Re: V: 1x02: "There Is No Normal Anymore" 11/10/09 - Grading & Discuss
My favorite part. "What, you work here‽" "What, You're a Priest‽" in walks a Cylon.
A priest, a lizard and a Cylon walk into a bar...
Pretty good second outing. Okay, did anyone NOT know that the final image of this episode would be Lizard Wash's oh-so-surprising resurrection?
The foreshadowing was more obvious than a frakkin' mothership hovering over midtown Manhattan. Very middlebrow entertainment, but so far, I'm intrigued.
Not much else to comment on, plotwise, so I'll pick on the characters.
Love
Father Jack - Casting Joel Gretsch against type as slightly cowed man of peace instead of his usual ass-kicking type has really paid off. I find myself highly sympathetic to his desire to just go on with his life and not get sucked into anything scary and violent, which is at odds with his entire life philosophy, yet unable to just stand aside and do nothing.
Plus it's cute the way the writers are creating a Mulder & Scully dynamic between him and Erica, knowing full well the guy is a priest, naughty naughty.
Okay not so much yet, but we all know where this is going.
Fun fact that I just learned on IMDB: Grestch is William Shatner's son-in-law!
Like
Erica - Elizabeth Mitchell is doing a competent job as an FBI ass-kicker, but Gretsch is really the soul of this show. I like the little core team of "opposites" they're forming.
Anna - A cardboard role, and it's doubtful it will ever be much beyond that (wouldn't serve the story) but Baccarin is doing the best possible cardboard role. How does she make fluttering her eyelashes look so
evil?
Chad - Oh wow, if ever a guy was headed off a cliff, it's Chad. He actually thinks he can go toe-to-toe with the V's. This is gonna be fun. (But he's not quite slimy enough for me to root for something really awful to happen - instead, I hope he'll just learn a lesson the hard way and find his way to Erica & Father Jack's team.)
Marcus - Not a major character but as Anna's right-claw man, he matches her for restrained malevolence and natty satorial style. (Kudos to the costuming department for the V's wardrobe - they've done a nice job creating clothes that aliens would adopt if they wanted to try to mimic human clothing and didn't quite succeed in not looking alien).
Wait & See
Dale - With an actor like Alan Tudyk, I am really really
really hoping for something beyond just a straight "terminator" act. Let's see what the guy is really like - if he's an alien psycho, fine, but there's got to be more to him than just that. He could make up for my disappointment with Ryan (see below).
Misfire
Ryan - The "traitor V in hiding" really should be a breakout role, the kind that steals the show. Why is Ryan so dull? There's no excuse. Unlike the other scenes with V's, where they are either putting on an act for hew-mons or just being stiff and bwahaha in their inner sanctum, the scene with Ryan and his fellow traitor buddy should have been a chance to show them being, you know,
alien.
At least a little! Maybe their lack of nations signifies that they have more of an insectoid-type hive culture, and individualism and treason is actually very difficult for them. Show us how they differ from humans and start giving us hints about why they decided to turn traitor anyway.
Also, Ryan is a stupid name for an alien. Don't ask me why.
It just is.
Tyler - Our very own Wesley Crusher (his buddy is Jar-Jar). Will some V just please eat his brain already.
Hardly Register
Lisa, Valerie - Nothing more than boring "girlfriend" roles so far.
I nodded off toward the end, was there some shocking scene or something? The last thing I remember was the mechanic telling Ryan all about his fiance. Could someone fill me in on what happened afterward?
Alan Tudyk (Dale) woke up in a pod on the mothership, right on schedule. Bwahaha! Now he will go seek his sudden but inevitable revenge on Erica and all the other hew-mons.
The numbers are out, the episode got 10 million viewers, versus 13 or 14 million last week. I'm amazed they held onto so much of the audience from the pilot.
I'm not surprised. It's nice, unchallenging, middlebrow entertainment. If ABC doesn't screw it up with idiotic scheduling, it could have a run of 3-4 years which is all I'd really want from this premise anyway.
I guess it's about a resistance forming to fight the Visitors, but the Visitors haven't even done anything that sinister yet.
It's like they've decided that the audience knows the V's are evil and don't have to show it. A smarter show might play around with the idea that the V's could be blameless and Erica and the others are just being paranoid.
There's simply no time to get invested in the characters. At all. I can't even think of a single character's name other than Anna, and that's not a good sign.
The kid is a great example. "See, this kid's a loser. BAM! He's now got confidence and a sense of right and wrong, but we the audience know it's misplaced! Character development, bitches! Okay, next we have..."
It's all
Heroes fault. The
V producers have read us bitching about how the show goes in circles and the characters never go anywhere, so they're determined not to make that mistake. Plotting at lightspeed!
I do recall seeing the occasional episode of the original series, but not so I would remember who the heck Willie or Martin are. They might have been dull as dishwater but that doesn't mean Ryan is the character I'd want him to be for this show.
