People Of Earth finds awkward humor in denial in its best episode yet
The second episode of People Of Earth ended with a pair of shocking revelations. The first being that Gina, despite her warm exterior and “empathy” bumper sticker, is apparently the type of person would run over someone and leave the scene, and the second being that the person she ran over was actually Kurt, the reptilian. The third episode opens with a panicked Gina calling the police to inquire if they knew anything about the incident. When H. Jon Benjamin’s cop character tells her it was just a raccoon, she’s breathes a heavy sigh of relief, and immediately drops the fake English accent she had been using (somehow, the cop fails to notice this). But since it was very clearly a human (or at least human-shaped) body that was found at the scene, we’re left to wonder why he would lie about something like this. This leads us to the show’s latest twist: the cop is in on the alien plot!
This is good news for one simple reason: everything is better when H. Jon Benjamin is involved. One would imagine that we’ll be seeing more of him as the show goes along, and that’s pretty much a guaranteed source of joy. That being said, we don’t see Benjamin for the rest of this episode, as the main focuses on Ozzie befriending Richard, whose life is pretty sad even by the low standards of StarCrossed members.
In the first two episodes, we don’t see much of Richard, and all we learn about him is that he believes he has a major job in the tech world, when really, all his company does is make those things that go on the end of internet cables. But while that might have appeared to be a one-off joke, it actually revealed the most important aspect of Richard’s personality: his tendency toward denial. That makes up the bulk of this episode, as Ozzie has to help Richard accept the fact that his wife is divorcing him.
After walking out a little less than a year earlier, Richard is entirely convinced that she was abducted by “the reptilians.” Somehow, even though we know these creatures actually do exist in the People Of Earth universe, he still comes off like a crackpot when he talks about them. While Gina discourages Ozzie from getting involved in the situation (she always seems to do this, and you can’t help wondering why), he sees a man in pain and decides to get him through it. Just when we believe Richard has finally accepted the truth, we find out that he actually wrote “suck reptilian dicks!” rather than signing his divorce papers.
This one moment reveals what People Of Earth is able to do so well: find humor in the uncomfortable. We know Richard is a sad person, struggling through a difficult time, and yet, we can’t help but find some odd comedy in his misery. This show understands that our darkest moments sometime contain an awkward kernel of humor, and it forces the viewer to confront that. Somehow, we can have the same empathy for Richard that Ozzie does, while also acknowledging that the phrase “suck reptilian dicks,” irrespective of what emotional trauma it came from, is just undeniably hilarious.