V, episode: V
Apr. 12th, 2010 01:18 pmHeh.
astrocave went away out of mobile range for Easter, so this ended up with me texting him, and him e-mailing me back several days later when he finally got the texts. So here goes:
We open with the priest, still alive (dammit) being tended to by his fellow priest. Who's taking him to a V healing centre.
hnpcc: That priest is a V!!
The priest passes out before he can go "Noooooooo!!!!" (scary music)
Erica is at home, looking at a photo of her and Dweeb in happier times and wondering how the hell he ended up on an alien spaceship. I mean, other FBI agents are upset if their kids go to jail, but sure enough Dweeb goes one better. In the photo frame reflection she catches a glimpse of alien guy who stabbed the priest about to stab her. She kung fu's him, fails to kill him the first time by stabbing him with a steak knife where a human heart would be (Erica, did you learn nothing from Wash? Also, hang on, where'd she grab the steak knife from? Wasn't she in the lounge room?) but manages to put him down the second time with the pointy end of the photo frame. (The alien guy helpfully but somewhat stupidly helps her by pointing out that his heart isn't on that side of his chest. Heh.)
astrocave: Alien assassin guy: really crap. No wonder he felt he had something to prove.
hnpcc: Better follow up the second time!
astrocave: What did I ask for? Rayguns. Much more effective than a pointy stabby thing.
The Therapist, Ryan's fiancee, is starving. She's only 6 weeks pregnant and eating for her country. She hopes the 12 week scan will clear things up, which makes Ryan visibly nervous. Fortunately Erica rings and distracts him by telling him she's killed the V security guard and needs his body disposal services. And I'm suddenly wondering what V's eat. Hm. Erica can't do body removals, as she's planning on storming the V ship and rescuing Dweeb. God alone knows why... Oh, OK, he's her son and all, but really, she can't give him 5 minutes with his reptilian girlfriend? Ryan guesses that the V security guard was terrified of Anna finding out he'd failed to protect the warehouse and wanted to make sure he could say he'd taken out the terrorists before she skinned him alive.
Either way, Erica goes off to the V ship and makes a nuisance of herself by demanding to see Dweeb. Anna's Plastic PA comes out and placates her by letting her talk to Dweeb who goes on about how happy he is and how he'll be home later. Erica goes to grab/hug him and discovers that she's been talking to a hologram. Real Dweeb is still up in the ship, watching a Pink Floyd light show and spinning in circles while being watched by Lisa and Anna.
hnpcc: Dweeb is really annoying.
I have to quote Television Without Pity here, because this bit of their recap cracked me up completely:
Speaking of Tyler, he is in a holding tank on board the V ship. He seems to be watching a Pink Floyd laser light show and spinning in slow circles. Anna and her daughter Lisa are watching him. Maybe he's the Vs' version of a goldfish.
For some reason Dweeb as a fish makes me giggle. Still.
Anyway. Back to the show. The GIRAT has shown up again, this time reporting on the destruction of New York's flu vaccine supplies.
hnpcc: Well that was a crap terrorist attack. NYC stocks only!
(Seriously, would you report on this? Who would tell you about where the flu vaccines were stored?)
hnpcc: GIRAT is so not a reporter!
Anna sends her Plastic PA out to "help" the FBI find the bad guy. Mostly by providing them with a viable suspect. Plastic PA is worried that the resistance is growing - of which we've seen basically no evidence, it's the same four people it has been for the whole five episodes, only this time they've actually managed to blow something up without getting killed in the process. Anna tells him not to worry, she's about to set up an army.
Erica and Ryan are back together again (this resistance cell meets more often than my walking team, sheesh) and are splitting up so she can sidetrack the FBI investigation away from their Secret Cell and he can go take one of the samples of alien R6 he rescued and get another 5th columnist to analyse it.
Speaking of R6, the Priest is now being injected with it, having been healed.
hnpcc: Not lethal enough, dammit. And priest even more useless now!
With what looks like a horse syringe. He's still trying and failing to do the "Nooooooo!!!!" (scary music).
astrocave, yesterday: "What a stupidly enormous syringe. I suppose if you're mostly healing people with purple light you don't have smaller ones on hand."
hnpcc, yesterday: "Yeah but why would they have animal syringes? They could have stocked up on human ones!"
Ryan has found his fellow 5th columnist, a female doctor. She's surprised to learn about the cross-species pregnancy too, and refuses to speculate on how it could have happened, claiming that "Love Finds A Way". Sorry, but are you sure you passed medical school? Because that's rubbish. She also tells Ryan to make sure Anna doesn't find out, as she'd probably go troppo.
She also agrees to test the R6 and see if she can work out what it does. Will it matter? I mean if love is the magic ingredient it's probably not going to work anyway.
Anna's getting DrV to do medical checks on her potential soldiers who are being sent over from the other 29 ships. She's also rabbiting on about the R6, and in particular about the lack of uptake by the humans.
astrocave, paraphrased from yesterday: So the messages are: free healthcare is bad, vaccines are bad, vitamins are good, love cures all. Hm.
Anna plans to use the GIRAT's apparent high status to encourage people to take up the R6. Speaking of, GIRAT's in his human doctor's office being told that human technology (a) can't see any brain aneursym, and (b) couldn't fix it anyway. So hey, if you want to use unproven alien technology go for it! (Somehow I can't see the medical profession being quite so blase about their livelihoods being suddenly stripped away.)
Warehouse Guy finally makes an appearance, asking after The Priest. He finds him at the V healing centre, and helps him home.
Erica is at work, and isn't happy to find out that the VBI is taking over the explosion investigation. Uh, why? That makes no sense - it wasn't on V diplomatic soil, it wasn't their flu vaccine stocks... who the hell wrote this? Plastic PA comes in, and he and Erica exchange veiled barbs. Not very veiled in Erica's case. Anyway, V technology allows them to pull fingerprints off a picture of the explosive used in the blast. And sure enough they do. Is no one suspicious of this at all? Surely someone (probably a tech) is sitting there going... actually, no, that wouldn't work, even with your magical love-based technology. Or radar.
astrocave: Hang on, Erica is worried that seeing how the warehouse exploded will give them away? It was a self-destruct mechanism!
The fingerprints belong to a former British SAS guy who's now working as a mercenary. Surprisingly it's not for Blackwater. Erica buggers off with the file and gets together with Ryan again, postulating that this guy is being targeted because he could lead a resistance. In which case, what, the Vs are going to target everyone with specialised military training? That's quite a number of people actually. More if you get down to those without high level specialised military training but who actually are fighting anyway. God, half the male population of certain areas would have to be taken out.
(Side thought: I wonder what the fundamentalist position on aliens is. Just out of curiosity. I mean, would the fundamentalist Christian groups be setting up Rapture cells and going out to kill as many Vs as possible before the 7 years are up? Are aliens even mentioned in the Koran, the Bible or any of the other texts? How many new interpretations of verses would they need to justify a full scale war on spaceships? Just curious.)
Erica thinks they should get to ex-SAS Guy first and recruit him. Ryan doesn't necessarily think this is a good idea, but agrees. Erica is going to check Wash's files to see if he had stuff on this bloke. I mean, the V information had to originate somewhere.
astrocave: OK, so the FBI (admittedly, an alien undercover agent, but still an FBI agent) knows the address of the terrorist? And Erica's the only one who thinks to follow up on it?
Anna and the GIRAT are eating fubu. It doesn't kill the GIRAT. Pity. Anna thinks he should go and have his potential future aneurysm fixed, oh and film it for the general masses. She also wants to know why he hasn't broadcast his happy puff piece on the healing centres yet. Dammit, she paid for the fubu, she wants broadcast time!
Erica has found Wash's computer, done a search on his name and gotten his address and picture.
astrocave: For that matter - he was an alien. He knew where the terrorist guy was. The aliens want to get the terrorist guy. And they do it by trying to frame him for blowing up their warehouse? Why not, like, just go and shoot him themselves? They could so use some rayguns...
She heads over, enters and British ex-SAS Guy pulls a gun on her. Joke's on him because she brought Ryan, who starts a Mexican stand-off. They start talking.
Dean: Is this guy Australian?
One IMDB search later, yes. Well, born in the UK, moved to Sydney aged 5, trained at NIDA, worked in NZ, moved to LA. Either way, his English accent's... erm... not. Not consistently at least.
FakeBrit tells them he didn't blow up the warehouse. Dude, they know that. Erica ups the ante by phoning her boss and calling in a SWAT team. FakeBrit agrees to go with them, mostly in the interests of not being arrested (and getting the names of who framed him). Erica then waits for the SWAT team to arrive and call in the all clear, before arriving late and asking what's going on. I don't think she's as smooth as she thinks, her boss looks suspicious.
Dweeb is still being a goldfish (or possibly a lava lamp), only now Lisa and Anna are working their way through his memories. They get to his parent's divorce, at which point Anna tells Lisa they have what they need. You probably could have asked him about that. This will allow Lisa to fulfill her destiny, which sounds ominous for Lisa at least. They wake Dweeb up, and tell him to go home to Erica but that he needs to grow up and become a man and leave her. Dweeb looks confused.
The Secret Resistance Cell are meeting again, this time with FakeBrit, who wants money for involvement. They don't have money. They do however have a guy who can prove he's an alien by pulling his eyeball down and revealing the reptile eyeball within. That freaks FakeBrit to the point that he's more amenable to joining for little to no pay. Or just so he can see the freaky eyeball trick again - that'd be a winner at parties.
Dweeb rings Erica and tells her he's heading home (finally). Erica and the Priest are talking - he's convinced the Vs are turning him into a reptile with R6 (remember that?) and she's not that interested.
astrocave, yesterday: So you'd think when they're going "oh, we need to know how R6 interacts with humans" the Priest could put his hand up and say "test me!" or something.
Ryan talks to the 5th columnist. Turns out the R6 is for tagging purposes. Trust the Priest to get tagged. God he's useless.
The GIRAT is going the prime-time broadcast of his surgery route. Eeuw. Still, could be worse - could be colorectal.
Anna is inspecting the 8 potential soldiers who passed the medical exam.
astrocave: You're invading a planet and you only bring 8 soldiers? I mean, those ships are big! What sort of people did they bring? I'm thinking this is the B Ark...
DrV is explaining they've been chosen for an important mission. Anna enters and starts sniffing them.
astrocave: Anna walks up and down the row of 8 soldiers, sniffing with her super-sensitive alien nose to find the best soldier. And who does she pick? The biggest, meanest looking one. Ooh, that nose is so effective - it can tell who is the biggest.
And who has the most symmetrical face, incidentally. She's obviously doing the same thing as the chick from Species and sniffing out genetic defects in potential mates.
Dweeb comes home and talks to Erica. She's about to warn him off the Vs when he reveals that he's joined the Peace Ambassadors and pulls out his jacket. Erica immediately clams up in front of the camera, claiming that she's happy with his choices. Dweeb also repeats Anna's lines about growing up and becoming a man. Erica doesn't think that's that likely, ever. Dweeb also doesn't think the Vs have secrets. Heh, is he going to be surprised.
The Therapist is still eating. Geez, she had a crap role this week! She finds a dead mouse in a trap, and eyes it hungrily for a bit before the human side of her intervenes and she dumps it.
hnpcc: Worst pregnancy cravings EVER!!!
She tells Ryan - who fortunately for him came in after the dead mouse bit - that she actually wanted kids, but then he couldn't have them, but now that Love Has Found A Way she's actually really excited and happy that they're going to have them. Ryan looks... weirdly nervous and non-committal simultaneously.
Anna meanwhile is up for making babies with the symmetrically-faced, tall soldier she picked. It takes less than a minute. Geez Anna, it's not all about you. Then she declares she's hungry, develops a really bad CGI fang face and tears the somewhat startled soldier apart from food. Do reptiles do that? Isn't that more sort of an insect thing?
hnpcc: Really Worst Pregnancy Cravings EVER!!!
So at the end of 5 episodes, almost nothing has happened. This is the slowest moving "action" series I have ever seen. Bring back Diana!! She ate rats almost immediately!!! And she had a much funkier red uniform that was easier to dress up as at conventions.
astrocave: Not quite a rat, not quite eaten. Five episodes in, still no rat-eating, still no rayguns. Sigh.
But we do have free healthcare!
We open with the priest, still alive (dammit) being tended to by his fellow priest. Who's taking him to a V healing centre.
The priest passes out before he can go "Noooooooo!!!!" (scary music)
Erica is at home, looking at a photo of her and Dweeb in happier times and wondering how the hell he ended up on an alien spaceship. I mean, other FBI agents are upset if their kids go to jail, but sure enough Dweeb goes one better. In the photo frame reflection she catches a glimpse of alien guy who stabbed the priest about to stab her. She kung fu's him, fails to kill him the first time by stabbing him with a steak knife where a human heart would be (Erica, did you learn nothing from Wash? Also, hang on, where'd she grab the steak knife from? Wasn't she in the lounge room?) but manages to put him down the second time with the pointy end of the photo frame. (The alien guy helpfully but somewhat stupidly helps her by pointing out that his heart isn't on that side of his chest. Heh.)
The Therapist, Ryan's fiancee, is starving. She's only 6 weeks pregnant and eating for her country. She hopes the 12 week scan will clear things up, which makes Ryan visibly nervous. Fortunately Erica rings and distracts him by telling him she's killed the V security guard and needs his body disposal services. And I'm suddenly wondering what V's eat. Hm. Erica can't do body removals, as she's planning on storming the V ship and rescuing Dweeb. God alone knows why... Oh, OK, he's her son and all, but really, she can't give him 5 minutes with his reptilian girlfriend? Ryan guesses that the V security guard was terrified of Anna finding out he'd failed to protect the warehouse and wanted to make sure he could say he'd taken out the terrorists before she skinned him alive.
Either way, Erica goes off to the V ship and makes a nuisance of herself by demanding to see Dweeb. Anna's Plastic PA comes out and placates her by letting her talk to Dweeb who goes on about how happy he is and how he'll be home later. Erica goes to grab/hug him and discovers that she's been talking to a hologram. Real Dweeb is still up in the ship, watching a Pink Floyd light show and spinning in circles while being watched by Lisa and Anna.
I have to quote Television Without Pity here, because this bit of their recap cracked me up completely:
Speaking of Tyler, he is in a holding tank on board the V ship. He seems to be watching a Pink Floyd laser light show and spinning in slow circles. Anna and her daughter Lisa are watching him. Maybe he's the Vs' version of a goldfish.
For some reason Dweeb as a fish makes me giggle. Still.
Anyway. Back to the show. The GIRAT has shown up again, this time reporting on the destruction of New York's flu vaccine supplies.
(Seriously, would you report on this? Who would tell you about where the flu vaccines were stored?)
Anna sends her Plastic PA out to "help" the FBI find the bad guy. Mostly by providing them with a viable suspect. Plastic PA is worried that the resistance is growing - of which we've seen basically no evidence, it's the same four people it has been for the whole five episodes, only this time they've actually managed to blow something up without getting killed in the process. Anna tells him not to worry, she's about to set up an army.
Erica and Ryan are back together again (this resistance cell meets more often than my walking team, sheesh) and are splitting up so she can sidetrack the FBI investigation away from their Secret Cell and he can go take one of the samples of alien R6 he rescued and get another 5th columnist to analyse it.
Speaking of R6, the Priest is now being injected with it, having been healed.
With what looks like a horse syringe. He's still trying and failing to do the "Nooooooo!!!!" (scary music).
Ryan has found his fellow 5th columnist, a female doctor. She's surprised to learn about the cross-species pregnancy too, and refuses to speculate on how it could have happened, claiming that "Love Finds A Way". Sorry, but are you sure you passed medical school? Because that's rubbish. She also tells Ryan to make sure Anna doesn't find out, as she'd probably go troppo.
She also agrees to test the R6 and see if she can work out what it does. Will it matter? I mean if love is the magic ingredient it's probably not going to work anyway.
Anna's getting DrV to do medical checks on her potential soldiers who are being sent over from the other 29 ships. She's also rabbiting on about the R6, and in particular about the lack of uptake by the humans.
Anna plans to use the GIRAT's apparent high status to encourage people to take up the R6. Speaking of, GIRAT's in his human doctor's office being told that human technology (a) can't see any brain aneursym, and (b) couldn't fix it anyway. So hey, if you want to use unproven alien technology go for it! (Somehow I can't see the medical profession being quite so blase about their livelihoods being suddenly stripped away.)
Warehouse Guy finally makes an appearance, asking after The Priest. He finds him at the V healing centre, and helps him home.
Erica is at work, and isn't happy to find out that the VBI is taking over the explosion investigation. Uh, why? That makes no sense - it wasn't on V diplomatic soil, it wasn't their flu vaccine stocks... who the hell wrote this? Plastic PA comes in, and he and Erica exchange veiled barbs. Not very veiled in Erica's case. Anyway, V technology allows them to pull fingerprints off a picture of the explosive used in the blast. And sure enough they do. Is no one suspicious of this at all? Surely someone (probably a tech) is sitting there going... actually, no, that wouldn't work, even with your magical love-based technology. Or radar.
The fingerprints belong to a former British SAS guy who's now working as a mercenary. Surprisingly it's not for Blackwater. Erica buggers off with the file and gets together with Ryan again, postulating that this guy is being targeted because he could lead a resistance. In which case, what, the Vs are going to target everyone with specialised military training? That's quite a number of people actually. More if you get down to those without high level specialised military training but who actually are fighting anyway. God, half the male population of certain areas would have to be taken out.
(Side thought: I wonder what the fundamentalist position on aliens is. Just out of curiosity. I mean, would the fundamentalist Christian groups be setting up Rapture cells and going out to kill as many Vs as possible before the 7 years are up? Are aliens even mentioned in the Koran, the Bible or any of the other texts? How many new interpretations of verses would they need to justify a full scale war on spaceships? Just curious.)
Erica thinks they should get to ex-SAS Guy first and recruit him. Ryan doesn't necessarily think this is a good idea, but agrees. Erica is going to check Wash's files to see if he had stuff on this bloke. I mean, the V information had to originate somewhere.
Anna and the GIRAT are eating fubu. It doesn't kill the GIRAT. Pity. Anna thinks he should go and have his potential future aneurysm fixed, oh and film it for the general masses. She also wants to know why he hasn't broadcast his happy puff piece on the healing centres yet. Dammit, she paid for the fubu, she wants broadcast time!
Erica has found Wash's computer, done a search on his name and gotten his address and picture.
She heads over, enters and British ex-SAS Guy pulls a gun on her. Joke's on him because she brought Ryan, who starts a Mexican stand-off. They start talking.
Dean: Is this guy Australian?
One IMDB search later, yes. Well, born in the UK, moved to Sydney aged 5, trained at NIDA, worked in NZ, moved to LA. Either way, his English accent's... erm... not. Not consistently at least.
FakeBrit tells them he didn't blow up the warehouse. Dude, they know that. Erica ups the ante by phoning her boss and calling in a SWAT team. FakeBrit agrees to go with them, mostly in the interests of not being arrested (and getting the names of who framed him). Erica then waits for the SWAT team to arrive and call in the all clear, before arriving late and asking what's going on. I don't think she's as smooth as she thinks, her boss looks suspicious.
Dweeb is still being a goldfish (or possibly a lava lamp), only now Lisa and Anna are working their way through his memories. They get to his parent's divorce, at which point Anna tells Lisa they have what they need. You probably could have asked him about that. This will allow Lisa to fulfill her destiny, which sounds ominous for Lisa at least. They wake Dweeb up, and tell him to go home to Erica but that he needs to grow up and become a man and leave her. Dweeb looks confused.
The Secret Resistance Cell are meeting again, this time with FakeBrit, who wants money for involvement. They don't have money. They do however have a guy who can prove he's an alien by pulling his eyeball down and revealing the reptile eyeball within. That freaks FakeBrit to the point that he's more amenable to joining for little to no pay. Or just so he can see the freaky eyeball trick again - that'd be a winner at parties.
Dweeb rings Erica and tells her he's heading home (finally). Erica and the Priest are talking - he's convinced the Vs are turning him into a reptile with R6 (remember that?) and she's not that interested.
Ryan talks to the 5th columnist. Turns out the R6 is for tagging purposes. Trust the Priest to get tagged. God he's useless.
The GIRAT is going the prime-time broadcast of his surgery route. Eeuw. Still, could be worse - could be colorectal.
Anna is inspecting the 8 potential soldiers who passed the medical exam.
DrV is explaining they've been chosen for an important mission. Anna enters and starts sniffing them.
And who has the most symmetrical face, incidentally. She's obviously doing the same thing as the chick from Species and sniffing out genetic defects in potential mates.
Dweeb comes home and talks to Erica. She's about to warn him off the Vs when he reveals that he's joined the Peace Ambassadors and pulls out his jacket. Erica immediately clams up in front of the camera, claiming that she's happy with his choices. Dweeb also repeats Anna's lines about growing up and becoming a man. Erica doesn't think that's that likely, ever. Dweeb also doesn't think the Vs have secrets. Heh, is he going to be surprised.
The Therapist is still eating. Geez, she had a crap role this week! She finds a dead mouse in a trap, and eyes it hungrily for a bit before the human side of her intervenes and she dumps it.
She tells Ryan - who fortunately for him came in after the dead mouse bit - that she actually wanted kids, but then he couldn't have them, but now that Love Has Found A Way she's actually really excited and happy that they're going to have them. Ryan looks... weirdly nervous and non-committal simultaneously.
Anna meanwhile is up for making babies with the symmetrically-faced, tall soldier she picked. It takes less than a minute. Geez Anna, it's not all about you. Then she declares she's hungry, develops a really bad CGI fang face and tears the somewhat startled soldier apart from food. Do reptiles do that? Isn't that more sort of an insect thing?
So at the end of 5 episodes, almost nothing has happened. This is the slowest moving "action" series I have ever seen. Bring back Diana!! She ate rats almost immediately!!! And she had a much funkier red uniform that was easier to dress up as at conventions.
But we do have free healthcare!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 04:24 am (UTC)I am however loving your commentary, and think I'm getting a more accurate picture of the show than if I wasted an hour each week checking for myself.
I had to go see who FakeBrit was (never appeared on my radar before). Also while I was on the IMDb I discovered that the Priest is William Shatner's son-in-law.
Someone on another newsgroup said that the much-missed Diana, Jane Badler (who has been living in Australia for many years now), was going to be on Neighbours. Now there's a show that could really benefit from some rat-eating.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-18 01:53 am (UTC)I'm really enjoying V, pretty much for all the wrong reasons.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-18 01:55 am (UTC)