V Recap (Season 2, Episode 10): Bliss Me, Ultima

“What’s so interesting,” says executive producer Scott Rosenbaum, “is I feel like the best of the show is ahead of itself.” That’s about it, right? Television is a thing designed to make you watch television. It’s not that we didn’t know that aliens might have better things to do than poke us with needles and then, instead of cackling, twitch their perfect swan neck muscles. But the least the show could do is pretend it wants to entertain us.

Well tonight, V did just that, and we realized we didn’t want that either. Plans were made, and they were silly failures as always, and so then we ripped out the reptile tails and struck through the gut.

It just isn’t that hard to make a big splashy sci-fi finale. All you have to do is give us the plot development for which we faithfully slugged through a season of recycled birthday cakes with a side of haughty blather.

I mean, it’s not like nothing happened in this episode. It’s just that very little of it was interesting by the seventh Windows 7 ad immediately following. (Microsoft, you deserve each other.) There are few shows that can pull out enough twists to dress up placeholder dialogue. Most of them are by J.J. Abrams. What is the mythology of this show? Aliens come and pretend badly to not be evil. They never pretend this to the audience, though, so we don’t care. Also, they can fix any mistake with mind control. They can also, whenever they want, crush a band of maybe 30 people trying to kill them, but don’t.

I could tell you a tale. A pretty lady saw another pretty lady. The one pretty lady worried about her child and said this to the other pretty lady, who worried about her child, who escaped in a hearse. The hearse child wanted to kill her mom because of the lady’s plan to kill the pretty lady’s child, with the hearse child but much to her horror, the hearse child’s, of course, the other pretty lady saw her gun in a mirror and made her watch a snuff video with her clone and the pretty lady’s child, a giant talking sweet potato. Then there was another lady who got stuck through the gut with a reptile tail. Her name was Diana and she was also pretty, but less so due to oldness.

Minus the sweet potato, that’s what happened on V. A girl got smuggled out of an alien ship, in space, on a hearse. OK, there was a hilarious bit where the Fifth Column fake kidnapped the alien girl, and read their demands in alien Halloween masks. That was about it. Well, I guess the aliens then subdued humanity, using that mind control thing, except more this time. People stood outside and stared at a light into forever, including an ex-priest. Bliss me, Ultima!

Oh wait! Also, also! So, Anna comes down to pretend turn himself in for her pretend hostage daughter. Everyone knows about this. Literally the most important thing that has ever happened to humanity, supposedly, shows up and there are like three cameras. She gives a 30-second speech. They made a goddamn Oscar-winning movie about a speech! All the drama is there. You have a suddenly vulnerable politician, an impossible choice, and all of humanity (well, the six dozen who showed up) waiting for you to reassure them that you are in control. Why did you make this campy sci-fi Nazi allegory nothing but talking if you don’t want to write dialogue?

Is it just to survive a budget slash to live another day? Television for television for television.

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