WRITERS: Christine Roum & Cameron Litvack[SPOILERS] I'm beginning to think reviewing V just isn't worth the effort. Since it came back from hiatus, it's improved in a few ways and there's certainly more happening every week now, but there's still a malaise hanging over everything. Elizabeth Mitchell looks utterly bored in every scene she's in; so much so I've forgotten Erica's supposed to be the lead. Joel Gretsch is also incredibly weedy as Father Jack, and Charles Mesure's tough-guy Hobbes has quickly become a cheesy beefcake with a mangled British/Aussie accent. The only saving grace is Morena Baccarin, who's so sublime as alien High Commander Anna that it's frustrating the show's just not worthy of her talent.
DIRECTOR: David Barrett
GUEST CAST: Charles Mesure, Lexa Doig, Mark Hildreth, Roark Critchlow, Rekha Sharma & Lucas Wolf
This week, Chad (Scott Wolf) accompanied Anna to a U.N Energy Summit in Geneva, where she intended to bring clean and renewable "blue energy" to the people, but finds unexpected opposition in the Secretary General over her plan to impart this humanitarian gift. Chad learned that the U.N are against accepting more V technology because it's already started to put so many people out of work in the energy and health care industries -- which is about the best political slant on alien first contact V's made yet.However, after Anna uses the blue energy to help the victims of a monsoon that's making world news, in gratitude Anna's allowed to take the stage during the summit to make her pitch, and it looks likely the V's will soon make the world dependent on an energy resource they control. Looking past the cackhanded way the writers treated the U.N, it was at least good to see the V's unrolling another plan for world domination, but I'm getting impatient with Chad's character (is he really so willing to turn a blind eye, or just dumb?), and Anna's right-hand man Marcus (Christopher Shyer) is just a walking device to ask questions the audience may be asking of Anna's motivations. Shame, as the actor has an otherworldly presence that nearly equals Baccarin's glassiness, so it would be nice to see him given a storyline to use it.
Back in the US, Erica found herself working as part of the V Task Force, now the FBI have become aware there's an anti-V group calling themselves The Fifth Column, meaning she's effectively chasing herself. The investigation got underway after the FBI found a warehouse full of murdered Fifth Columnists, but realize one managed to get away and now needs to be found. Working with her own Fifth Column comrades, Erica eventually found the frightened survivor of the slaughter (a young Greg Grunberg lookalike), and they decide to use him as bait to draw out the assassin on his tail.
Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) also took Anna's empathy test for Joshua (Mark Hildreth) and failed it, blaming her mission with Tyler (Logan Huffman) because it requires she fake a human relationship. Joshua realized that Lisa's psychology is becoming more human, so decided to keep her test failure a secret and instead earn himself a favour from Lisa, who could become a valuable asset for the Fifth Column if her emotions continue to bloom. Concurrently, Lisa and Tyler had sex aboard a shuttle orbiting Earth (what a way to pop your cherry!), so it all seems obvious that Lisa's going to become sympathetic to humanity thanks to her love for a human boy and eventually join the Fifth Column outright. Hardly an unexpected arc for her character, but it's a better use of Vandervoort than occasionally showing us her bra.
In a tiny subplot, Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto) was on the run from Ryan (Morris Chestnut) because she suspects he's a criminal of some description after finding his false IDs, and heads to a V-run health clinic to have her pregnancy checked. Luckily, Ryan managed to find Valerie seconds after a V doctor noticed the nature of her hybrid foetus, then killed and disintegrating the doc with a pill, before dragging his girlfriend away to tell her the truth.Overall, I'm actually being very kind with my ratings for V, but the gloves come off now. The writers have had enough time to make their mark and state its case for renewal, but too much of it hasn't clicked for me. Erica's a bore, the Fifth Column come across as feeble, you can't take Erica's gang seriously as a plausible threat, the V's aren't scary, the dialogue's often very stilted, and the plots wash over you. Baccarin's the unequivocal highlight every week, Chestnut's not too shabby, there's the odd good idea, but the majority of every episode just feels so predictable and slight.
20 APRIL 2010: ABC, 10/9c
