I can see what you mean about Earthlings Welcome Here. They kept making UFO/alien references in episodes leading up to that and I remember being really worried where the hell they were taking the story. But I thought it ended up working really nicely to lead into the story about strange alloy metal and drone sightings. I also thought it was fun that they had John be very rolling of his eyes about it all to offset the seriousness.

I do, however, have one bog problem with that whole arc that I'll get into in my "Born to Fail part 2" post because it's related.