Surface 7 pm Central, NBC
Yet another aliens-among-us television series, Surface debuted last week with three separate stories of encounters with mysterious unknowns from the ocean.
A deep-sea diving submersible surveys a part of the ocean where matter bubbles up from the earth's crust. Dr. Laura Daughtery (Lake Bell), the attractive and divorced marine biologist helms the craft and catches glimpses of something swimming outside that her handlers on the surface don't see. The craft goes into a turmoil and loses power. Later, back on land, the government takes over control of the data. They know something is up and are very hush hush about it.
At the same time, roughly, a couple of brothers head out to a oil rig for some deep sea diving and spear fishing. The spy a really large grouper and hide in the shadows for it to swim by. Instead, something massive and fast bears down on them. They duck out of its way by hiding in the oil rig superstructure. The younger brother, out for his for first time, naively spears the creature and is dragged down to the depths, out of site, with green lights appearing as he disappeared. You just know he's magically going to reappear later on. Does this remind anyone of Mulder's sister being taken away in his prescense, when he was a young man?
Finally, a group of kids are out water skiing at night. One of them, Miles Bennett (Carter Jenkins) has an encounter with something in the water. It's mysterious and small. The next night, they sneak back and discover a collection of what appears to be eggs. They bring one back, store it in the family aquarium and hide the resulting growing creature as it breaks out of the glass enclosure and hides in the bathroom.
In episode two, the survivng brother, (Rich Connelly - Jay R. Ferguson) from the diving accident travels to a beach to see some mysterious whale that has become beached. He's quite certain it's the same type of creature that took away his brother. Our stubborn marine biologist also shows up. Eventually, the two hook up in one unlikely scene.
Article comments
1 - visualsimplicity
"Surface" is slow going but I find the premise to be more interesting than the already-been-there body snatching "Invasion". Nothing big has really happened in the show, but I think there is potential.
2 - Davey
X-posted from my blog...
This show has too many sci-fi/mystery/conspiracy theory cliches for it to be enjoyable.
1. The "military" intervening with civilian scientists doing their work. (Prediction: defiant scientist chick goes and does her work on her own bill and figures it out before the government does.)
2. The guy who "saw something" but the wife is skeptical and believes he is just being a jerk. (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, anyone? Prediction: The wife takes the kids and leaves him, and he goes on a bender)
3. The kids who find a specimen and keep it secret from everyone. (Prediction: the "military" finds out about the specimen, and the kids wake up one day realizing their house is encapsulated in a protective plastic bubble. The kids get questioned about their bond with the alien...er... creature.)
4. The guy who had his face blasted off is mysteriously healed. (Prediction: he goes on a crusade believing these "aliens" were sent to help us all, and that all this happened for a reason. As everyone begins to believe he is insane, he clashes with the scientists because he is a "man of faith" while they are "men of science".)
3 - ukexpat
Could not agree more -- it's complete bollocks and hopefully it will sink without a trace.