Review: V – “There is No Normal Anymore”

On the bright side, V sort of did what I wanted in slowing things down for its second episode. Unfortunately, the show’s priorities are still at complete odds with what I find interesting about the initial scenario of charismatic yet evil aliens arriving on Earth one day. If they could nail that I might be able to forgive the generally weak acting and poor dialogue, but the combination of all those frustrating elements together is tough to push through.

Picking up right where the pilot left off, the storyline given the most time is the burgeoning partnership between FBI agent Erica and Father Jack after they survived the V attack on the resistance meeting and they’ve become – all too easily – fully aware of the conspiracy at hand, if not its goals. The immediate problems posed to them are whether they can trust each other and agree on the foundations of the larger conflict and who, if anyone, else can they trust. Unless the audience was being thrown a half dozen red herrings, it seems like several other FBI agents and the elder priest may also be Visitors, or else they’re just mysteriously supportive and highly defensive of their cause. One way or another, we’re given the impression the people around the two central characters shouldn’t be confided in. There’s the start of what’s sure to be too many reveals of who has been a V all along and countless paranoia storylines. As if to drive the comparisons to Battlestar Galactica and its Cylon skinjobs home, Recka Sharma appears as a fellow FBI agent who seems unusually interested in learning who may be spouting crazy conspiracy talk against the Visitors. Could she be playing for the other side? Signs point to yes. Again. But with every single colleague of both characters suspicious in some way, there’s a point where you have to ask what the hell the Visitors are up to. What is the goal that requires having large-scale secret infiltrations of government and social services along with the above-board public relations blitz?

The major blown opportunity in this episode, however, was doing absolutely nothing with the background debate over whether the United States should establish diplomatic relations with the aliens hovering over its cities. This so-called debate is mentioned a few times but not a single pro or con is ever mentioned. The episode goes so far as to tease journalist Chad Decker doing a broadcast on this very issue only to cut away as soon as possible in order to keep anyone from saying anything even remotely of substance. See, it’s the politics and the bigger issues that I find potentially fresh and interesting here. Of course, the opening of diplomatic relations is a foregone conclusion, hell the pilot already had the V giving tours of its ships to teenagers. The government in this show’s universe doesn’t really appear to consider aliens to be of any conceivable threat or even incidental danger. I’m a given a more thorough security check at the airport than this government gives Anna when she comes to Earth. Anyway, even though is stuff is a bust Chad Decker is still one of the best characters the show is offering if only because he seems genuinely intelligent and thoughtful, and his plot involves some semblance of maneuvering ethical quandaries.

The teenage son plotline returns in perhaps even more embarrassingly awful ways than the pilot. He’s quickly made a peace ambassador for the V but almost as quickly starts punching out protesters out of an absolutely childish concept of indirectly defending Lisa’s (his V crush) honor. This kid and his friend are purportedly seventeen years old but they act several years younger, as if they’re jealous that their peers have already hit puberty and so find immature ways of compensating. Lisa is seemingly disgusted by his actions and the program decides to investigate whether he should remain, but no one really cares. This whole element of the show is dreadful. It reveals nothing about the conspiracy plot or anything substantial about any thematic material. We’re just watching a functionally braindead teen try to impress a blonde alien. There’s absolutely no chemistry between them, nothing to suggest either one should be interested in the other. It’s almost impressive how superficial and juvenile it manages to be.

There’s a mostly throwaway subplot with Ryan, the V traitor, seeking an old acquaintance, presumably another traitor, for help in healing a gash in his arm from the previous episode’s fight. This doesn’t really get anywhere except to point out that like everyone else, the traitors have trust issues too. There was an odd moment at the end, where his girlfriend notices an upside down picture in their apartment and upon inspection reveals a small note with a name and address. We suspect this was left by the acquaintance and Ryan tells the girlfriend that it’s just a friend, but what makes no sense is that she expresses no question about his not knowing what it was doing there, or more pointedly, why someone secretly entered their home and left a note! This is either more terrible writing where characters act nothing like real people, or she’s a card carrying V and is keeping tabs on him. I’m not sure which is the better option.

Ultimately, V‘s biggest problem is that it lacks any relevance to the world I live in. A world in which government is almost completely absent from a situation involving mass alien arrivals is one that I will never understand, nor relate with. On the microcosmic scale, individuals don’t act like real people either. V currently resides in a magical world devoid of politics, ideologies, trust issues, even an instinct towards survival. The latter two only seem to materialize once our protagonists have knowledge that the Visitors aren’t what they claim to be. I hate to use the phrasing since it’s somewhat nonsensical, but it’s shocking how a show in 2009 can try so hard to avoid all the themes and trappings of a post-9/11 world, when it so obviously should be about those very things.