The CW isn’t known for its cutting-edge science fiction or horror, but it is the current or former home of stalwarts like Buffy, Angel and Supernatural. We want to give the mini-net the benefit of the doubt. But seriously: we really deserve better than what Star-Crossed is promising.

Hulu is offering up the first five minutes as a “sneak peek,” in the sadly misguided notion that it will want people to see more. So go watch that, here, and then come back.

Okay, basics: Spaceship (of indeterminate size, apparently the only one) from a dying, earth-like planet crash-lands in a small (unnamed) town not far from Baton Rouge, though it looks about as picturesque as, oh, say, Burbank. This happens on “September 14, 2014), i.e., a few months from now.  That’s pretty much all you need to know before the ‘fun’ begins.

What we already hate:

1. Hey, the aliens look just like us! At least in Falling Skies or the classic alien-occupation series Alien Nation, there was some attempt to make the visitors from another planet look, well, alien. (Unless they were trying to pull one over on us, like in V or the other classic alien occupation series, The Invaders. Yo, shout out to Roy Thinnes!) Use any random Star Trek: Next Generation alien as a benchmark. The least you could do is funny hair styles, strange skin colors, latex bumps on their head or nose, something. Nope. As we see less than a minute in, these aliens look exactly like us, except they seem to have a couple of (very tasteful) facial tattoos each. Oh, and they’re like totally cute.
2. Stupid army! Think about it: a spaceship crash lands in an American town. Hours later, in the middle of the night, after no sign of hostile intent – it’s a crashed ship, mind you, not an invading armada – the U.S. Army has managed to set up no lights, made no attempt at contact, or even established a perimeter around the ship itself. No, they just have one hapless squad stumble in the dark at the thing, and at the first sign of a totally unarmed, clearly human-like being approaching with its arms raised … one soldier shoots him. That’s our U.S. Army at work. Who knows, maybe they were spooked by the looming wreckage of the starship in the background, since it does look like a knock-off from Alien. Or maybe Prometheus.
3. Mute, as opposed to mutant, aliens (and Earthians). As far as we can tell, everyone in Star-crossed has lost the gift of speech. The army-guys don’t call out to citizens or busted aliens on a loudspeaker, don’t even attempt to establish communications with the (as far as we know) completely unknown folks who, again, have shown no overt signs of hostility and clearly crashed. Likewise, the aliens (who are able to speak – we hear them mumble and shout to each other) – don’t yell “Stop!” or “We give up!” in any language, including their own. Silence is apparently, somehow … comforting? Helpful in a situation like this? A cheap plot device to drag the story forward? Who can say?
4. Alien hand grenades. You’d think a civilization advanced enough to build, power, and steer a spaceship across vast interstellar space would have more than one kind of hand-weapon at their disposal, and if they did have only one, you think it’d be something cooler (and more useful) than a hand grenade. Like a phaser or something. But that’s all the ‘Atria’ seem to possess – and a lot of hand grenades, apparently: they fling a crapload in that single, breathless moment after the first shooting when they could have, maybe, possibly… called out? Retreated without firing? Hidden back inside the Prometheus ship? No: Hand grenades are the only option, damn it. And apparently there were only enough for one barrage, ‘cause then the running and killing begins, courtesy of the US of A, and they do nothing to respond. So no second barrage, no digging in, no hand-to-hand. Stupid aliens. 
5. Is bad writing and wooden acting required on the CW these days, or can we make an exception now and then? We focus on a family near the crash site, and are subjected to some painfully wooden acting mouthing painfully fatuous dialogue, including they “HEY, PAY ATTENTION! SHE’S INTERESTING” lines about how the pretty little girl is seriously ill with…something. Given the low bar, we should probably be grateful. At least her Dad says, “Be sure to take your pills, honey,” instead of “Be sure to take your twice-a-day doses of life-saving medication to slow, and please God prevent, your imminent death from leukemia. Honey.” Though he might as well have. And oh, how we wish the little girl had shown any emotion, including, “Oh, just shut the hell UP, you filthy old shit! You don’t have to remind me every time! I am not a fucking CHILD!” and flung her pill-box into his dopey, astonished face. Hey: we can dream, can’t we?
6. Okay, so we’re just going to skip actual science completely, yes? In this same scene, we hear the chatter from an entirely unconvincing TV broadcast that says, among other silly things, “NASA astronomers have speculated that the trajectory of the spacecraft originated from a distant solar system.” The pseudo-announcer even stumbles over the word “trajectory,” because, you know, science is hard. But thank god it was from a distant solar system, not one of the nearby ones. And you have to feel sorry for those pooor aliens – they had to make it all the way to Earth without benefit of the art of what we experienced space travelers call “changing course.”  Just one straight shot out of their Astro-Cannon on the Planet Atria, before they even had time to scream “No brakes! NO BRAKES!”
7. Be sure to have characters do inexplicable and inconsistent things just to advance the plot. Look, you’ve got this pretty little, what, eight-year-old girl who has just demonstrated that she’s (a) kind’a sickly and (b) an obedient child, since we see her acceding to her father’s brusque “get outta here, take your damn pills” comment. But logic and consistency be damned: she leaves the house – in the middle of a scary “aliens are just outside” thing on TV — and finds an alien boy in her playhouse or garage or something, and proceeds to steal blankets and food for him and never once thinks of telling her parents there’s a strange alien boy in the tool shed. Of course not! Don’t be silly! If she did that, she couldn’t grow up into a cute teenager who falls in love with an alien boy – hey, maybe the same alien boy, you think? Maybe?
8. People are the same all over (the good version). Just as the five-minute sample is drawing to a close, we see the cute li’l girl giving her alien pet –check that, ‘friend’ – a bowl of cold spaghetti for breakfast. He sniffs it suspiciously, like any right-thinking captive, then chows down, even using a fork in the proper way. Clever monkey! So clearly these aliens really are exactly like us. Same physiological structure, same biochemistry, same love for pasta. You can forgive us our mad desire to see him take in a mouthful, then spew out a gallon of fluorescent blue bile as lesions big as silver dollars blossom on his waxy skin at the mere exposure to ‘hyu-mon’ food. No worries, the desire passed. Fairly soon.

…and the sample, rather abruptly, ends there. But wait … there’s more. If you can stand sitting through the information-free interviews with the actors playing the grown-up versions of the characters that accompany the sample on Hulu, you’ll get to see additional glimpses of the ‘action,’ and we use the term loosely, that bring us to the following conclusions:

9.  Army guys have ray guns! It’s not entirely clear, but it sure looks like the soldiers that close in on the guest house are carrying future-weapons, even though they’ve specifically told us this is all of six months into the future. And when one of them shoots the kids – doesn’t tell him to “Freeze!” or “Halt!” or “Show us your hands!”, just shoots this ten-year-old unarmed child – he does it with a gun that looks like it’s shooting a phaser beam instead of a bullet. Wow. Remind us not to piss of the National Guard anymore. They are packing.

10. Some people should not be allowed to watch Neill Blomkamp movies. Or Shakespeare. Or pretty much anything. In the interviews, we see the actual story of Star-crossed is set ten years later – ten years into the future. The plucky little girl is still alive, apparently better, and attending the local high school … with cute alien teenagers. Because even though a decade has passed, and even though the aliens have learned our language and – as far as we can see – have no special powers and have done nothing aggressive, they’re still living in a WWII-style concentration camp on the edge of Baton Rouge, held there by the startling 21^st century technological innovation called “chain link fence” … except the kids, y’see, the alien kids, get to go to the local high school, where they’re treated like tattoo’d dorks from the wrong side of the tracks. And that’s just the beginning. (The racist – specist? – epithet seems to be “tatties,” because that, after all, is was makes ‘em alien: their tattoos.) But the inanities have barely begun. Wait ‘til you encounter the cutest terminal cancer patient you ever saw, the worst prison security ever created (ten years in the future, remember), inexplicable sociological speculation (and you’re keeping these people prisoner why? And you’re letting their grown kids out to play why?), and an alien ecology that seems to have come along for the interstellar ride, and is being kept from invading Earth ecology only by virtue of the abiding power of that mysterious “chain” “link” “fence.”

You can watch Star-Crossed for yourself, right here. See what you think, and leave a comment below.