Habitat

When I was a kid, I was always intrigued by this episode (Habitat), although I was never sure what it all meant.

I just watched it again on YouTube, and I think that the key to understanding it is what the aliens say at the end--something about what hypocrites humans are in that they like having pets but can't stand being pets.

So this appears to be a preachy episode in that it's either saying that we don't treat our pets well enough or that we shouldn't keep animals as pets at all.

I think it's an interesting point to make. I've seen many cases where I thought that people were cruel to their pets, but (in their minds) they were doing their pets a favor by taking care of them and saving them from death (or at least from a worse existence).

This episode seems to be telling us that's not good enough, although if they hadn't said 'pets' at the end, I never would've guessed that's what this episode was about. I was thinking something like 'a rat in a maze', but we don't usually consider rats to be pets--more like creatures to experiment on (which seems a lot more like what the aliens were doing with Jamie Neal rather than just keeping her as a pet).

I tried to research this on the internet, but there doesn't seem to be much talk about this episode. I wonder what the writer's (David Morrell) intentions were.

I really liked Lili Taylor's performance in it. I thought that she did a really-good job of showing us what a hellish-existence it would be to live like that for 9 months.

So what do you think? It's definitely a much-different episode than the rest, and I'd love to get your take on it.