By Lisa Fary
Did everyone involved with writing and production have hands of lead? ‘Cuz there was a lot of heavy handed nonsense here. Get it? Heavy handed? Lead is heavy, and if someone’s hands were lead, they’d be heavy hands. Hence, heavy handed.
That’s the kind of heavy handedness at play in V.
Where do I even begin? Let’s start positive, which is uncharacteristic of me. Let’s talk Morena Baccarin’s hair.
There was never any doubt that Baccarin is pretty, but the short hair shows off how beautiful her face really is. What I wouldn’t give to have the cheekbones and chin to pull off that pixie haircut.
Staying positive now . . .
The Visitors’ ships were an improvement over the original, featureless disks of the 1980s. The interior was also cool. Light and airy, with a greenhouse like ceiling and lots of open spaces. Like a space loft.
Ummmm. . . thinking here. . .
Sorry, V. All I’ve got left for you are problems. Problems such as. . .
Giant Spaceships
I know. Since when do I think giant spaceships are a bad thing? When they’re still expected to be jaw dropping, amazing, holy crap pieces in the program.
We’ve seen giant space ships hovering over the world’s cities so many times that they’re effectiveness is gone. Hitting me over the head with HEY! AWESOME SHIP, HUH? does nothing to change my hovering-ship fatigue.
But, that doesn’t mean we can’t have hovering ships. District 9 handled the hovering-ship fatigue really well: the Prawn ship had been hovering over JoBurg for 20 years. We were expected to think, “OK, there’s a ship there,” fold it into the story, and move on. It was there, without drawing attention to itself.
Only the Faithful See the Way
There was one bit with the church I liked – Father Jack flat out asked how he was supposed to explain the existence of God in a world with extraterrestrial life.
Otherwise, the church scenes were annoying and full of lead fisted imagery, like the crucifix falling, headed straight for the guy in a wheelchair. . .
The Christ icon fell and almost killed him! But, he was saved by the priest! Get it? A hollow idol of devotion will nearly kill humanity! But, we’ll be saved by faithful shepherds, pushed away when we can’t help ourselves.
Conspiracy Theory Nuts are Right and Deserve to Be Validated
Wild eyed conspiracy theorists hold the truth of the Visitors – they’ve actually been here for decades and revealing themselves is the last step in their plan to destroy humanity. No idea how they got this information; I expect the source of the knowledge to be revealed at some point. However, people are surprisingly willing to buy the Curly Haired Nut’s explanation with no real evidence. For instance. . .
CurlyNut hands Juliet a photo – it’s the same creepy dude from a crime scene passport she processed recently.
Hmmm. He’s creepy in this candid picture. And he’s creepy in that passport picture, too? Must be a Visitor. You know, I looked creepy in my old passport photo and have looked creepy in candid shots since then. Could I be a Visitor? YEAH.
It’s kind of like Orly Taintz and her birther cult. Believe without evidence.
“This is Independence Day!”
Really, kid? You shouldn’t be smiling when you say that, especially when you’re standing under a hovering mothership. That’s a good way to get dead in an alien invasion situation. Use the knowledge your pasty geek life has given you: when a mothership swoops in, it’s a good time to visit that Real America we’ve heard tell about.
You know. Real America, where the teabags roam free.
Universal Healthcare is Universal Evil
Teabags are going to looooove V. Universal health care is a tool of evil. Being happy and processing emotions is actually evil. A message of hope and change? Yup. Evil.
Counting down to a Photoshopped image of Visitor President Obama in 3. . . . . 2. . . . . 1. . . .
Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She’s angry that it’s almost 2010 and she still doesn’t have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
I'm SO glad I'm not the only one who caught the Anti-Obama message in V..and I hope (there's that word again) that it stops. We'll be discussing this on The Werd this week..OOH, Lisa, you should come by for this one.
-CR
Seriously. I think you'd have to be some kind of willfully ignorant, culturally illiterate twerp to miss that!
Heh, heh. GREAT review. I felt VERY uncomfortable with the universal health care and religious references! Ugh. FAIL! The health care bit was especially indicative of the shallow writing—AMERICA is the ONLY industrialized country on earth that doesn’t already have “universal” health care—so, WTF were these advanced aliens offering France, et al? Super deodorant? I’m afraid much of that lead yer talking about was between the Vidiots’ ears. Tee-hee. And yes, Baccarin = BOING! Damn, she fine! Well, at least theirs baseball tonight, eh?
I honesty didn't think about that – what are they giving the rest of the world's industrialized nations? After universal health care, I think the next evil liberal thing they could offer would be clean, renewable energy.
Interesting. I had an issue with the faithful in this, too, but it was a different issue. That priest is probably my least favorite character, because all I kept thinking was "Why is this dude even a priest in the first place?" He doesn't seem to particularly LIKE it. He seems like every other cliche movie priest – he's the priest who's not really faithful. He's the priest who has trouble with the church. He's the priest who takes his collar off the first chance he gets, and he probably won't put it on the rest of the series! And I give it about two more episodes before he's making out with Elizabeth Mitchell because he's all pent up and frustrated and all he wants to do is fight aliens and have sex. Really? I actually sided with the other priest (who I guess was the pastor?), who was all about the aliens being part of God's plan. I mean, the Bible talks about the creation of Earth and of humanity, but it doesn't say "Oh, and PS, the life on Earth is the ONLY life God created anywhere ever." There's no reason why the existence of God and the existence of life forms other than human beings can't be reconciled, and this lead priest guy started flying off the handle and having issues with his faith IMMEDIATELY. It's like, "dude, you got into the wrong line of work!"
I actually liked this pilot, though I agree it was heavy-handed. My biggest problem is that within three weeks there are these extreme reactions. You brought up District 9, and I think that's a great comparison, because District 9 handles alien invasion really well. It took them 20 years to get to the point they're at when the movie begins. Meanwhile, on V – within three weeks there's spaceship tourism? There's public meetings at the UN? There are already protesters with signs and alternately people really, really willing to help the visitors? I would've loved it if they would've spent a bit more time processing the fact that….holy crap! There are beings other than us in the universe! Everyone in this pilot was already acting as though aliens were already a given fact, because they've all watched so many sci-fi movies. Everyone was too quick to jump to a positive or negative conclusion, and I think the reason for the heavy-handedness was so that they could speed things along and get to alien on human brawling. Now, I'm all for moving the story along….but did Alan Tudyk and Morris Chestnut have to be revealed so quickly?? Did the teenage boy have to decide right then to be a visitor ambassador?
V needs to slow down!
I was also annoyed by the extreme reactions – no one was in the middle, except maybe the older priest who saw them as a blessing to bring more people to God. It seems like three weeks was a random time frame pulled out of someone's butt.
A friend of mine just brought up a good (and hopeful!) point. When I told him about my reservations about the show because it was heavy-handed and moved too fast, he asked me if this was the "pilot" or "the first episode". I asked him what the difference was, because I thought they were the same thing. He reminded me that pilots are what the producers use to sell the show. Sometimes they're the actual first episode, sometimes they're not, but they have to show all the elements the show's going to have in it at once. I'm hoping that, because this WAS the pilot – it was even titled "Pilot" – that that's the reason why it was so heavy-handed and jampacked. I'll continue watching an episode or two to see what more "typical" episodes look like.
I actually loved the idiot kids being nerds on TV about whether or not this show was ripping off better sci-fi. Those are my people. I laughed. I wanted to spend more time with them than with Elizabeth Mitchell's obviously too stupidly hormonal to live son.
Otherwise, I actually really liked the pickle that Scott Wolf's character is in. He's gotta start pushing at his boundaries or it won't be interesting. But I loved the dilemma he faced and I totally understand why he caved.
Also, I always knew that Laura Vandervoort was an alien, I just never considered how un-Earthly Morena Baccarin was until now.
The journalist is the only character I'm interested in right now – he's the only one with a personal moral conflict. I hear that's what they call "human drama".
I really think you were too easy on this. They compressed what should have been a bunch of episodes, or even a season, into an episode. All the dialogue was on the nose and more about philosophic or political allegory than character or story, and the direction was terrible, with an abundance of over-used low angle dolly shots and poorly done low-angle close ups with strange framing. It felt like watching the show from the perspective of a midget(nothing wrong with midgets by the way) or a Japanese movie. Also, Juliet and her partner always felt like, to me at least, actors playing FBI agents on TV, and not the real thing. Just watch LOST and you'll find out she can act, but I wouldn't have believed from this. This was just a really really poorly executed bad pilot that jammed exposition down our throats.
Thank you for bringing up the camera work. We actually laughed out loud the camera angles in that scene with Scott Wolf and the Visitor after Anna's interview. (high angle close up, face level close up, low level close up, there and back again). I'm really hoping that this ep is just putting pieces into place for the rest of the episodes.
I actually liked V. I took it for what it was, a reboot of a 1980's TV series about reptilian aliens who eat mice. I didn't expect too much (it's no Alien Nation!) and , in turn, I wasn't disappointed at all. I wonder if Marc Singer will make an apperance?! I'll have to pull out my jelly slippers and two tone socks for that one.
Wow! I never thought I'd see such hatred for an improvement decades in the making. For those who don't remember waiting to see the orginal V it was a slow mini-series that FINALLY got good by Part 3 and into V: The Final Battle. Yes, I'm a little disappointed the classic charecters arent there such as Mike Donavan, Ham Tyler, Diana, John, the list goes on and on. But that was my generation's V. This one is far slicker than the original and WILL get better as the story goes on. I was very pleasantly surprised that they placed the "5th Column" in as deserters. I think they are trying to go for an all out ground war. Remember, they are here to take the water and for food which turns out to be the human race. Give the series a chance before you abandon it right out of the gate.
I never said I was abandoning it – just wasn't impressed with it's first time out. The original may have started slow, but it was the 1980s. It was a slower time and that doesn't work for television anymore. It's not enough for it to simply be V – it has to be good, too. Being a remake of something great doesn't exempt the new version from sucking.
I never thought I'd hear that the 80's were slow. The great sci-fi for tv and film that came out is actually in a lot of ways FAR superior to what we have now.(The original Knight Rider, A-Team, G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc). What I am saying is let the show develop. And as for the so-called knock on universal healthcare, I took it as our own country cant come up with a health care system that works and yet an alien race will offer it to us while we sit around and debate it for 30 years.
[...] Lisa Fary at Pink Raygun likes Baccarin’s hair, but is disappointed in the heavy-handed tone of the episode. [...]