as a sort of pet name. A woman wears a midriff-baring top. A few people flirt. A guy makes a crude joke about women’s underwear.
Wendy, who is technically only a child, grabs her breasts and tells her mentors that they feel weird, since the body they created for her is that of an adult, not a prepubescent girl. The scientists who created Wendy’s new body say that an adult body was necessary since synthetic bodies can’t grow. But they’re trying to simulate puberty for her with synthetic hormones to help her mentally transition into the adult body.
The two scientists who built Wendy’s body are married. But since they were unable to have children of their own, they see Wendy and the other hybrids they create as their own kids. Wendy asks the husband about sperm and eggs in a conversation on this topic.
Some characters smoke cigarettes and cigars. Someone speculates that corporations are putting mind-control drugs into the human food supply.
We hear more than a dozen uses of the f-word and a handful of uses of the s-word. There are also uses of “a–” and “h—.”
Wendy and the other children transferred into hybrid bodies are told they can never go home or see their families again. Indeed, Prodigy lied to Wendy’s brother about her ultimate fate, saying that she had died. It’s clear that some of these hybrids are still scared of dying. Kavalier orders troops to triage wounded people at the crash site by “income bracket.”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Based on novel by Jenny Han, this series follows the complex love life of Belly, a young girl caught between two boys who are childhood friends as she joins the world of debutantes.
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