TV Review — V

I was crazy for the original V mini-series, and V: The Final Battle (the sequel mini-series), and V: The Series (the 1984 TV series).  (Never bought the comics, though.)  Diana was a bitch goddess, Crystal Carrington for the truly man-eater set.  And the fact that I still remember the half-alien girl’s word for peace — “pretanama” (spelling per Wikiquote) — says the show stuck with me in deep ways.

I want to like the new V show.  Really I do.  Oh God, but I can’t quite manage it.

The reinvention is adequate, carrying forward many of the tropes of the original show — lizard aliens disguised as humans coming to Earth allegedly in peace but really with an ulterior motive, human teenager falls for a Visitor, 5th Column rebels with Visitor allies on the inside, TV newscaster blows off ethics to get the inside track on Visitor news, and so on.  And they’ve ditched the Nazi subtext, replacing it with domestic terrorism.  (On the other hand, they also dropped the squick-inducing eating of mice, which was way cool in the early 1980s.)

I have a natural soft spot in my heart for Agent Erica Evans, played by Elizabeth Mitchell, such that I always think of her as Juliet (from Lost), and the actress carries some of the underscores of that character into this role.  (I keep helfway wishing agents Mark Benford or Dale Cooper would show up, though!)  And there’s a weird attraction to Scott Wolf as newscaster Chad Decker, since he is visually reminiscent of Michael J. Fox, who played a newscaster covering an alien invasion in Mars Attacks!

Some of the acting is top drawer, especially most any scene with Mitchell.  (I really liked the eye movements she made in a scene at the FBI office when they are watching a press conference on TV and she knows it’s all a lie.)  And Morena Baccarin as Anna is just so slimy, she just about reaches Diana heights (Anna, Di-ana, mmm).  I am also intrigued by Christopher Shyer as Marcus.

(Although speaking of eye movements: can we skip the edge-of-romance meaningful looks between Father Jack and Erica.  Priests shouldn’t be on the make.  Eeewww.)

I get unnerved by the cinematography on the Visitor ship, which uses green/blue screen backdrops constantly, but almost all of them slightly skewed or with wrong perspective.  Is it shoddy work or is it intentional to emphasize the alienness?  I can’t be sure.  (But if I question it, that means that the effect has broken me out of the story and thus the question is answered: even if it is intentional, the result is shoddy work.)

But the real problem I have is that just about every episode has me all but screaming at the screen: “That makes no sense!  How can you be that stupid!  Why doesn’t anybody say something?”

• Father Jack confides in Chad Decker, who trots to Anna and then comes back and tells Father Jack that he did so.  But Father Jack keeps talking with him, further jeopardizing their 5th Column cell with every syllable.
• They blow up a shuttle and find human remains in it.  But no one asks why there are absolutely no Visitor remains as well.  (Viewers know Visitors can be immolated, turned to ash, but the FBI and the media don’t know that.)
• They blow up a shuttle, leaving debris scattered over a big field.  High-tech debris.  And the Visitors let the human police and FBI do the clean up, giving them access to Visitor tech.  (Viewers know the shuttle was a set-up by Anna, and thus might have been stripped of anything useful, but the FBI and the media don’t know that.)
• Hobbes is framed for the attack on Lisa and has his picture shown on the news.  But he still goes out to meet a contact in a public park: no hat, no sunglasses, no shaved beard, no hair cut, no bleached hair.  Why did the FBI have to search for this idiot for years?  (I suppose you could argue that Erica’s partner, who was a Visitor, was blocking efforts to catch him all that time to allow him to be used as a patsy later on, but come on.)
• And then there he is again in public in a church.  And not just that, but with Father Jack giving an anti-Visitor sermon that makes people angry enough to get up and walk out, right past the guy whose face was plastered all over the TV a couple days before because he tried to kill the daughter of the alien woman they are almost revering as a god.
• And Hobbes also sits right next to Erica: the terrorist the FBI has been hunting for for years, sitting next to the FBI agent heading up the task force to catch him?  WTF?
• Lisa’s face is slashed and her legs are broken.  Her legs get healed at the medical center at the start of the next episode (so the shock value of her mother having her legs broken is completely wasted).  But if they could heal her legs, why doesn’t anyone interrupt the press conference and ask why her face hadn’t been healed?  (Yes, Anna intentionally left it unhealed for the press conference shock value, but the press conference was held outside the medical center, and no one thought to ask about the facial injuries?  Does Anna really think she is fooling any humans about her having ulterior motives?)
• All the ships arrived at once at the beginning, but when Anna decides to leave, she has only one ship pull out rather than all of them.  Shouldn’t this be a rather obvious ploy to anyone in government circles?  To be sure, the blogosphere would be pouncing on it.
• Joshua calls while they are interrogating the human prisoner.  So do they leave the room to answer the call?  No, they pull out the special tech gadget and talk right in front of the guy.
• After putting an axe in the chest of the Visitor soldier who nearly killed them all, Hobbes — the experienced terrorist/soldier — leaves the guy struggling to get up.  What, you thought he would just die in a few minutes?  Shoot him in the head and be sure!
• Anna’s people know there are 5th Column rebels in their own ships, so why aren’t they constantly scanning for unauthorized communication activities, which Joshua does just walking down the hall?  We saw the intense monitoring of humans being down via the jacket cameras early on, so is it even conceivable that similar monitoring throughout the V ships doesn’t also occur?
• Speaking of unauthorized communication, Erica is constantly on her cell phone at the FBI office.  Surely all communications in those offices are super-sensitive and need to go through secure channels.  And God forbid that she turn away from the office windows through which someone could read her lips.
• Further on this topic, what is with allowing humans to walk around the V ship unescorted, going wherever they want?  (And Erica with a gun, to boot!)  Worst example of this being Joshua directing Chad to a “restricted” corridor.  Restricted to whom, given that a random human was able to walk right in with no escort, passcard, or security challenge?
• What the fuck is Anna’s plan?  In the original mini-series, we started to have an idea after an hour, but by the end of 13 episodes — the entire first season — we have no idea if she’s sucking the planet’s resources dry, eating the people, running from worse invaders, or what.

These things drive me up the wall, and not in the sense of “What does it mean?  I’ll have to keep watching!” from Lost.

I see the show has been renewed for a second 13-episode season.  Jesus Christ, please fix these fucked up plot holes!  (Yeah, I’m praying to Jesus to do it since I don’t think the writers will.)