Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Stegall.
V
“Red Rain”
ABC 8/9c PM, Tuesdays
Written by Gregg Andrew Hurwitz and Scott Rosenbaum
Directed by Bryan Spicer
Warning: this review contains some spoilers. If you’d rather not know what the episode is going to include, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
“I may wear this skin, but I never forget what we are beneath.” —Anna
Maybe it’s because it’s been a while since we had an episode of V. Or maybe it’s just because, for reasons I cannot explain even to myself, I spent eleven hours Monday watching the Syfy marathon of the 1980s vintage V. For whatever reason, this episode was… dare I say, better? The ’80s version of this show resembled a porn film without the sex: bad hair, bad writing, bad acting, and ludicrously over-the-top music. The current incarnation of the series has been really, really slow off the mark, to be sure, but in this episode, we at least finally got a look at some skin—alien skin. And eyes and claws and tails. Still haven’t seen anyone eating a live mouse, but maybe they’re saving that for sweeps month. We got a nice throwback to the original series with the introduction of Diana, Anna’s mom, played by the original Diana, Jane Badler. Thank God her ’80s big-hair hairstyle was left behind.
Milli-mom (as opposed to octo-mom) Anna, having discovered that her zillions of babies have been sabotaged, invokes a red plague on the world; the sky rains red in a beautifully Biblical manner. Naturally, Anna lies through her razor teeth about it, claiming it’s intended to combat environmental pollution. It’s actually intended to help humans conceive more lizard babies (although I also have a sneaking suspicion it’s a flavor additive meant to make us tastier). As the resistance figures this out, Erica remembers that her phosphorus levels were unusually high when she had Tyler. Since this is V, where humans are stupider than a box of rocks, Erica doesn’t manage to put two and two together and figure out why Tyler’s DNA does not match his father’s. It probably doesn’t match hers, either. Given how dumb Tyler is, I’m surprised he has DNA at all—do rocks have DNA?
Unfortunately, Tyler survived this episode, again. Apparently the writers have decided to torture us with his continued presence; not since Wesley Crusher have I so fervently rooted for a character to die. I remain unimpressed with his adolescent affair with Lisa, Anna’s daughter. The politics in that relationship begin to resemble the Medicis on LSD: Lisa is allying with Tyler’s mom to take down her mom at the same time that Tyler is allying with Lisa’s mom to take down his mom. I may need diagrams and a cheat sheet by February. This underdone love story gets even more unsavory as Tyler’s mom pimps him out to Lisa and Lisa’s mom pimps her out to Tyler. The ick factor is going off the charts.
This episode was more complex dramatically, but too simple emotionally. The pace is up but the temperature is down. At the end of the last season, the characters were in emotional crisis: Ryan’s baby was being born, Anna’s babies were being killed, and Chad was undergoing some kind of epiphany. Everyone was a secret double agent. After a long hiatus, we come back to considerably ramped down emotions. The fanged fury that was Anna at the season finale is emotional, yes, but not quite the creature of terror she was last year. Erica is sleepwalking again, and Ryan has one note—anxiety. I’m not sure if this is good or bad; while I sort of wanted to see how the characters reacted emotionally to the events in their lives, I also wanted more action, and some sense of urgency.
“The soul is what lies beneath—the core of all humans, the wellspring of emotion.” —Diana
The most interesting character on the show continues to be Morena Baccarin’s Anna. She’s the only creepy character on this show. But the stress of dealing with idiot humans is getting to her, and when she has to euthanize her damaged offspring, she comes dangerously close to displaying human emotion. This raises concerns among her subordinates, who don’t trust human emotions. This seems to be an unfortunate family trait, as we are introduced to Anna’s mom, Diana. There are hints that Diana is more sympathetic toward humans than Anna, which may account for why she is not, or is no longer, queen. Anna takes the view that a human being’s soul can be contained in a test tube, which tells me that not only is she emotionally vulnerable, she’s stupid. It’s especially unworthy of the bad-ass boss she showed herself to be in her meeting with her subordinates; this lady’s version of a performance review makes Donald Trump look like a marshmallow. So why make her all vulnerable and wishy-washy? Maybe the writers are trying to say something about how an overemphasis on the intellect and the repression of emotions can come back to ambush you. I’d like to think they were aiming that high, but I suspect they’re not. I suspect what’s happening here is the recycling of some of the most worn-out clichés known to science fiction. I wish they’d go all campy with Anna and make her the Snidely Whiplash of prime time sci-fi.
“Anna’s a lizard? That sucks. She’s so hot!” —Sidney Miller
The unevenness of this series may be due to some revolving-door issues. The show’s original creator/producer, Scott Peters, was replaced in mid-season by Scott Rosenbaum, whose work on Chuck led me to hope for at least a modicum of that show’s self-aware self-mockery. The only way we’re ever going to take alien hybrid babies, lizards in human suits, and soap opera characters is with a grain of salt. Better the writers should run with that, make the show a little self-conscious, give us someone we can identify with. Erica, the earnest FBI agent who can’t clue in to her own son, is not it. Father Jack as a fighting priest is a washout. Ryan is yet another Angry Black Man with only one emotional response in his repertoire. None of these is a charismatic leader; none of them is even as strong a presence onscreen as Marc Singer was nearly thirty years ago. A new character, Dr. Sidney Miller (Bret Harrison, Reaper) seems to have an edge of black humor to him, but I don’t know if that’s going to be enough to lift the cumulative inertia of the rest of these characters. Anna may be feeding us phosphorus, but what we need is more irony.
Whether due to the slight re-tooling, or due to viewers’ forgetfulness, the audience came back for the second season of V. Unfortunately for ABC, they did not bring their friends. The show pulled in the same 6.5 million viewers as the last episode, but didn’t improve on those numbers. Worse, this maintains the show’s 60% viewer loss from its debut. Still, it’s a 2.1 share in the 18-49 demographic; if it maintains these numbers that’s probably enough to keep it from immediate cancellation. I don’t think ABC has high expectations from this series any more; certainly no one thinks it’s going to blossom into the replacement for Lost that ABC was hoping for. Maybe if they threw in some mouse-eating scenes…