After months of waiting, with fans clamoring on ABC’s doorstep, building gigantic mock spaceships and sending pet lizards to studio heads, V is finally back with us after an endless break. Those lackluster first four episodes sure kept me salivating (hey, at least ABC didn’t release a $40 “V, Season One, Part One” DVD) and I was really encouraged by the kooky anti-big government immunization conspiracy slant the show took in its final episode.
Amid rumors of creative turmoil, V has a new showrunner, the talented Scott Rosenbaum (who cut his teeth on The Shield and Chuck), and a plum timeslot after the final episodes of Lost to see if it can ensnare some new fans. So, was “Welcome to the War” much of an improvement? Not really. There were definitely some glimpses of how V could, under the right circumstances, be a fun show to watch. But the fundamental flaws it had back in November haven’t really gone away.
This week’s title suggested a stepping up of the show’s action quotient, which had been very lacking. That didn’t really happen, but the wheels have started turning towards something a little more intense than Erica and her elite squad of morons blowing up flu vaccines. On the resistance side, a new member was added, and he’s a sexy English mercenary for hire! On the alien side, Anna had awkward sex with a nervous-looking porn actor and apparently that’s enough to furnish them with an entire army. So, the deck’s still stacked against us Fifth Columnists, I guess.
I’ll talk more about Anna’s awkward sex life later. Back to V’s most particular, grating flaw: for a show about an alien invasion, there sure are a heck of a lot of scenes where people talk in windowless rooms. Or on green-screened sets. All they do is talk. Yak, yak, yak. It really detracts from the menace of the aliens when a supposedly atmospheric shot revolving 360 degrees around them in their spaceship instead makes everything look like a shitty videogame. I feel like a cheap-looking set, no matter how cheap, would still distract less.
The humans’ scenes aren’t a whole lot better, because most of the characters still don’t feel fleshed-out enough to be having real conversations; instead dialogue about rebellion and resistance is just being bounced around the room. Elizabeth Mitchell is doing her best, and she sells lines like “IF I HAVE TO CROSS A LINE TO BLOW THAT BITCH OUT OF THE SKY, I WILL” as best she can. None of the others—shifty Georgie, handsome Ryan and brow-furrowed Father Jack—feel larger-than-life, which they really should on a show like this.
There were definitely some cool moments this week. I liked Ryan’s original method of showing that he’s a visitor by pulling his eye down. Anna sniffing at the beefcake studs chosen to populate her army was kinda cute, and her chowing down on her mate afterwards was the kind of freaky shit we need to see more of. Best was Lourdes Benedicto, who has had nothing to do as Ryan’s pregnant girlfriend Valerie, eating a thousand omelets to satisfy the lizard gestating inside her and then contemplating eating a dead rat. Perfect way to wink at the old show while still being amusingly gross.
But most plot points in “Welcome to the War” were just ridiculous. The flu vaccines got blown up, so the Visitors offer to help the FBI solve the case with their case-solving computer machine, which can seemingly pull prints off of C4 even after it’s exploded. V’s iteration of the FBI, who have to be the most pathetic Dunder-Mifflin-esque crime-fighting unit I’ve ever seen committed to television, are happy to have the work taken off their hands and try and arrest the suspect the aliens frame, a British paramilitary gun-for-hire dude called Hobbes. And heck, they almost nab him, but he escapes out the back door, because what FBI SWAT team would remember to cover the back door when going after one of America’s Most Wanted?