V: V is for Meh

PPM, or Post-Pilot Malaise, is a condition affecting infant stage television programs. Its symptoms are marked by the presence of a series premiere so ambitious that either the writers feel the need to give the characters a week to process their thoughts or sometimes the producers realize that after said pilot, there’s only enough cash left in the budget for low grade exposition. In most cases symptoms only last a week, but V has definitely caught itself the PPM bug and the patient requires further observation.

Fleeing the scene of the Visitors’ warehouse massacre, Erica and Father Jack witness a V shuttle tidily moving bodies from the scene. A 911 call in hopes of luring backup to the scene meets the unfortunate fate of being tracked and rerouted to an extraterrestrial call center of doom, sending another pointy flying death bot after our heroes. But Erica once again proves handy with an iron pipe, and knocks the probe cold before it can identify their faces. They part ways with a commitment to foster a resistance and trust no one, but then proceed to spend the remainder of the hour bungling that promise in frustrating fashion. Erica plays dumb about the incident, especially the death of evil partner Dale, but her hand is forced when Jack shows up at the FBI all boy scout loyal to report what he knows in reaction to the disconcertingly pro-V stance of an elder man of the cloth, who I’m betting is totally a lizard. Elizabeth Mitchell gets more chances to flex her awesome skills of deception and dry sarcasm in convincing her boss that Dale was just some sort of garden variety domestic terrorist, and eventually winds up again hitching her wagon to Jack’s desire to resist. There’s nothing glaringly wrong with the plotline, it just feels more like a story necessity than legitimately entertaining.

The meandering low points of the hour laid in the actions of Tyler and Ryan, as each found themselves drawn towards opposite sides of the V war on the still distant horizon. Tyler keeps avoiding his mom to put on a chintzy uniform and make goo goo eyes at one of the sexy snakeskins, but winds up becoming the most stupidly ironic “peace ambassador” ever when he punches a protestor in the face. Fairly inconsequential. Ryan seeks out a fellow good guy traitor Visitor to fix his little “real skin visible through the foot long gash in my arm” problem. He gets his skin, but not without lots of “I don’t wanna get involved” complaining. There’s also a pinch of domestic melodrama over Valerie finding the engagement ring, but these two just don’t quite matter enough to the grand scheme of things to make me care yet.

All the best material this week gets saved up and showered upon the uneasy press liason between Chad & Anna. Chad’s still feeling like a spineless patsy for caving to Anna’s censorship demands (as well he should) but he makes strides to take back some of the power in the relationship and do a little soul cleansing manipulation of his own by using a national debate over travel visas for Vs to give V opponents national face time. And thanks to the broadcast’s paradoxical effect of increasing Visitor support among the population, Chad is more popular with the evil overlords than ever. I’m hoping for a big valliant expose in Chad’s future, but the reporter clearly still has a long way to go.

Season 1, Episode 2: There Is No Normal Anymore (originally aired November 10, 2009)

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Tuesdays 8/7c on ABC

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