Reaction to the Emmys

E: So of course the only person on our wish list to be nominated was Archie Panjabi, just as I predicted.  But!  There is other good news!  All in all, not a bad morning for Relatively Entertaining favorites.  There’s good news for Glee, The Good Wife, Lost, Top Chef, Project Runway, and even some smatterings for Chuck, Castle, Emma and Return to Cranford.  If you want an actual list, go here.  This is the run down of stuff we care about here.

V-cap: John May

M: Over the last couple weeks V has definitely ratcheted up the action, and “John May” was no exception.  Quick alert, there will be spoilers…  like the fact that the title should have been John May Died.

E: I’m kind of furious over this.  Well, first of all, the way they started it, I thought we were seeing Georgie’s past, so I was a little confused going into it.  I can see the whole bit about the secret martyr, and the specter of a man Anna thinks she’s had killed, but holy crap, he’s really dead?  I HATE that!  I got all excited about Michael Trucco for nothing?  I don’t care that he’s going to show up on Castle.  Or that he was never my favorite Cylon.  I could spit!  O, for a handy target.  Where’s my cat got to again?

M: See, here’s my take on Trucco.  He’s on V this week.  He’s on Castle next week.  Both are ABC shows.  My guess is this is a try out to find a demographic that fits him, and they are going to develop a show for him.

E: Huh.  Interesting thought.  Networks do get all proprietary about people – look at Alex O’Loughlin and CBS!

M: That said, the character of John May being dead?  Big, huge, colossal mistake.

E: Yes.  Maddening and ridiculous.  Um, also, did they really just kill James’ girlfriend, let him in on the secret of the Vs and the identity and fate of his stepfather, and then LEAVE HIM?  Without ever mentioning it again????  Shouldn’t they have him in hiding, or starting their army, or something?  What the hell!!!!

M: Okay, here’s my complaint with that, and with the guy that Erika killed after he stabbed Father Jack.  Remember our favorite scene to make fun of in the original mini-series?  The scene where the resistance is talking about the video of Marc Singer ripping the human skin off a V’s face exposing the reptilian skin?  Where Marc Singer’s response to the insistence of how important that video was a deadpanned “I’m hip”?

E: And how could I forget the most unintentionally awesome line ever? Because I, I am so hip.

M: Yes, you are.  As I’m sure you knew, that was really rhetorical.  The point was that the most important an effective thing the resistance could do to turn people’s opinion of the V’s was to show them that they were really lizards.  Well, our little resistance has now had two chances to show the world that the V’s are reptiles, and that they are embedded within us…  and they haven’t even discussed it, let alone put a viral video out there.  Stupid.

E: You are totally on point here.  How easy would that be?  The writers must not want to expose that secret too early, because it would provoke a huge reaction in the public and up the ante of everything – but it’s the most natural thing for them to do.  Way more natural than the whole “John May lives” stuff.  There’s my problem with the pacing again – they can’t do some of the more obvious things because it’d advance the storyline too quickly.

M: They seem to be adamant to have our main four characters struggle to cobble something together very slowly.

E: Other big developments this week: Val finds out that Ryan isn’t who he says he is!  And, if she can read an ultrasound, that her baby has a tail!

M: Unfortunately for Ryan the giant, hidden in a secret compartment in the closet safe that he bought had a simple 5 digit reset code that the building super happened to have.

E: And Joshua mercy kills Georgie.  Kind of a waste, but also (and I feel slightly guilty about saying this) good riddance to a useless character.

M: I think that he was not gotten rid of, he was replaced.  Hobbes basically is Georgie, but a more badass Georgie.  (E: Ding ding ding ding!) I’m fine with this.  They were doing a crappy, inconsistent job of writing him, and he was not the fiery leader that he started out being in the pilot.  Hobbes seems like a better version of him to me.

E: Very true, but it seems unfair to punish the actor for what is essentially the writer’s mistake, I think.   Anyway, we have midiclorians again.  Who’s Tyler’s father?  No one knows!  Erica never cheated, but Ty-Ty doesn’t have Joe’s dna.  You know, on the one hand this is a nicely angsty reason for a divorce, and on the other,  it’s crap.

M: I’m holding out hope that they take this down a better road, but right now it feels like it’s just a plot device to drive Tyler to the Vs.

E: Yep.  So, Chad Decker knows he’s in bed with the devil, and he doesn’t care as long as he thinks he can manipulate Anna. Well, youch.  Talk about ambitious.  And, you know, missing the forest for the trees.

M: I thought that the scene where he tried to play hardball with Anna, and even leaned into her personal space to tell her off?  I thought she was going to turn the “My babies need sustenance” fangs on him.

E: Hee hee – me too! Anna lays a pond full of soldier eggs.  Expected, but it’s kind of creepy.  Better for a flat stomach than mammalian childbirth, that’s for sure.

M: I thought that was a very creepy-cool ending.

E: I think they rely on those too much – especially since these endings don’t tend to be quite as cool as I want them to be.

M: True enough.  They are trying to follow Lost‘s lead of ending episodes with a “wow” moment, but they have not mastered the art of it yet.  Overall I think they are doing a good job with the action parts of the plot, like the escape from the V floating spike-ball-thing at John May’s storage container, and I thought that the emotional scene where Tyler confronted Erica about Rat-boy not being his dad was really good.  (E: Ditto.) But this episode did not instill me with the kind of confidence that the previous few had.  I still like the 5th Column stuff and I like the “new” communicator device, even if I think that Joshua is being far to cavalier and should have been caught.

What I am leaning toward, though, is the need for a stronger, larger resistance, and for a power struggle within the V leadership.  In the original, the V leader Diana was constantly having to fight off threats to her power.  Even if she is continually winning, it would be good for the show Anna to have some form of other rivals.

What do you all think?

V: Pound of Flesh

E: Alright,  I admit that was better.  Parts of this episode actually grabbed my attention, and held it.  I can’t think of anything to say that’s not a spoiler, though, so please follow the discussion after the jump!

V-Cap: Welcome to the War

E: And lo, the sky was crowded with Angels, heralding the return of V, the highly anticipated reboot of the classic 80s sci fi series.  Not an moment of new footage had been seen since last November.  Surely the lengthy break since an episode last aired will have afforded the crew the time to figure out what made those first four episode less thrilling than the camptastic original?

No. Sorry.  Still disappointed.

We did get some revelations this week, but some how, there’s no umph to them. How is that possible?  We learned some seriously crazy stuff, but in the end it just feels like the creators trying to shock without changing up their style that much.

V-cap: It’s Only The Beginning

E: Yikes!  Was that an ending or what?  I cannot believe they’re not bringing this show back until March!  And will they actually, really bring it back?

Let me start by saying this.  I think the problem with V is that they really need a time line to work with; they need to know how long they’ve got to spin this storyline out.  It’s hard to build the proper amount of dread, somehow, without that deadline. Am I wrong? Maybe the pace is throwing me off because I’m used to the miniseries, but I dunno.  I think they need an endgame in order to have a decent start.

M: I think you’re wrong.  I think you need to have an endgame and a finish line to have a proper middle.  Lost proved that with its lousy (by its standards) first half of the 3rd season, then they set and end time and the second half of that season, concluding with the finale with the first flash forwards, was some of the best TV ever.  I think they are doing well with the pace, which was too fast in the beginning of the pilot, but has now settled into a “not rushing through things” flow that most shows have trouble finding.  I feel most shows feel like they need to resolve things every week, so they end up blasting through major plot items way too quickly.  I like the way that V is going with the slow build.

E: Let’s agree to differ, then.  That said, we did get some exciting stuff, mostly at the end of this episode, in three main plot lines or categories: first, The Halls of Healing, then Puppy/Lizard Love (the seduction of Tyler), and finally what I’m beginning to think of as the Idiots Revolution.