Subversive sitcom: Tolerance is lesson in "Aliens in America"

LOS ANGELES — A group of Muslim worshippers gathered for evening prayer inside the Islamic Center of Southern California when Moses Port and David Guarascio arrived.

"The fact that we're here is bigger than anything we could have even hoped for," said Guarascio, creator, along with Port, of the CW sitcom "Aliens in America." "But being here seems to make sense, you know, appropriate."

Appropriate, certainly, for the bold, satirical comedy, premiering Monday night, which explores Americans' fears and cultural ignorance of Muslims. Port, who's Jewish, and Guarascio, who was raised Catholic, were at the Islamic Center this night to introduce their new series to the faithful.

Though not unique — the Canadian series "Little Mosque on the Prairie" also deals with anti-Muslim attitudes — it's rare these days for an American sitcom to tackle such sensitive issues.

At first, "Aliens in America" seems more akin to NBC's short-lived 1999 series "Freaks and Geeks" with its story of Justin Tolchuck (Dan Byrd), a nerdy Wisconsin high school student who doesn't fit in.

His overly involved mother, Franny (Amy Pietz), agrees to take in a foreign-exchange student, hoping it will help Justin become as popular as his sister Claire (Lindsey Shaw). Only the student who arrives is Raja Musharaff (Adhir Kalyan), a Muslim from Pakistan.

Raja is polite, idealistic and hardworking, much to the pleasure of Justin's father, Gary (Scott Patterson). But everyone else in town sees Raja as a potential terrorist.

In one scene from the pilot, Raja sits wearily in class listening to a student confess that she is angry with him because "his people" blew up the twin towers. The teacher asks if others are angry with Raja and all raise their hands.

The response from the Islamic Center crowd was overwhelmingly positive, just as it has been with TV critics. Although a small minority of columnists complained that the pilot suggests Americans are "bigoted and stupid."

"Maybe it appears in the pilot that Raja is the moral center of the show," says Pietz, "but the character of Justin and the relationship between them is the moral center — what's happening between these two young men, that's the lesson for all of us, and it's the lesson of tolerance."

Guarascio and Port, who created "Aliens" in 2005 for NBC, insist that their intent was not to be edgy or socially provocative — just funny.

"Everybody will be able to get it on some level because irrespective of who you are or where you're from, your race or religion, we all at some point in our lives feel as though we don't quite fit in," says the 24-year-old South African-born Kalyan.

"Adhir and I have a lot more in common than our characters," adds Byrd. "We didn't have to force it on ourselves as far as trying to get along. We just kind of work on similar wavelengths ... that's really been the blessing in all of this, because if we didn't get along on that level, then this would not work nearly as well."

But these are difficult times for TV sitcoms. In the past decade, the number of half-hour comedies on television has been cut by nearly a third, notes "Aliens" executive producer Tim Doyle, "so there's a caution and a lot of calculation that go into comedies because they've failed so much and the studios and networks are a little gun-shy."

That said, Doyle contends "family comedies got a really bad rap because critics were not particularly generous with the things that followed in the wake of 'Cosby' and 'Roseanne' ... 'Aliens in America' takes place within a family, but it's also a high-school show, and we're still finding the voice of the show. We want to defy classification."