V - Episode 2

Saw the second episode of the new "V" series last night, and it continued the high quality of the first episode.  I was a big fan of the 80s series, but I'm finding this one is just as interesting, but in a different way.  So far, it hasn't turned into a "lizards and laser beams" show (though we have seen the lizards), but it's just as good.  Yes, the original series was cheesy looking, with lots of big hair, but it was still fun.


One thing I do have to say is that the pace is pretty slow, all things considered.  This is a 4-episode launch of the series that will then continue next Spring, but things are still not moving that quickly.  This episode was almost a placeholder, with results only coming at the end.  We still have no inkling of what the Vs are after, just that they're bad guys.  I know I said last week that it jumped too fast to showing how malevolent they are, but now that we know, shouldn't their plan be moving forward a little bit?

The Resistance is beginning to form, though, and the Vs have now established diplomatic relations with all of the nations of the world (that's not really a spoiler, as the series can't move forward without it once it's established that the Vs want it) and it will be interesting to see where things go from here.

One thing I wanted to point out (and the reason I turned this into a blog post rather than just a Twitter comment) is that there is one perfect example of how each series is a reflection of the time period it was made.  In the original series, Marc Singer played a crusading journalist who discovers the truth about the Visitors and brings it to the world's attention (or tries to, as the Visitors fight him every step of the way).

In this series, the journalist character has almost become a lapdog of the Visitors.  He actually shows signs of growing a pair to resist them, but it turns out (at least so far, though I suppose it can change in the next two episodes) that it's more that he doesn't want to be their lapdog than it is to actually get at the truth.  He's pissed off that Anna used him the way she did, and that he let her do it because of the high exposure that it gained him.  But his threat to them (not a quote, but basically "next time you use me, it will be on my terms") is self-serving rather than showing any desire to figure out what's going on.

Like I say, the character may surprise me, but right now, it's an almost perfect reflection of too much of the media today.