I watched the pilot episode of V last night” late I know, but that’s life in the PVR lane. I’d seen a review that said V might be the hit of the season, so I bumped the pilot up to the top of my viewing list.
First, can I say that the name bugs me? It makes me think of True Blood and then I get all confused looking for vampires. But no, V is a minor twist on all the super power shows we’ve seen in the last few years. The trend has been to have the lead characters coping with discovering their own powers (Heroes, Chuck, the short lived Journeyman, for example).
V is about the normal powerless human race coping with outsiders with immense powers and questionable motives.
Though the name bugged me, the pilot definitely sucked me in and I’ll be back for further episodes. My favourite cable series are nearing their season ends so my TV watching schedule has some openings.
One of the things that struck me is the choice of how the opening moments of V played out. Remember how Lost opened? Jack’s eyes pop open. He’s lying in the jungle, injured and disoriented. Eventually, he pulls himself to his feet and runs through the jungle. He reaches a beach, pristine and idyllic in one direction. Then he turns and looks the other way to find the confusion and horror of the plane wreck. From the first moment, you’re sucked in wondering what is going on? By 2:45 seconds into the episode, you’re in the thick of the action.
V makes a very different choice for its opening. It starts by introducing us to each of the lead characters in the moments leading up to the events that the series documents. We meet an FBI agent (and we know she’s an FBI agent because we get a nice tight shot of her badge), feel a little rumble and then discover that her son is missing. We meet him in a hospital room. V continues round the horn, introducing us to the leads: the guy buying the ring for his girlfriend, the news anchor who can’t get the powers to let him to cover a real story, the girlfriend of the ring guy, the guy in a wheelchair halfway up the church steps and the parish priest who doesn’t seemed to have helped him get up there.
Everyone gets a little taste of the rumble, but only after we’ve met everyone and done a little character establishing does their world really start to rock. I don’t know why they don’t assume it’s an earthquake”maybe the ring guy’s girlfriend. After discovering she can’t keep the bookshelf from falling down, she does go stand in the doorway.
This whole sequence seems designed to bring some action to the opening. When Tyler (FBI’s son) rides his motorcycle through the streets at breakneck speed, it only seems to be for the action, not to serve the plot.
Suddenly the military is on the street herding people in no particular direction and separating some from others so that FBI mom has to sneak her way across the barricade to be easily reunited with Tyler in the middle of the crowded downtown core swept by panic.
Oh yeah, and there’s a spaceship in the sky.
There was lots of lameness to this opening. I didn’t believe how people were reacting to the spacecraft. Very little about was credible. As compared to the opening of Lost where I felt it was absolutely how people would behave at the site of plane crash (although so much of what followed did require suspension of disbelief).
Most of V’s characters did not appeal to me. Poor Scott Wolf; what a lame role he has. The first question he asks the alien is why she’s so good looking! No wonder they only let him read the news.
Yet, I did not turn V off. Because there is something inherent in that story that makes me need to know. It’s the page-turner phenomenon. I want to know what happens when the aliens land. I want to see this story twist and turn.
Story is what pulls me into a series. Character too, but it’s the need to know what happens next that is most important to me. If the story is interesting, then I can suspend some disbelief, tolerate shallow characterizations and maybe even close my ears to clunky dialogue (although that might be the hardest of the three).
This morning I read a quote from a director about his upcoming movie; it’s going to be a spectacle. That’s not a draw for me. I couldn’t care less about glorious visuals (unless of course they’re in the 3D). For me, it’s story first and foremost.
And for the moment, V has got some of the story I crave.
Richard
Good points all. Fully agree with them. Except, for me, the pilot didn’t pull me in enough to continue watching.
I’m already familiar with what’ll happen next from watching the mid-80s V, so to keep me interested this V needed to be of the same quality as Ronald D Moore’s Battlestar Galactica revamp.
But this pilot fell far short of BSG’s in terms of writing, acting (with two exceptions) and SFX which, apart from the teaser you detailed, were extremely poor.
Robbo
Sorry, Jill, gotta disagree with you on this one.
I am also a big fan of the original. My position is biased because I had the opportunity to work with Ken Johnson, the writer & director of the original, on another project so I have an abiding affection for the first pass at this story. That Ken wasn’t involved nor consulted at all is a bitter pill.
Scrambled time lines, faster pacing and CG effects aside, this falls far short of the original. For one – as my 13 year old son pointed out with great exasperation – they’re calling the visitors V’s. WTF? The V – the big ass red V – is the same as used in V For Vendetta and Churchill’s V during World War II – in the words of my son: “It’s supposed to be V for victory you dumb shits.”
The cheap ass universal health care swipe at the Obama administration was as small minded as any of the made-for-tv anti-Soviet tripe that issued forth from the Reagan era broadcast spew.
The leap forward through an excessively compressed time line did little to keep an audience hooked and did much to reduce any believability in the situation or the characters.
Seeing the raid the casting closet of Joss Whedon does not give them the necessary cred for the story they are trying to tell – it’s just an obvious attempt to suck up to the fan base they hope and pray will embrace their efforts.
The original metaphors and intent have been either dampened, ignored or distorted to serve a 21st century American view of post-9/11 politics and distrust of anything that doesn’t embrace jingoistic xenophobic excuses for what is supposed to be regarded as true patriotism.
It’ll be interesting to see how far they think they can travel down that road before jumping the shark with a guest appearance of Glenn Beck or someone pretending to be a kinder, gentler, less annoying version of him.
I reveled in the original production when it first came out – even though I was fully aware at the time of the inevitable lameness of an early ’80’s big hair, wide shoulder pad, overly lit, earnestly acted effort at “high class” TV SF melodrama. It wasn’t Casablanca but it had the cojones to paint the alien fight as an obvious and (seemingly) never-ending battle against Fascism.
A few years after that I found myself working with Ken and had the opportunity to learn more about what his intentions were and how they have also been made manifest in his successive novels which continue the story.
Take away the stylistic and logistic differences between any production from 25 years ago to today and compare the two and it is easy to see this production as a very sad and neglectful attempt at reproducing the success of the original without having anything approaching the heart, passion or clear vision of the original.
Once again I give my young son the floor with his verdict of this first episode:
“That didn’t just suck. It sucked and it blows.”
I rest my case.
Cheers.
admin
Well that was vehement. I guess I better watch the original.
And clearly, the boy is a chip off the old block.
Robbo
Hee hee hee!