V S1E02: There is No Normal Anymore

"You still don't understand humanity."

Should have called it "The One Where Everyone Has an iPhone."

We want Anna's magic mirror! Clearly, they're not shying away from the potential camp appeal of the character, because that scene of her virtually trying on clothes seemed tailor-made for the gayboys in the audience. There were four gays watching the show in front of our TV last night and we all squealed whenever Anna appeared. Being the fashionable sort of gays, we quickly ditched any discussion of the rest of the series and got down to discussing her wardrobe. We were all in agreement that the show needs to have a sequence (like in the Sex and the City movie!) where Anna poses in couture for a Vogue editorial. This is why we can't be television writers. If it were up to us, Mad Men would be 40 minutes of Joan, Betty, and Trudy modeling clothes.

Not that we missed anything (we did watch it 2 and half times after all). Things are briskly moving along and we were happy to see them pickup right after the pilot's closing scene because if there was one major flaw in the pilot, it's that they skipped 3 weeks in the timeline, wiping out a lot of connections that needed to get made. A story like this requires some careful setting up of the particulars and if you're jumping around too much, you're not establishing a baseline from which to move forward. Look at the first season of Lost. The entire 20+ episodes covered...what? Maybe a month in the lives of the characters? That's why later seasons of the show paid off so well, because they did the work early on of setting up each character's story and place in the storyline.

We still think the show is strong, but all shows suffer from a form of first-season-itis and this show is no exeption. You can feel the writers kind of hashing it out on screen: who are these people; why do we care about them, if at all; how would they act in this situation or that one; that sort of thing. Clearly, Elizabeth Mitchell's Erica is being set up as a major player, if not THE major player in the resistance, so last night's episode felt like an attempt to really get to know her. Unsurprisingly, she's cool under pressure in the same way Juliet was on Lost, able to think on her feet, and savvy enough to know that she can't do it alone. She and the priest make a good team. We hope they resist the idea of pairing them in a romantic way. We don't think we're seeing Mitchell at her best, though. Four seasons on Lost convinced as that she's very good in these types of stories and she's just not quite there yet. It felt like she was struggling to find some hook in the material to hang on to.

Speaking of Father Jack, we like that they didn't try and portray him as a square-jawed heroic type (especially since he's literally square-jawed). Granted, the writers apparently think that a priest's job consists of moving boxes (seriously, what's with all the boxes?), but it was a smart choice to portray him as in over his head on this situation and looking to other, more knowledgeable people (like Erica) for help.

The kid is a douchebag but he's designed to be a douchebag, so no problems there. We do like Lisa, the teen slut version of Anna. The scene where she expressed doubts that he could be a V Ambassador because, well, because he's a douchebag (some concepts are universal), was masterfully played. You knew as the viewer that she was playing him but could also appreciate how well she was playing him.

We have to admit, for whatever reason, Ryan, the V in love with an earth woman, isn't really grabbing us yet. It's not the actor because he's so gorgeous we could look at him all day, but the storyline just isn't coming together for us yet. Not that it doesn't have a ton of potential. We had a minor discussion last night of the possibility of their being a V hybrid baby in the show's future and if Ryan and his not-yet fiancee were going to be the happy parents.

Still, the idea of V sleeper agents is a great one. Whether the V traitors like Ryan and his little automotive friend will come together or not, the idea that anyone could be a V is tantalizing. Who knows what's going to happen to Erica now that her former partner is awake? If he tells his people about her, then she's got a massive target on her back. Part of us wonders how long the show is going to pretend that these people can get back to their lives. If the Vs know who Erica is, how can she reasonably be able to go to work every day? At some point, she's going to have to go permanently underground.

Anyway, like we said, the show's still in that fetal stage, but it's developing nicely and the possibilities for storylines are looking mighty big. We're still on board. Especially if there are more Anna fashion shows in the future.

[Photo Credit: ABC TV]

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Labels: V Season 1, V Series