Kudos to Anna to finally starting to use her noggin and subvert any possibility of the Fifth Column winning a PR war - though she shouldn't have had to wait for inspiration from them. She could have fabricated that scenario all on her own, with a shuttle of V's and humans (best that way) and some of her own people posing as Fifth Columnists to shoot it down.
Let the authorities capture one or two surviving terrorists, so they can foam at the mouth on worldwide TV how much they hate the dirty aliens, etc, and generally sound unappealing and horrible. Then have them manage to commit suicide before anyone gets too inquisitive about them medically. Let the popular imagination believe these "suicides" were the work of more evil Fifth Columnists, because the police and defense apparatuses are riddled with them. Make humans feel guilty about the bigotry and violence of the Fifth Columnists, and feel ashamed that humanity's first encounter with lovely, blameless aliens has taken such a nasty turn.
In short, it's stupid-easy for Anna to win any PR war, which is why that io9 column we debated last week was way off the mark. PR is Anna's strength. As long as she's using it even semi-effectively, Erica's team has no hope.
What Erica needs to do is start thinking a bit harder about the oddity that not only are there Fifth Columnists who are V's, but they seem to be running the show, and have been running the show for years. Far from being a scary monolithic force, the V's seem very prone to rebellion against Anna. Erica should be striving to understand this much better. What motivates Ryan and Joshua? How can she replicate that phenomenon to undermine Anna's power base right under her nose?
Erica should leave the public PR war to Anna and concentrate on attacking Anna's weak point - that her minions are willing to turn against her because of some reason. I guess that reason is the allure of human emotion, and as dopey and sappy as that may be, that's the logic of the show and we have to accept it. Erica hasn't figured that out yet, much less devised ways to spread its influence, but she should.
But enough about tactics, there's a bigger issue here, that this show has displayed a very troublesome fatal flaw: GUTLESSNESS! Why exactly would Anna put human corpses on that shuttle when she could send some live humans to their doom and reap the PR benefit of weeping families on TV, cursing the evil, bigoted Fifth Column?
Because the writers don't want to make Erica and the gang look bad. Feh! There's an interesting idea that Father Jack wanted to save one life - Chad's - and thereby ended dozens of lives. And if the writers had let the scenario play out honestly, that's exactly what should have happened. It's nice to try to save lives in wartime, but naive to think you always have the power to do so.
In war, the only way to guarantee that you will keep the moral high ground is to withdraw from the battle altogether. Then people who don't care about the moral high ground will take over, and the results will certainly be worse than if you had the guts to stay in the fight. So that method of keeping the moral high ground is a self-indulgent sham. In reality, there's no way to hang onto the moral high ground, the world being what it is, regardless of whether you fight or not, so isn't it better to make the best of a bad thing and tough it out? Or if you withdraw, fine, but don't pretend it makes you any better than the flawed people who do choose to tough it out.
But this show isn't interested in addressing any issues that will make the audience uncomfortable. Instead, it's going to take a shallow, mindless approach - good Erica vs bad Anna and their respective teams, blowing shit up real good. This is
Stargate all over again.
And Tyler... that little bitch drags down every scene he's in.
He is way too old to go crying to mommy. The writers need to make him a villain, asap! It's the only thing that will salvage his role in this show. He just damn unwatchable now.
Ryan continues to be an ass. He's a V, right? Is Anna the only V who knows why they are on Earth? Ryan has endless information about the ships, the tech, the biology ... but he only gives it away when necessary and he doesn't know WHY they came all this way to invade? I'm confused. Why has he not sat them all down and infodumped yet?
Why hasn't Erica insisted on it? Forget the ships and the tech - Ryan and Joshua's mindset and motives are the real key to victory.
No one watches the show that airs after Lost. They go and discuss Lost instead.
Not after this week's
Lost!
Even if
V were as good as
Lost, I couldn't have watched anything after that.
V gained something like a 0.3 in the Demo this week compared to last week, because it had a new Lost episode as a lead in this week.
That's not all that much compared with expectations for a strong show helping a weak one that follows it, but it's good for
V if
Lost isn't responsible for much of its ratings because next season, it's going to have to make it on its own. The suits will take into consideration whether
V has its own fanbase now. Since the ratings are stable, it seems to have just enough to survive. As disgruntled as I may be with this show, there isn't much on TV with actual spaceships and aliens. I hope it gets another saeson.
