Actress Elizabeth Mitchell, most known for her role as Dr. Juliet Burke on ABC’s television series “Lost,” sailed on Disney Cruise Line’s very first voyage to Alaska. Mitchell made a short video showcasing some of the highlights of her family’s experience: Does a cruise to… Read More »Actress Elizabeth Mitchell on Disney Cruise to Alaska
My apologies for being a bit delayed with this recap – hopefully you were all so busy enjoying your turkey and Black Friday shopping you didn’t mind the wait! On the other hand, perhaps this is one way to prolong the interest in a show that may not have been given enough time to grow legs.
This episode opens with action – our resistance heroes Erica and Ryan are racing through a parking garage, then we see Erica standing over a wounded Georgie, while Ryan aims a gun in her direction…
Then we cut, West Wing-style, to 14 hours earlier. The writers on The West Wing did this often, and very well, so I was excited. Had we just seen the final scene, or the penultimate scene of the fall finale? What a way to end! But no – this story-telling technique, while very effective sometimes, was not put to its best use. But more on that later.
Although record numbers tuned in for the premiere last week, Episode 2 saw those ratings fall 30%. And while the collective complaint of the first episode was the lightning speed with which it moved and how much was packed in, I found last night’s episode excruciatingly slow. There was, in my humble opinion, very little forward movement to this episode – we have very little new info about what our sneaky lizards are up to and our newly founded resistance members Erica and Jack seemed a little shell-shocked.
But perhaps the plot this week is a reflection of how it usually is in times of sweeping crisis or change – hurry up and wait. Initial enthusiasm and excitement quickly gives way to the need-some-time-to process-this reality of most things in life.
And indeed, our heroes, at least, need some time to process all that they’ve experienced since the Visitors came calling. It provides some convenient filler while the question of the episode is decided: Will the US agree to diplomatic relations with the Visitors or not?
I’d like to welcome back our newest guest author S. Divnich, who will be covering “V” here on The Disney Blog. – Ed.
It seems like we’ve been waiting forever, but the Visitors finally showed up last night with the premiere of V, ABC’s newest sci-fi offering.
The episode opened with an attempt to make it personal – captions reading “Where were you when JFK was assassinated? Where were you on 9/11?” led into “Where were you this morning?” So right off the bat, anyone who has not seen any advance info about this show is going to know – something big’s about to happen.
Tuesday, 6:30 a.m. Having asked “Where were you?” the first block shows us where (and who) our main players are. FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) awakens to her house shaking. She finds her son Tyler (Logan Huffman) is not in his bed and gets him on the cell, to find he’s in the ER, and barely feeling bad about it. This theme is going to play strong on this show – Erica wants to protect her son, but he’s not going to make it easy for her.
Newsman Chad Decker (Scott Wolf) is showering and heading into work. Ryan Nicholls (Morris Chestnut) is buying an engagement ring. Father Jack is opening the church doors. Val, Ryan’s girlfriend, is at home. It’s difficult to show simultaneous action on a TV show, and the pace felt a little off. We get a shaking water glass next to Erica right off the bat, but it’s several minutes before we see Val’s shaking coffee cup, FJ’s shaking light fixture, Ryan’s ring jumping around on the counter. Regardless, things start to shake, rattle and roll, and you can tell they’re not earthquake-savvy Californians – rather than run to the nearest doorway, Val seems to try to stop her bookshelves from falling over first.
In the street, Ryan does what so many of us have done since 9/11, what must be second-nature to New Yorkers by now – he looks to the sky to see what’s falling. The writers don’t disappoint – the fighter jet falling out of the sky gave me a lurch of déjà vu that was most unpleasant. Eight years later, and not even American, and I can recall the footage from 9/11 in a heartbeat. It brings a tear to my eye every time.
The giant Mother Ships darken the sky and all hell breaks loose. They could have saved some money by inserting footage from movies past – as one onscreen citizen put it, “This IS Independence Day.” And Deep Impact, and The Day After Tomorrow, and so many other running-from-the-end-of-the-world scenes. Conveniently placed TVs show newscasters reporting similar Mother Ships hovering over 29 major cities around the world.
The introduction of Visitors is very cool compared to the 1983 version (more on the comparison later). The bottom of the Mother Ships morphs into a giant movie-screen type thing. On the ground, we see Erica’s maternal “get behind my arm kid, I’ll protect you” gesture with Tyler. Erica’s a mother bear, through and through. And then, like a benevolent supreme being from on high, Anna’s smiling face gazes down on the planet.
First, if you missed “V” last night, you can now download it as a free video on iTunes. Second, if you did see it, you weren’t alone. Almost 14 million people watched with you. That’s a good sign for ABC which has three successful Sci-Fi… Read More »“V” Premiers big, Retooling still ahead
ABC’s next hit TV show ‘V’ premiers on Tuesday night at the early time of 8pm, so set your DVRs appropriate and check your local listings. For some reason they’ve decided to smash Dancing With the Stars in between ‘V’ and The Forgotten (which I… Read More »‘V’ Premier Tuesday at 8pm on ABC
Don’t forget there is another episode of FlashForward airing on ABC tonight. But it’s time to start looking foward to the next big series to air on ABC, ‘V’. Thanks to Shelley Divnich Haggert for sending in these morsels. Shelley will be the recap/reviewer for… Read More »Looking forward to ABC’s ‘V’
‘V’ was a hugely successful mini-series back in the 80s (two series, actually, and a tv show) focusing on ‘The Visitors’–Aliens who came to earth to do good, or did they? There was quite a bit of Nazi allegoricals going on, some cheesy acting, and… Read More »V