V is for Intrigue

I’m pleased to write that after a less than dynamite second outing, this week in the land of V was riddled with fun twists and significant gains for both the Visitors and the slowly but surely coalescing resistance.

The curtain rises as Anna and the NYC visitors are granted travel visas and Chad prattles on in a chipper fashion about how freakin’ great it is. Tyler heads into the city to visit his newly liberated V buddies under Erica’s nose, and has an amusingly awkward meeting with Father Jack who’s waiting at the door. Mom and a priest? Nah. Right? Erica’s been probing watchlists to find credible candidates for the resistance, but gets called into work to investigate a death threat leveled against the Visitors.

Ryan and Valerie have an amusingly context laden conversation in which she defends the potential goodness of the Vs, but her secret alien paramour clearly knows better. Ryan meets with George, the human who organized the pilot’s ill-fated resistance meeting, and brings news of John May, leader of a mysterious “5th Column” internal traitor V resistance whose influence could swell the new rebellion’s numbers. Above the city, a newly not dead Dale wakes up on the mothership with no memories of who took him out, but he sure wants revenge.

Erica arrives at Visitor Central and is forced to barter with a member of the V security staff to expose the threat.  Back at her house, Tom’s data mining leads right to George. At a meeting with another old 5th Column buddy, Ryan finds himself on the wrong end of a pistol held by a former ally who now just wants to rejoin their evil brethren in hopes of being “reconnected” to some sort of blissed out hive mind state. Ryan reverses the gun on his former buddy and blows him away, leaving his mysteriously ashy remains to be later discovered by a V brute squad. Wait, ashy remains? Are they aliens or the Buffyverse version of vampires?

Erica spots a would-be shooter who’s managed to steal one of the V’s fancy blue jumpsuits, but she spots him and gives chase. Our favorite paranoid sarcastic fed takes him down, effectively positioning herself as a hero in the Visitors’ creepy slit eyes. The shooter is later revealed to be an evil V himself, but the joke’s on the lizards when Erica immediately uses that newfound trusted hero status to infiltrate a surveillance hub, revealing a window to the eyes of every invader through hidden cameras in those spiffy jackets. Tyler gets a pleasant surprise when Lisa and her visa show up for an impromptu pizza date and an invitation to rejoin the Peace Ambassadors. She is so trying to get him to knock her up.

Chads reports on one Mary Faulker, de facto leader of V haters after losing her husband in a plane crash during the Visitors’ arrival. This leads to Morena Baccarin hitting an absolute home run in a brief-but-haunting scene of Anna practicing different variations on feigned sympathy and literal crocodile tears.  In an assuredly creepy off camera exchange, Anna gets Mary to pull a complete 180 on her views regarding our benevolent new pals. Dale goes hunting for his memories in a holodeck-esque construct (which scientists really ought to get to work on) and unfortunately it doesn’t take much to recall Erica’s skills with a piece of rebar. His dreams of revenge are put to a surprising and triumphant end by an especially well placed 5th Column agent who shoots him up with something, leaving his state of existence once again TBD.

Tyler brings Lisa home for a close encounter of the third base kind when Erica comes home early, making every teenage boy’s worst nightmare come true. But a fast thinking (and fanboy appeasing) Lisa strips to her skivvies in time to convince Erica she’s just a garden variety human skank. We leave our heroes and villains till next time with yet another uniting of the plotlines when George introduces Ryan to Tom & Erica, and back on the aptly designated mothership, Anna & Lisa seem to clarify plans for that pregnancy I was predicting. Also, Lisa is Anna’s kid. Good for Tyler, getting a chance to father the little salamander grandbabies of the face of evil on earth.

For another take on this episode, check out Vs vs. ? by Liz Cooper.

Season 1, Episode 3: A Bright New Day (originally aired November 17, 2009)

For more on V, click here.

Tuesdays 8/7c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC and Michael Courtney