seraphcelene (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seraphcelene) wrote2010-03-31 12:49 am
seraphcelene) wrote2010-03-31 12:49 am
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TV: V - 1.5 Welcome to the War
Although we don't know the agenda of the V outside of Lisa's sooper-secret destiny, apparently with Tyler, the lines have been drawn in the sand and we're officially at war. The last episode introduced the Fifth Column, although we still don't know who John May is. The show is still frustrating at this point because there are hints of Big Things to Come, but who knows what those things are outside of the massive fleet of V ships headed towards Earth. There's also this unwieldy attempt to personalize the impetus for the members of the Resistance that isn't working. Erica's attachment to Tyler channels Mike Donovan's attachment to his son, Sean. Unfortunately, Sean was a fresh faced kid who gets snatched by the nasty Visitors and stored along with the other food on a mothership. Tyler is a blind, too-naive-for-his-age and annoying punk kid who very willingly walks into the jaws of the lion. Considering he's the kid of an FBI agent, I am stunned by his complete lack of common sense.
What I did find interesting in this episode and the previous one are the predatory females and monstrous mothers all over my TV screen.
The women take the lead in this. The primary location of agency is coded female on both sides of the divide. The mothers are in (or out of) control (uncontrollable). Anna, the cold, ruthless leader of the V's is gorgeous and terrifying. V's are tortured to death at her command, but she also possess the "bliss" and nuances iron fisted leadership with some kind of mind control. Anna is beautiful and sexy, the ideal image of a non-threatening female forever dressed in neutral colored power suits that invoke both her femininity and leadership status. We know that the V's are masked and we've seen how she adapts her presentation by audience. It's obvious, then, that Anna chose her "skin" very deliberately. That awareness makes her all the more dangerous. In a way, she is an unknown quantity.
In contrast to Anna, we have the very human, very overprotective, initially neglectful, mother in Erica. She's tough and smart and vaguely butch. Erica is blatantly aggressive. An FBI agent, she kicks ass and takes name, demands and manages the world around her. Erica pays lip service to the terrorist fear of conquest the show envisions, and although she isn't quite "in control of the situation", she is always in control of herself. It is very clear that Erica is the Mother of the Resistance and that she will survive whatever birth pains as necessary and get the job done. Any vulnerability, at this point, is a false one. She's so contained and although, she constantly espouses her desire to save her son, I don't know how much I buy her commitment to that cause. My doubt is quite possibly a result of my complete and utter disdain for Tyler.
Then there is Valerie who is, quite literally, the mother of the monstrous human-V hybrid she carries. The conception can be seen in two lights, as the natural and inevitable evolution of species living too long and too intimately together, or as some sort of abominable lab experiment. In the original mini-series, Elizabeth Maxwell is impregnated by a Visitor as part of an experiment conducted by Diana. The suggestion however, is that humans and Visitor's can't naturally reproduce (a tenant reiterated in the re-imagining) and that Brian is altered in some way so that he and Robin can procreate. Here, that doesn't immediately appear to be the case, although Valerie's pregnancy is introduced after her visit to a V healing center. So, her pregnancy is doubly suspect. Was she altered? Is she part of an experiment.? Is this natural evolution? How does this relate to Lisa's destiny and whatever makes Tyler "the one".
The men in V are emotionally out of control in a way that the women, with the exception of the fragile Valerie, never really are. Dale, Tyler, Georgie, and Jack are all very reactionary characters. Chad and Ryan are, also, but manage cooler heads. Chad and Ryan are working angles. Playing a game of chess with Anna and forced to measure themselves. The men, again with the exception of Valerie who is undergoing very extreme physical adjustments, seem to also be the location of change. Jack, having been injected with R6 feels himself changing. Tyler rebelling against the mother/child relationship is literally undergoing hormonal changes as he grows. His connections to the V's imply that there may be greater changes either already underway or impending. Personally, I think Tyler is a brat and a lost cause, but I can't fault Erica with trying to protect her kid.
I liked the fork(ed tongue), literally a sign of Anna's alienness, the lizard within. It hints at her physical duplicity, and very overtly references her duplicitous personality. Anna speaks two truths, she lies and Chad is completely aware of that. She is the enemy from every angle. It's also a nice little foreshadow of that end scene and Anna's mouth full of razor sharp teeth, when she becomes the devouring mother.
I liked the very detached way that she conceives her "army", the monstrous mother theme played out on a larger, apparently global scale as we are meant to envision her literally birthing an army of babies that will rapidly grow into soldiers. Personally, I imagine a bunch of eggs tucked away in an incubator somewhere. Perhaps, even more threatening, Anna is in control of her reproduction. She chooses her mate, chooses the place and time. She will also control the offspring that she produces, in this case an army. Anna can destroy the world with her uterus. The solider, terror all over his face, provides genetic material and then becomes useless and is discarded.
Everything about this incarnation of the V's are meant to be disconcerting in a way that the original weren't. The original series focused on their diet, the voice and, occasional glimpses of their true face as locations of other. This V invests their behaviors with more alieness. The way that Anna chooses a mate, their stillness. The way that they don't blink very often. The more human V, Dale, Ryan, etc, I assume can fake human better because they have been living among humans for so long. Even Lisa is slightly off. There is a stillness, although more warmth, that invokes Anna.
I thought that the moment with Valerie and the mouse was a little overkill. There was a great scene from the second mini-series when Elizabeth wakes in the middle of the night and stumbles to the kitchen, opens the fridge and starts devouring raw liver. I think that was a better demonstration of the alien pregnancy then having Valerie stare in fascinated hunger at a dead mouse on a trap. Sure, it's fresh and all, but really?!
I'm interested to see where in the spectrum of our guys, the new addition, Kyle Hobbs falls. I get the feeling he might be set-up in romantic tension with Erica, alpha-male to her alpha-female. He's got no allegiances and reminds me of Mike Donovan's sort of rogue individualism. He was part of the group, but kinda not part of the group, forever off doing his own thing.
So, all in all, I'm curious enough to keep watching. I really do want to see where this is going, so long as it is going somewhere and so long as we get answers. I don't watch Lost and there is a reason for that. That reason has everything to do with all the questions that never get answered. I just don't have the patience.
What I did find interesting in this episode and the previous one are the predatory females and monstrous mothers all over my TV screen.
The women take the lead in this. The primary location of agency is coded female on both sides of the divide. The mothers are in (or out of) control (uncontrollable). Anna, the cold, ruthless leader of the V's is gorgeous and terrifying. V's are tortured to death at her command, but she also possess the "bliss" and nuances iron fisted leadership with some kind of mind control. Anna is beautiful and sexy, the ideal image of a non-threatening female forever dressed in neutral colored power suits that invoke both her femininity and leadership status. We know that the V's are masked and we've seen how she adapts her presentation by audience. It's obvious, then, that Anna chose her "skin" very deliberately. That awareness makes her all the more dangerous. In a way, she is an unknown quantity.
In contrast to Anna, we have the very human, very overprotective, initially neglectful, mother in Erica. She's tough and smart and vaguely butch. Erica is blatantly aggressive. An FBI agent, she kicks ass and takes name, demands and manages the world around her. Erica pays lip service to the terrorist fear of conquest the show envisions, and although she isn't quite "in control of the situation", she is always in control of herself. It is very clear that Erica is the Mother of the Resistance and that she will survive whatever birth pains as necessary and get the job done. Any vulnerability, at this point, is a false one. She's so contained and although, she constantly espouses her desire to save her son, I don't know how much I buy her commitment to that cause. My doubt is quite possibly a result of my complete and utter disdain for Tyler.
Then there is Valerie who is, quite literally, the mother of the monstrous human-V hybrid she carries. The conception can be seen in two lights, as the natural and inevitable evolution of species living too long and too intimately together, or as some sort of abominable lab experiment. In the original mini-series, Elizabeth Maxwell is impregnated by a Visitor as part of an experiment conducted by Diana. The suggestion however, is that humans and Visitor's can't naturally reproduce (a tenant reiterated in the re-imagining) and that Brian is altered in some way so that he and Robin can procreate. Here, that doesn't immediately appear to be the case, although Valerie's pregnancy is introduced after her visit to a V healing center. So, her pregnancy is doubly suspect. Was she altered? Is she part of an experiment.? Is this natural evolution? How does this relate to Lisa's destiny and whatever makes Tyler "the one".
The men in V are emotionally out of control in a way that the women, with the exception of the fragile Valerie, never really are. Dale, Tyler, Georgie, and Jack are all very reactionary characters. Chad and Ryan are, also, but manage cooler heads. Chad and Ryan are working angles. Playing a game of chess with Anna and forced to measure themselves. The men, again with the exception of Valerie who is undergoing very extreme physical adjustments, seem to also be the location of change. Jack, having been injected with R6 feels himself changing. Tyler rebelling against the mother/child relationship is literally undergoing hormonal changes as he grows. His connections to the V's imply that there may be greater changes either already underway or impending. Personally, I think Tyler is a brat and a lost cause, but I can't fault Erica with trying to protect her kid.
I liked the fork(ed tongue), literally a sign of Anna's alienness, the lizard within. It hints at her physical duplicity, and very overtly references her duplicitous personality. Anna speaks two truths, she lies and Chad is completely aware of that. She is the enemy from every angle. It's also a nice little foreshadow of that end scene and Anna's mouth full of razor sharp teeth, when she becomes the devouring mother.
I liked the very detached way that she conceives her "army", the monstrous mother theme played out on a larger, apparently global scale as we are meant to envision her literally birthing an army of babies that will rapidly grow into soldiers. Personally, I imagine a bunch of eggs tucked away in an incubator somewhere. Perhaps, even more threatening, Anna is in control of her reproduction. She chooses her mate, chooses the place and time. She will also control the offspring that she produces, in this case an army. Anna can destroy the world with her uterus. The solider, terror all over his face, provides genetic material and then becomes useless and is discarded.
Everything about this incarnation of the V's are meant to be disconcerting in a way that the original weren't. The original series focused on their diet, the voice and, occasional glimpses of their true face as locations of other. This V invests their behaviors with more alieness. The way that Anna chooses a mate, their stillness. The way that they don't blink very often. The more human V, Dale, Ryan, etc, I assume can fake human better because they have been living among humans for so long. Even Lisa is slightly off. There is a stillness, although more warmth, that invokes Anna.
I thought that the moment with Valerie and the mouse was a little overkill. There was a great scene from the second mini-series when Elizabeth wakes in the middle of the night and stumbles to the kitchen, opens the fridge and starts devouring raw liver. I think that was a better demonstration of the alien pregnancy then having Valerie stare in fascinated hunger at a dead mouse on a trap. Sure, it's fresh and all, but really?!
I'm interested to see where in the spectrum of our guys, the new addition, Kyle Hobbs falls. I get the feeling he might be set-up in romantic tension with Erica, alpha-male to her alpha-female. He's got no allegiances and reminds me of Mike Donovan's sort of rogue individualism. He was part of the group, but kinda not part of the group, forever off doing his own thing.
So, all in all, I'm curious enough to keep watching. I really do want to see where this is going, so long as it is going somewhere and so long as we get answers. I don't watch Lost and there is a reason for that. That reason has everything to do with all the questions that never get answered. I just don't have the patience.