The last episode until March of 2010, V kept up the pace of last week’s episode and kept left viewers with some genuine cliffhangers that they’ll have to wait a solid four months to see ironed out. 

The fledgling V resistance is still hanging out from last week, engaging in their mistrust-apalooza while trying to figure out a way to allow the general public to know what’s going on. Georgie expresses the desire to capture a V and skin one alive to show people what they really are.  Ryan objects to this and instead gives Erica, Father Jack, and Georgie the names of some V’s who were planted in prominent positions.  Most of them were dead with the exception of a scientist named Combs. Erica quizzes Ryan as to how he got this info and he remains quiet.

In the wake of last week’s ending, Anna’s hopping mad that the V’s installed agent Dale Maddox was murdered right aboard her ship.  Realizing that they could have debriefed them and gotten valuable information as to who and what were aware of the V’s true nature, she calls for the guilty party responsible to step forward.  The medical team is lined up (in “V” formation, no less).  When no one steps forward, she says she will single out one person – guilty or innocent – to take the fall for Dale’s death and they will be punished as she sees fit. Joshua, the Lead Medical officer (and the one who offed Dale to begin with last week) has to carry out the sentence, which is to skin the V alive. Just as Joshua is about to step forward himself, his extra-pretty male medical companion steps forward, issuing forth a hearty “Long live the Fifth Column.”

Pretty V Medical Officer tells Joshua on the skinning table that he sacrificed himself so that Joshua could remain one of Anna’s closest advisors. Joshua gave him a sedative to lessen, but can still hardly bring himself to do it to his friend.  He does, however, but we don’t get to see any of the gruesome action.

Meanwhile, Tyler soon finds himself aboard the V ship after Lisa wants to take him to meet her mother.  However, that’s not before Tyler attempts to tell Mama Erica about how he’s super-smitten with Lisa and have a mother-son chat about the girl she found half naked in his room.  Tyler gets all (justifiably) emo when Erica refuses to stop doing her research online and listen to him.  She finally puts the work away and attempts to listen attentively to Tyler when she receives an urgent phone call from Ryan who wants to speak with her.    

She meets up with and finds out that Ryan is really a V after he corners Combs, the V scientist who is now trying to kill her, knowing Erica’s hot on his trail.  After popping a cyanide capsule, Combs dies and turns into a pile of ash, the way V’s are neatly prone to do. Ryan then tells Erica the truth and also fills her in on the Fifth Column.

Meanwhile, the V’s favorite television journalist, Chad Decker tours a V healing facility after Anna makes an announcement that the V’s are releasing a Super Vaccine to the public.  This is all too coincidental since Ryan’s fiancé, Valerie, has been feeling craptacular.  Even more coincidentally, she’s Tyler’s shrink and learns that Tyler’s tight with the V’s as he expresses his emo-ness that Mama Erica doesn’t approve of his affinity for the Visitors.  He also tells Valerie he can get her an appointment on the V healing centers.  Score! 

Aboard the V ship, all sorts of revelations occur: Valerie’s scan reveals she has some minor, treatable malady akin to a flu bug, however, her scans reveal something else: she’s pregnant.  Instead of telling Ryan that she discovered this aboard a V healing facility, she whips out a pregnancy test to show Ryan that they’re expecting.  Wonder if the blue First Response positive turned green instead?  Ryan gives her a hug although his face plainly says “Uh-oh,” in more ways than any single dude facing an unplanned alien pregnancy ever could. (Anyone who saw the original V series could have seen this one coming a mile away.  Morris Chestnut is the new Robert Englund.  Wow, that sounds weird.)

Tyler is introduced to Lisa’s mom, Anna.  Prior to their meeting, Lisa and Anna reinforce that Tyler is “the one,” whatever that means.  To butter up Tyler for whatever they have planned, Anna shows Tyler this Super Neat-O V Machine that does all sorts of cool things like put on a Pink Floyd-esque light show.  She also tells him he’s the first human to see this machine.  Suddenly, Anna is the Awesome Mom he never had in Erica.

Speaking of Erica, she sees an IM conversation on the computer screen that Tyler left up, with him talking about how he’s stoked to see the V mother ship.  (Really. Who does that?!  Anyone with something to hide from their parents makes sure they close out any potentially incriminating screens and deletes their browsing history.  DUH!  All this sloppiness and Tyler is somehow “The One”? I already called the Ryan/Valerie/alien baby pregnancy.  I call that next ep, Tyler changes his screen name to TheOne.)

Also aboard the V ship, Chad Decker is told by the medical staff that he has a vascular artery disorder that will cause him to have a massive brain aneurism and kill him.  When Decker proves skeptical, they relay his entire medical history to him to prove the accuracy of their scans.  The V’s tell Decker they can cure him if they allow them to. 

This may prove to have its pitfalls since the V’s medicine comes with a price.  Father Jack, Erica, Georgie (who gets shot in the process, but is patched up by Father Jack), and Ryan break into the lab that Combs was working out of.  It’s packed with dead, mutated human subjects and crates of this drug called R6.  This could be what is being unleashed with the V Super Serum to cure everyone on the planet.  However, this R6 is being mixed into the human’s flu vaccine which is shipping out the next day. In a nice nod to the H1N1 vaccine, the V’s are banking on humankind’s predictability to overmedicate and attempt to prevent illness and are going to dose them with the R6.  Perhaps they should put it in antibacterial hand sanitizer.

To avert certain catastrophe and a worldwide, V-flavored pandemic, the team blows up the lab and all of the R6, except one vial to be used as proof.  Ryan corroborates that this won’t really make Anna angry, just temporarily halt her plans.  However, he does know what will make her mad: scrawling “John May Lives” where she can see it.  It works and Anna’s even angrier than she was when she ordered My Pretty Medic skinned.  (Although no one knows exactly who or what John May represents, I’m going to throw in a bit of speculation that somehow, his name has something to do with the Fifth Column, with May being the fifth month.)

In the cliffhanger ending of the episode, Father Jack gets stabbed in his church by a sobbing patron who “needs to talk,” but is really the security guard who had been guarding the R6 facility.  Looks like Father Jack will be laying in a pool of his own blood until March 2010. 

Meanwhile, Anna has recovered from her anger enough to trot into her control room, wearing nothing but a sparkly white sheet and enter a meditative state, replete with twinkling lights to give the V’s the gift of “The Bliss,” her own message of peace, love, and harmony as the episode closes out.

This week, V steps things up from the snail’s pace of last week’s episode, revealing more secrets and plot points regarding the Visitors.  The resistance and its varying factions converge to help rebuild the Fifth Column, which is not a ‘70s singing group, but rather the name for the band of traitorous, human-sympathizer V’s.   Ryan goes off in search of an old friend named Cyrus in hope of getting him to help rebuild the Fifth Column with him.  Ryan finds out that Cyrus had done yet another 180 and is now turning V traitors in to Anna in an attempt to get back in her good graces and score some of the sweet substance known as “The Bliss” which all good Vs get.  Ryan manages to avoid being turned in and reduces Cyrus to a pile of ash, leaving the V’s called to the scene to find a cryptic message on the wall: “John May lives.” 

Another Fifth Column leader by the name of Georgie (don’t you dare call him “George”), has found himself tracked by Father Jack and doesn’t take too kindly to it.  Father Jack eventually gets Georgie to come around and join with the human resistance to create a united front against the V’s. 

Speaking of the Fifth Column, unfortunately for Dale Maddox, he is brought back to life by a V healer only to be put back down for a dirt nap again after giving the healer valuable information.  After Dale remembers that it was Erica who had busted his human face wide open and saw his true face, the healer (actually a member of the Fifth Column) finds out that he has a new ally and sends Maddox off to green-blooded heaven with a syringe. 

Erica, however, has been assigned to keep the peace and ward off an attack by a would-be attempt on Marcus (Anna’s head minion/assistant)’s life at an event celebrating the V’s getting their Visas, enabling them to go anywhere they want. Erica thwarts the assassin, but it turns out that (unbeknownst to her, or anyone else), the “assassin” was a plant as part of a plan to elicit sympathy for the V’s and further Anna’s agenda of getting humans to trust them. After subduing the “attacker,” Anna stumbles upon the V’s technology room with a seemingly endless array of screens.  She also finds out that these screens receive their information by miniature cameras built into the V’s uniform jackets… Just like the one that her son Tyler has at home!  Dun-dun-DUN!

Anna, it turns out, has had an elaborate plan to keep the V’s in the public eye.  She even goes so far as to practice looking concerned, caring and offering her “heartfelt” condolences to the widow of a serviceman who died when the V’s landed.  The widow, Mary Faulkner, had previously been at the forefront of the anti-V movement and was to speak at the V’s Visa Fest, but had been persuaded otherwise by Anna’s feigned kindness that the V’s are all sweetness and light.  Anna’s mission to snow humanity continues to run on course!

Perhaps the biggest phase of Anna’s plan includes Erica’s son, Tyler. Still hot for Youth Ambassador Lisa, Tyler ends up getting back in her good graces and is allowed back. Lisa decides to tell him the happy news over pizza and heads back to Casa de Erica, sporting their matching V Youth Ambassador Letterman Jackets.  Erica arrives home after a hard day of V wrangling and Tyler and Lisa ditch their jackets, and most of their clothes, leaving Erica to believe they were just about to get busy… Because that would be preferable to having her find out that her son is a V Youth Ambassador.

Lisa’s role in Anna’s master plan is revealed at the very end of the episode when Lisa informs Lisa informs Anna that she believes Tyler is “the one.” She also calls her “mother” and Anna tells her daughter (Yes! Daughter!) that she’s done very well.  Looks like Tyler might not lose his “V-card” to Lisa after all, just probably end up fertilizing a colony of human/V-hybrid eggs.  Poor, dopey kid!

Opening week of the reboot of the ’80s Earth-invaders series, V, was seen by 14.3 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Company. That was the second-best new series premier for the season behind the CBS spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles, and it was the most-watched scripted show of the week among the young demographic networks bend over backwards for.

The audience and the vaunted 18-49 demographic performance for V almost tripled from what the network usually averages with the reality show Shark Tank in that same time slot. The show, “about aliens who seem friendly when they come to Earth seeking water but actually have ulterior motives,” built its audience in the second half-hour, which is usually a great sign that interest in the show held throughout the episode, though it seems the interest in V ended when the credits on the show ran. There was not much of a trickle-down effect from V for the rest of ABC’s all-star lineup. Dancing With the Stars still averaged 14.5 million viewers and finished third in adults 18-49 with a 3.1 rating. The Forgotten drew 7.6 million viewers and tied NBC’s Jay Leno with a 2.0 in adults 18-49.

Three of ABC’s new scripted series, including Modern Family and Flash Forward, finished among the 32 most-watched prime-time shows last week. Behind them was CBS, who had two of its new series within the top 32, Nielsen said. By contrast, Fox’s Bones was its only scripted series, new or otherwise, in Nielsen’s top 32. NBC failed to have any.

Besides V potentially having a built-in fan-base with fans of the original series, the sci-fi drama has had a reputation that it had continuous problems during production. In the past week the studio that owns the show, Warner Brothers, announced it was bringing in a new executive producer, Scott Rosenbaum (Chuck), to run the new series. The news came on the heels of reports that production of the series had been shut down. This resulted in the decision is that only four episodes of V were ready for broadcast. Those four will appear this month and then the show will go on hiatus until March.

It’s usually important for new shows to have a continuous presence to build an audience. It’s usually not the norm to pull new (and expensive!) shows and ask audiences to wait until spring so ABC must have some faith in their product. The network pulled a similar move when it debuted Lost.

Last week, the series debut of V, a redux of the ’80s sci-fi franchise pulled the second highest debut of the season with a 5.2 Nielsen rating and 14 million viewers.  It scored big in the all-important 18-49 demographic and covered a lot of ground in its one-hour opener.  Although the pace slowed considerably for the second episode of the series, V hasn’t entirely shot its wad right out of the gate.  While this episode wasn’t nearly as action or info-packed as the expository first ep, this week’s serving of the Visitors started laying the ground for action to come this season.  Not a bad second episode, even if there are some characters/plot points that are starting to look a tad predictable.

Erica Evans is in the thick of the action, facing down V’s on the work front with the disappearance/possible death of her partner, Dale Maddox; on the home front with her son Tyler who has developed a fascination for the V’s; and in her spare time tracking the Visitors with a list of contacts she pilfered.  Interrogated about the disappearance of Dale, Erica is faced with some rather curious department heads who put her on the track of getting to the bottom of it.  Having explained that there was no monkey business between the two of them and that Dale was more like a brother to her, she takes the show on the road and questions Dale’s wife about any activity on his part that seemed suspicious… Particularly since the arrival of the V’s.  Mrs. Maddox is rather tight lipped, alluding that Dale had always been insistent upon keeping his work life separate from his private life.  However, she manages kick out some grudging praise regarding the arrival of the Visitors, possibly hinting at her disdain for them and exonerating herself from knowing her hubby was packin’ lizard beneath his skin suit.

Erica’s not the only one to be grilled about the recent turn of events.  The FBI pays a visit to Father Jack to interrogate him regarding the death of the V-informant who bled to death in his church.  Additionally, Father Jack’s superior, the older priest, Father Travis gives Jack heat about his suspicions of the Visitors.  (This could be a totally predictable plot twist, but I’m voting that Father Travis is really a V who had ascended the ranks of the clergy.)

While personality-wise, Erica is the new Marc Singer of the V reboot, Father Jack is pretty much the spitting image of Singer with a few character traits of the old resistance leader thrown in to round it out.  Erica presents Father Jack with the list she had procured and requests his help in uncovering more of the mysteries behind the Visitors and gain more support in creating a stronger, larger resistence. 

Back on the home front, Erica’s son, Tyler, hides his awesome new Junior Ambassador’s / V-letterman jacket under his mattress.  While he’s attempting to hide his fascination with the V’s from Mommy, it still doesn’t him from stashing it his backpack and making a beeline for V headquarters directly after school.  (I’m sure that will look stellar on young Tyler’s transcripts: Drama Club, Spanish Club, V Youth Ambassador League.)  In an attempt to impress the Lisa, hot, blonde V Youth Ambassador who recruited him, he brings along a chubby friend to add to the ranks.  It’s painfully obvious that Tyler wants In a completely different story, Ryan Nichols, the V-traitor/human sympathizer goes to a human contact to heal his gaping wound he sustained in the scuffle last week, which was seeping with green lizard skin. His contact drugs him and tells him that he can’t trust Ryan — or anyone for that matter in light of learning about what the V’s are capable of.  Later, to prove a point, he calls an awoken and unharmed Ryan with details on Ryan’s fiancé, stating that if he can find her and learn things about her, so can the V’s.  He insists that if Ryan really loves her, he’ll let her go so that she will remain unharmed.

Speaking of trust issues, Anna and her toadie/personal assistant Marcus discuss how little faith they have in Chad Decker, the television journalist/unwitting Minister of Human Propaganda.  Decker manages to snow Anna and her minion, although he’s attempting to rally the human troops and subtly toss hints that the V’s cannot be trusted.  With a cause born possibly more out of sheer vanity than journalistically-motivated altruism, Decker confides in his co-worker that although his interview with Anna pulled madd ratings, people tuned in to see her and not him. In an attempt to carve a name for himself and have people tune in to see The Chad Decker Show, Chad gathers a roundtable to discuss the pros and cons of the Visitors and platform their own feelings of trust or mistrust of the V’s.  Anna isn’t sure what to make of this, although Decker justifies that he ultimately made the V’s look better.  Anna just blinks rapidly and creepily in the camera in a reaction shot as Decker walks away smiling to himself.

We also learn that Anna has a Cher-in-Clueless sort of holographic catalog of outfits and that Marcus fails as a personal assistant for underestimating the power of a well-chosen outfit as it pertains to addressing geographic clusters of humanity.  And that the V’s interrogate their subjects (one of whom is now Dale Maddox) by making them hallucinate that a batch of Raiders of the Lost Ark-like snakes are crawling all over them.

Tuesday night, ABC debuted V, a revamp of the ’80s mini-series/television series that aired on NBC.  While the original mini-series paralleled the alien Visitors plot to destroy humans to the spread of fascism in Nazi Germany, the 1984-85 run of the show was more of a straight-forward sci-fi drama. 

The new version of V adds new versions of old characters and employs a lot more of the socio-political allegory that the 1980s franchise’s mini-series (V and V: The Final Battle) had contained.  In place of Nazis, the relaunched V taps into current social phobias such as terrorism, religious extremism, and apocalyptic mania (Have the Mayans ever been so popular?!) as well as the zeitgeist of optimismistic change. 

The story is still the same: Visitors from another planet zero in on Earth to use its inhabitants for some as-yet-to-be-revealed nefarious plot and commit genocide.  They wear the guise of uber-attractive humans and initially come across as peaceful and helpful allies to humanity, but are actually calculating, scaly reptillian creatures beneath their cloned, human skin.  An underground collective of humans has been tracking the Visitors and have known they had implanted some of their own to rise through the ranks in all walks of life, making their transition and sudden, near-miraculous appearance on Earth a smooth one.

The cast of characters has a few constants.  The names change from the ones in the original show, but the character archetypes are firmly in place:  the freedom fighting leader, the creepily hot female alien commandant, the skeptic, the good alien who really loves humanity, etc.  You get the idea. 

Scattered among the relatively huge ensemble cast of the new V are a few familiar faces.  Morris Chestnut is the new Robert Englund from the original as the alien traitor and human sympathizer with a human wife.  Firefly’s Morena Baccarin is Ana (an interesting play on the original’s alien femme fatale Diana’s name), the beautiful, seemingly serene yet coldly calculating leader of the Visitors.  Scott Wolf (Party of Five, Everwood, The Nine) makes his return to weekly television as an ambitious human journalist who becomes a reluctant and somewhat unwilling Minister of Propaganda for the Visitors.

The new V uses a lot of the same plot devices as the old one.  One of the show’s main characters, a butt-kicking, terrorist-tracking mom finds her teenage son’s growing obsession with the Visitors to be positively disturbing.  Wait until she gets a load of him joining the Hitler Youth-esque branch of teen Visitor sympathizers as laid out in the pilot episode. 

Overall, the pilot episode of V was solid and has potential to become a good series, even for a remake.  It touches upon relevant issues and there are some interesting characters with more of a sophisticated sheen than the original television series of the ’80s.  The one caveat is that there is very little humor, not even a speckle of camp.  I tend to be a bit skeptical of a series that seems to take itself a tad too seriously and goes for nothing but top-to-bottom heavy drama.  Additionally, even beyond the fact that it is a redux, the show can get rather predictable at times, even in its early stages.

Pending on the Nielsen numbers that have yet to manifest themselves, ABC may have a hit on its hands.  With Lost in its last season and depending on how long Desperate Housewives can hang on, the network will need another hit series to reel in the viewers.  V, still in its early stages, has potential to do that, both as a nostalgic throwback and as a new series construct.