We've had a lot of involuntary down time around here lately and when we came to, we realized that we had spent...what can only be described as...an unnatural amount of time watching TV shows...mostly on Hulu.com. I can summarize this experience by saying that we now own an indelible montage of soap operatic nonsense, packaged like the designer purses of Susan Mayer and Gabrielle Solis look-a-likes, the Marlboro Man-lite, sexy FBI agents and big, bald black men...all guided through a maze of predictable, unimaginative investigative horseshit by writers who wouldn't have made the short list as Star Trek techno-babblers. Our search for anything meaningful or satisfying would equate to a dehydrated person trying to find comfort in sucking on a barely damp cloth. I let all of this roam, freely, through my psyche. When will I ever learn?

Then along comes "V".

I paused it at the beginning, allowing myself to set-up a little wooden cutting board, an Exacto knife with a brand new blade and an ample supply of clean towels, hydrogen peroxide and bandages on my desk. I strapped my right hand to the desk and clicked "Play" with my left hand. With the Exacto knife poised for action, I gave my monitor my full attention.

Opening shot: Lady in bed. Camera pans past her FBI badge. (My left hand quivers). Arrival of the aliens (The Visitors) is signaled by vibrating furniture and coffee cups. First blood occurs at First Contact.

Human: "Is there such a thing as an ugly Visitor?"

Visitor: "I don't understand."

Human: "Well, you all seem to be what we consider to be attractive."

Visitor: "Thank you. You're not so bad yourself."

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I started with my baby finger. Stark immediately picked the finger off the floor (amazing how far it flew) and packed it in ice. I lost another finger when the FBI agent (the baby Doctor from "Lost") leads a raid in search for C-4 explosives. WTF? The third finger went when the violins led us into the soapie confrontation between the FBI agent and her son, about how "you're father left us..." The fourth finger got chopped when there was a reference to how the Visitors would bring 'hope and change'...AND (AND!) Universal Health Care...followed by a crippled man in a wheel chair now being able to walk, thanks to the new Saviors. I was down to a thumb. But, I just couldn't do it. When I began to raise the blade to my throat, Stark snatched the Exacto knife away from me.

Evolution is a sneaky thing. In less than an hour, all of my opposable digits were in the freezer.
(which will be a real test for the new set of cast iron pans that I bought.) And for what? So I could write a review on this garbage? Well, you guys can keep sucking on that barely damp cloth.

Curiously, we just did a Clint Eastwood marathon, here. From "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" all the way through "High Plains Drifter" and I never once thought about cutting off my fingers.

When will I ever learn?

Additionally: I'm sorry, but I didn't nail this one, so let me give it another shot. I feel disgusted that I allowed myself to spend weeks consorting with a pack a spineless, gutless writers, producers and directors who absolutely refuse to take any risks with their work. Everything is recycled...the themes, the plots and the characters and if they can't get the actors they want, they find ones that look exactly alike. It's like the sugar effect: the more you take, the more you crave it...basically, because it's so unsatisfying to begin with.

I think this series shows a lot of promise. I'd never seen the original miniseries or TV episodes but I'd heard enough about it to know a few of the basics of what the series was about. So this meant I could watch this series with no real pre-conceptions of what to expect and could hope it would be a solid science fiction series that would replace the void left by the ending of Battlestar Galactica earlier in the year (with one of the most phenomenal final episodes ever I must say).

In this first episode they don't waste any time introducing the Visitors and their ships and the special effects do look good - as you would expect for a pilot episode. The characters introduced include an FBI agent and her son, and a vicar who sees the Visitors coming as dangerous to religion. I liked the general feel of the show and the designs of both the interior and exterior of the ships, but I felt at times some of the story elements were a little clumsy. I think what they were trying to do was to set up some mystery to start with and to also shed some light on why the Visitors arrival would be a bad thing. The way this comes about is that both the lead characters end up at the meeting of a resistance cell for different reasons and soon find out that the Visitors have been here for years and are hiding something. The meeting is interrupted and the majority of the people there are killed except for the FBI agent, the Vicar, and a rebel Visitor.

Whilst this is going on the FBI agents son has joined the New York chapter of the Visitor's peace corp due to him lusting after Laura Vandervoort's character (understandable really). So this is obviously setting the series up for some mother - son conflicts later on. I'm expecting this series to become very similar to Earth: Final Conflict, which was probably based on the original series anyway.

Overall I would say the series show promise and I'll no doubt continue watching it, but it is now making me start to wonder what the original series was like. I think one of my main concerns for this show is that it is already showing signs of having some strong political agenda in the show and sometimes this can be too overpowering for the rest of the story. Anyway, I'll look forward to watching the next episode.

I got 2/3 of the first episode of V (2009 version), and it was just good enough to make me want to watch another one.

To me it felt like a (slightly) dumbed down, mainstreamed Battlestar Galactica. It's a clash of cultures, with heavy political undertones. Is the queen lizard visitor an evil Barack Obama figure, offering universal healthcare to the masses in order to advance an insidious agenda? Who knows - no doubt politicos on both sides will read a lot into this show.