V: There is No Sci-Fi Anymore

By Lisa Fary

This episode of V, “There is No Normal Anymore”, was like drinking Bud Light while listening to Matchbox 20 and wearing the chino pants/ white tee/ cardigan combo: an exercise in lifeless predictability and blandness.

I mean, out of all the beers out there, why would someone choose Bud Light? It has no distinctive flavor. All drinking it really shows is that no thought went into the beer purchase. No thought of what would taste good, how it would compliment the snacks, how many it would take to get good and buzzy. Bud Light is an easy beer decision.

Matchbox 20? Formulaic lyrics and music, guaranteed to bring forgettable background noise to any get together.

The chino pants/white tee/cardigan combo? Guilty. I used to do that for work all the time. It matches. It looks put together without being stuffy or offensive. Like Bud Light and Matchbox 20, though, the ensemble is non-distinctive and doesn’t take any thought. It’s easy.

Matchbox 20 gives the illusion of liking music. Bud Light gives the illusion of liking beer. V gives the illusion that ABC made a science fiction show.

There are spaceships. And aliens. And a pointy rip off of the Phantasm sphere. It even has actors who have been on other sci-fi shows. There’s someone from Firefly! A blonde chick from Lost! That guy from The 4400! Was that warehouse at 4400 Pier Street? Was that a reference? Hey! A Cylon!

But, it’s all so non-offensive. There’s nothing challenging to it. Nothing even to identify the aliens as otherworldly, even when there is no one around and they should be able to act as themselves while still wearing their meat suits.

Check this: two V’s (I’m trying so hard not to call them V-tards) are all alone on the mothership. They speak to each other in English. Is it so hard to imagine that they might, like, have their own language? Did no one think of this?

In making V accessible to sci-fi shy viewers, they’ve wiped away everything that was interesting about the original. V can barely be considered sci-fi. Instead, it’s Shy-Fi: science fiction that is so embarrassed about being science fiction that it scrubs away as much of it as possible, leaving only a pretty spaceship and a collection of pretty genre stars.

I’m having a hard time saying anything specific about “There is No Normal Anymore” because it was just so beige, more about facial expressions than story. Erica looked frantic. The priest looks conflicted. Ryan walks around looking conflicted. Lisa looked conflicted. Anna looked vaguely annoyed. The journalist looked smug.

And that’s really it. Like Bud Light, from taste buds to toilet in under an hour.

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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