Well it seems as though the string pullers behind V have heard that people are not happy with the show, so they are attempting to spice, and speed it up a little. The thing is, it feels as though they are not quite sure how to do it.
The main point of the episode is that Erica and her band of anti-V freedom fighters want to catch one of the Vs, after they find a whole bunch of Fifth Column-ers murdered. This is literally what they spend the episode trying to figure out. They eventually use someone – Alex – who escaped from the murderous Vs as bait, and even though Alex does, the rebels catch the sniper. Only problem is, that he is human.
There are some issues with this whole idea, apart from the glaring one of what they were going to do with a cornered V once they got hold of them. There is entirely far too much reliance on Jack’s priesthood to get things done. There seems to be this belief that unless a man of the cloth tries to coerce someone then there is no point. The character of Alex seems to have just been introduced to die, which would be fine if he had more to do in the episode except fill space.
As well as this, Anna is in Geneva trying to give the humans the “gift” of blue energy – clean, sustainable energy – but because she is not invited to speak, she is excluded from the talks. Conveniently though, a monsoon strikes a small island and Anna is able to turn the tragedy to her advantage and show off what Blue Energy can do. Of course, she is then invited in to the UN, but there is still a voice of scepticism in the form of the secretary general who maintains that she played politics with tragedy and should not be trusted.
Thank god someone in power is listening to their gut and not allowing the Vs to charm them; the show seemed to be going down the route that everyone in power was charmed by the Vs… And it was getting a little old. The secretary general seems to be the voice of reason. It seems that he is going to have a bigger part to play in the series overall.
In other news, Tyler is getting more and more annoyed with Erica for not telling him the truth about who his father is, and this is driving him closer to the Vs. This is not really surprising, seeing as this as been the direction he has been going in all along. Lisa has failed the empathy test – it seems that she really is falling for Tyler – so when they finally do the nasty in a spaceship, it’s not that much of a surprise either. Shame that Florence and the Machine’s great song Cosmic Love is used in a very clunky and obvious way over this scene. Waste of a good song. Joshua covers up for Lisa, so now she owes a favour to the Fifth Column.
Finally, Ryan finds Valerie – she went missing at the end of the previous episode – and protects her from a V at a Healing Centre who discovers that her baby is not human and is about to attack her. Surely the truth must out here? This was going to be one of the most interesting storylines of the show and it somehow got sidelined by other, less interesting subplots.
The end of the episode is pretty anticlimactic. The sniper is caught and tells Erica “We can’t win”. Well, if that is the case, then there is nothing left fighting for, and if there is nothing left worth fighting for, is there anything left work watching for? The show seems to have lost momentum in its second half. Maybe the long haitus that the show took in the US was detrimental to its survival, or maybe the writers just could not figure ouy where the show was supposed to go. Either way, if the show keeps going the way it is, it seems to be only a matter of time before it is cancelled – viewers are down, as is buzz and remakes of old shows rarely do well. It will be interesting to see if V can claw its way back from the edge.
Oh, and the CGI is still dreadful. As is Lisa’s make up. I have not seen such an obvious tide mark in years.
GS Reviewer: Brogen hayes
