Quotable Moments

Cade: All I keep finding is scared neighbors filled with distrust. Eddie: My kind of people.

Mrs. Gimmel: They never did anything for me.    More Stories The SPACE.com Guide to First Wave Spoilers: First Wave - 'Cul-de-Sac' Cade Foster Meets His First Wave Mentor via 'The Channel' First Wave's Cade Foster Has a Psychic 'Susperience'    Related Links First Wave Sci-Fi Channel Cade [to himself]: That's because you're probably a disagreeable pain in the ass. Mrs. Gimmel: I heard that!

NOSTRADAMUS SAYS Quatrain 28, Century 5: When Jezebel enters the village Her step shall shake foundations. With a venomous flower She breaks chains of steel.

Written by Bruce Zimmerman
Directed by Tibor Takacs

Bill Switzer -- Nick Patterson
Brandy Ledford -- Michelle Ingram
Fred Henderson -- Ron Patterson
Iris Quinn -- Joanne Patterson

In a small suburban neighborhood, Ethel Delaney stares at the house of Michelle Ingram. Inside, her sloppy husband Sam offers beer to Michelle, a beautiful blonde.

When Michelle asks about Ethel, Sam tells her "she won't bother us anymore." That makes Michelle happy -- until Sam explains that instead of killing Ethel, he told her about his affair.

That's when Ethel enters Michelle's bedroom with a gun. Sam's assurances that "she's not going to shoot" become his last words.

There's something wonderfully creepy about suburban America.

The manicured lawns and color-coordinated houses send a chill down the backs of the people who don't live in them. It's the opposite of the primeval wilderness, the banal made mythic, a triumph of central planning over organic life.

If there's a reason the Gua picked Earth to invade, it's probably that they want to move into neighborhoods like this one.

Suburban developments have their own special hold on the American nightmare. Movies like The Graduate, American Beauty and The Ice Storm have made good use of our knowledge that the people inside these perfect houses are just as imperfect as we are.

Unfortunately, when "Cul-de-Sac" tries to tell a similar story, it trips itself up.

Part of the problem is that the neighborhood never feels real.

Neighborhoods like this tend to be anonymous and empty during the workday. This one, however, is constantly filled with smiling children, adults and a ubiquitous postman.

Despite this, none of the families seem to interact with each other. Except for snoopy old Mrs. Gimmel -- who isn't talking -- nobody is aware of what anybody else's husband is up to.

This inconsistency isn't too serious. The pheromone gimmick is considerably more problematic, though.

By putting the blame on the pheromones, "Cul-de-Sac" absolves all the husbands for their actions. Ron Patterson slept around and nearly committed murder, but he's supposedly a sympathetic character because he was "under the influence."

Sure, Ron and his wife are getting counseling, but his neighbor Barry killed his wife. And if Ron is good because he was able to fight off Michelle's orders, what does that make Barry?

The pheromones also cheapen the story by focusing on the gimmick instead of the strengths and flaws of the characters.

Writer Bruce Zimmerman missed an opportunity -- a Gua agent so wily she can manipulate an entire neighborhood using simple psychological tactics would have been much more interesting than super perfume.

When he was growing up, Cade loved playing hockey, and had a famous slap shot called the "runaway train."

Cade never knew his biological father, though, and his stepfather was an abusive alcoholic. His mother died of cancer when he was 17.

Despite the death of Michelle Ingram, the Gua's pheromone love potion works almost perfectly. Will they do something more useful than break up marriages with it?

Did Barry get away with murdering his wife? What happened to Ethel Delaney after she shot her husband and Michelle Ingram?

This sleepy suburban neighborhood is absurdly busy -- Cade visits it every day for most of a week, and there's always a weekend-sized crowd playing or walking around. Cade and the postman always seem to show up at the same time, too.

Despite all this activity, nobody notices a suspicious-looking stranger like Cade hanging around except the snoopy old woman next door.

Ron and Joanne Patterson are worried about Nick's claims that Michelle Ingram is not what she seems -- but they're not worried when a guy from something called The Paranoid Times starts hanging around their son?

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK

Cade gets revenge for his wife's death in another first season rerun, "The Box". After that, it's reruns of season 2 -- with occasional visits from season 1 episodes like "The Undesirables" -- until April.