Resident Alien Season 4 channeled its inner Men in Black in this week’s episode — “The Human Condition” — with an out-of-this-world poker game at Harry’s lakeside cabin hosted by none other than Bridget. They grow up so fast, don’t they?
Attending this friendly night of cards are a number of humanoid extra-terrestrials, including time travel expert Dale (Linden Porco) and two visitors we haven’t seen before — one of whom has an anglerfish-like lantern appendage dangling from his head.
According to makeup effects designer Cayley Giene, the deep-sea predator was one of the main inspirations for the character, alongside a pug and a dinosaur.
“We tend to pick real-life things and mash them together and come up with different alien-looking creatures,” she explained in the latest look behind the scenes (watch the video above).
“We get to see more aliens, which… I just love that element,” said series lead Alan Tudyk. “Harry tries to play poker with them, but it doesn’t go very well. It’s like your dad coming in to play poker with your buddies; that’s not gonna go well. You wanna have some guy time, but they wanna have alien time, and I’m a guy now. I’m a human.”
Resident Alien creatives on Bridget’s poker game in Season 4, Episode 5
As director and executive producer Robert Duncan McNeill revealed in the video above, the original plan was to keep the scene pretty simple.
“At one point, early on, we were like, ‘Oh, we’ll just have some simple aliens. We’ll have a couple pointy ears.’ It started very modest,” he shared. “And then we were like, ‘Wait a minute. If we’re gonna have Bridget playing poker with a bunch of aliens, it’s an opportunity to really go big.’ Our special effects makeup team did a phenomenal job.”
“The stuff they put together, really pretty quickly, was incredible,” added creator, showrunner, and executive producer Chris Sheridan. “That’s the hard thing, we’ve seen so many aliens on TV and in film, trying to come up with something you haven’t seen before is tough.”
How to watch Resident Alien
New episodes of Resident Alien premiere on USA Network and SYFY every Friday in a new time slot: 10 p.m. ET, with each episode available to stream on Peacock a week after air. The first three seasons are now available to watch right here!
Peacock offers two subscription plans: Premium ($7.99 a month with ads) and Premium Plus ($13.99 a month with no ads and download access for certain titles). Students can enjoy Premium for just $2.99 a month for an entire year!
