V S2E7: Birth Pangs

"Anna wants a war? I'm gonna give her one."

You know how we know that EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED and Erica and her scrappy band of no-goodniks are going to TAKE THE WAR TO ANNA?

Sunglasses, baby.

Suddenly, everyone in the 5th Column is sporting a showy pair of shades and we can't groan hard enough because that's what passes for character-building and subtlety on this show. Badass=sunglasses.

Don't get us wrong, we're enjoying the somewhat heightened pace of things, but just as we predicted last week, the more frantic feel of the proceedings still isn't amounting to much actually happening. It's still a show where characters stand around and talk about what happened, what's happening, what's going to happen. If you look at the two potentially most exciting narrative developments - Erica becoming Queen of the 5th Column and Lisa allying with her grandmother Diana - in practical results, it only means that there are now new people or new combinations of people standing around talking. Openly talking about their secret plans; in hallways, in restaurants, on cell phones in public. It doesn't exactly foster a sense of urgency if the characters never really seem to be in any danger or under any surveillance.

Yeah, things happened; we're not denying that. A lady V jumped out a window, Lisa slapped her mother, Diana got hold of a communications device, Ryan's baby got older, Anna has a secret egg, yadda, yadda, yadda. There are some interesting things going on, certainly, but that's a lot of plot with very little payoff, wouldn't you say? Anna or Erica always have some new plan they're unveiling but nothing ever seems to happen; we only get the illusion of things happening. Very frustrating as a viewer.

We'd probably be cheering an episode like this if it was the first or second in the season, but we've got only a handful of episodes left and the show squandered pretty much every chance it had to build something. We're still there every Tuesday night and we still kind of enjoy it, but there's an overwhelming sense of too little, too late. The likelihood of a third season seems remote, but if they can do some paying off in these next couple episodes and somehow manage to get renewed, we'd be very interested to see if they can finally make something of the show by next fall.

[Picture credit: ABC TV]

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Labels: Television, V Season 2, V Series