Episode Title: "Red Sky"
Writers: Gregg Hurwitz & Scott Rosenbaum
Director: Robert Duncan McNeill
Previously on "V":
In the aftermath of Lisa's faked assault, Anna (Morena Baccarin) used the resulting public sympathy to further the Visitor's long term goals. After the U.S. government gave the Visitors unprecedented access to suspected anti-Visitor terrorists, FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) was made the head of an anti-Fifth Column task force, essentially winning the trust of Anna.
Meanwhile, Kyle Hobbes (Charles Mesure) began keeping secrets from his fellow resistance members and struck his own deal with Marcus (Christopher Shyer), Anna's second-in-command. Later, Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) continued to display empathy towards the Fifth Column as her feelings towards Tyler Evans (Logan Huffman) appeared to grow stronger.
Story:
Valerie Stevens (Lourdes Benedicto) is kidnapped while about to give birth to the first Visitor/Human hybrid, causing her lover, Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut) to storm onto the Visitor mothership demanding her return. Anna offered their assistance through Valerie's difficult birth, which Ryan reluctantly accepted. Separated from Ryan, Valerie successfully gives birth, but is murdered moments later by Anna. A despondent Ryan is soon comforted by Anna, who introduces him to his child.
Realizing that her new position can get her close enough to Anna's soon-to-be-born soldier Visitor eggs, Erica accepts a dinner invitation with Tyler from Anna and Lisa aboard the mothership. Erica makes contact with alien resistance leader and Fifth Columnist Joshua (Mark Hildreth), but journalist Chad Decker's interference inadvertently reveals all Fifth Column members on the ship. However, Lisa turns on her mother and secretly aids Erica and Joshua in their mission. To maintain her cover, Erica is forced to kill Joshua.
Back on Earth, Kyle Hobbes met with Marcus and discovered that he had essentially been working for the Visitors for years through intermediaries. He also learns that the Visitors intend to blackmail him through someone he cares about. In the church, Father Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch) gave an anti-Visitor sermon, which caused most of his followers to walk out on him. Although there were some converts...
Finally, Anna discovered that most of her soldier eggs were destroyed and erupted in a rage of never-before-felt human emotions. Overwhelmed, she prematurely instigated the next phase of the Visitor's plans and turned the skies of Earth a dark shade of red.
Breakdown:
After last week's relatively flat and uneventful episode, this week's "V" actually managed to generate some excitement and could potentially change things drastically for the next season
Although, I have to point out how deeply incompetent the human resistance fighters can be on this show. Father Jack's plan to get Chad Decker (Scott Wolf) involved actually cost them several valuable allies on the Visitor mothership. It was one of those "this is really unbelievably stupid" plans that should never have been implemented — at least some of the resistance members also pointed out its rather obvious flaws.
The brightest spot in the episode was Lisa's turn towards the Fifth Columnists, which had been hinted at for the past few weeks. Vandervoort has been giving one of the more interesting performances on the show and she also has one of the best moments near the end of the hour, with a slight smile while her mother rages. Equally intriguing was the notion that the Fifth Columnists like Joshua may now recognize her as their "Queen."
Mark Hildreth's Joshua has also become one of the series more compelling characters, as well as one of the only truly selfless members of the main cast. Of all of the characters on the show, I'd like to see more of him in the next season and find out exactly why he opposes Anna. His motives don't seem fully fleshed out at the moment, but his revival at the end of the episode suggests that he'll be back in some capacity next season.
Morena Baccarin also gets her chance to shine as events spiral out of Anna's control for the first time. She is appropriately cold-blooded when murdering Valerie early in the episode and completely unhinged near the end. She literally howls with rage.
I've come to the conclusion that Erica just isn't very compelling as the lead character. We're meant to feel a moment of intense pressure for her when she is forced to kill Joshua, but it just doesn't play. Elizabeth Mitchell has done terrific work on 'Lost," so I'm hesitant to point the finger at her. But "V" needs a strong central character that the audience can relate to. And I'm not sure that's Erica.
On the ground, Hobbes' story didn't really go anywhere and was kind of superfluous. Whereas Father Jack actually grew a spine this week and gave the anti-V speech that he should have given in the first episode. It was interesting to see that there were at least a few like-minded people in the crowd. If Father Jack becomes famous for his anti-Visitor views next season, it could also be an intriguing way of countering Anna's PR mastery. But what does it say about this series when all of the most interesting characters are the aliens?
The special effects on this episode were also handled well, although there was an unintentionally hilarious moment in which Erica outran an explosion while wearing heels. I know this is science fiction, but come on!
The conclusion and cliffhanger were also ineffective, as the series failed to explain what the red skies meant and what they will do to the planet. If the writers had taken a few seconds to get that information across, it could have worked. Instead, it just felt like a tacked on ending.
"V" is coming back at some point next season and we should get some sort of closure to this episode. Ideally, the writers and producers will take the summer to flesh out the characters and figure out where they want to take the story. There's nothing I'd rather see than for "V" to become the next great sci-fi series.
But it's not there yet.
Crave Online Rating: 8 out of 10
