Last week, I prayed V would pull out the stops for its season finale and finally treat us to some epic battling, or at least pull back the curtain and reveal the aliens as malevolent to the whole world. One out of two ain't bad? On the one hand, instead of Anna's army of soldiers waking up and marching on Earth, Erica blew them all up. It's a disappointing, but probably necessary move for the show, especially considering it just got picked up for a second season and probably doesn't have the budget to transform into a Terminator-esque scorched-earth survivalist show.
On the other hand, in just about the only plot development that wasn't completely telegraphed from the get-go, a vengeful Anna activated some protocol on all of her invader ships to cover the planet in weird red clouds. What's up with that? No idea. But you gotta figure it's gonna have some impact on the reputation of the visitors next season. The positive reaction of some of Jack's parishioners to his anti-alien speech suggests at least an expansion of the dissident crowd in the future. I certainly approve of that. One of V's many, many flaws is that watching the aliens pull a fast one on humanity quickly got boring – especially Anna's knowing smiles to the camera or Erica & co.'s awkward public support of the visitors.
A game-changer like this is what the show needs, but it's too bad the rest of the episode was as plodding as usual. Sure, plenty of stuff happened, but apart from the red sky, was there anything that happened in the finale that hasn't been hinted at for weeks and weeks?
Let's think. Lisa put her money where her mouth is and assisted the Fifth Column, giving Erica the blue energy bomb she needed to blow up the soldier eggs, and freeing Joshua to create a diversion. Valerie gave birth to a lizard hybrid, and then Anna killed her, using her death to turn Ryan back to her side. Chad, finally, after a LOT of prodding, figured out that the aliens are up to no fucking good.
Killing off Valerie might have been more shocking if that character had anything to do for the entire show except look a bit concerned. Once she popped out the lizard baby (the only interesting part of her), the writers had no more use for her. Ryan's growing emotional distance from his fellow Fifth Columnists had been hinted at since the John May episode, so I wasn't surprised to see him accept Anna's bliss and rejoin the fold, but even for a show this lazy, I could not overlook the plot twist in which the visitors tell him to leave the room while Valerie gives birth, and he just…does. Even though he's a SWORN ENEMY of Anna's, he accepts her at her word when she says that Valerie's death, which he didn't see, had nothing to do with her. Just how stupid is he supposed to be? Why on earth did he leave in the first place, when Valerie was literally dragged on board by a crazy soldier who likes to chow down on fresh-killed deer?