Review: V, “Devil In A Blue Dress”

I’ve had my problems with V this season but much like last week’s episode, “Devil In A Blue Dress” provides a good amount of fun and exciting sequences that almost make me forget all the slow, terrible pacing and plotting it took throughout the season to get us here. There have been some truly awful episodes of V this season, but this penultimate episode is not one of them. And before I get into the details of the episode, I just wanted to note how unfortunate it was that the seventh episode “Birth Pangs” was so terrible. The middle of the season — most notably “Concordia” and “Siege” — were fairly entertaining, and these last two episodes have been as well. But the pathetic seventh episode that delayed all sense of momentum (however minuscule it was) the season had and even if the finale is fun, I’ll be left thinking about how much better V could have been in season two if the writers would have kept their feet on the gas.

IN ANY EVENT, “Devil In A Blue Dress?” Kind of fun. It continued to explore Erica’s damaged, weakened psyche and what that means for the resistance as a whole, featured a few good CGI set-pieces and actually suggested that everyone is ready to take Anna down. Of course, that’s been something the series has hinted at since like episode six of season one, but next week is the probable series finale, so I imagine something will actually happen. Let’s hope.

This episode continues to present the two of the series’ best problems — throwing in random plot developments at the last minute, bringing back past developments and pretending they’re BRAND NEW — but the exemplars of those problems here are fun enough that I can just let it go. Sure, it’s completely random that the series is now telling us Anna can bliss humans, but at least this is a twist that could have some sort of impact on the ongoing narrative. I think most of the season two episodes were made in a vacuum (i.e. before they aired and subsequently got middling ratings) so there’s a chance that Anna won’t try to totally bliss EVERYONE in the finale, but at least we know the threat is there. This adds some urgency and danger to the situation, making Erica and company’s horrible changes even worse.

Moreover, a lot of this episode is about a fairly stupid “reveal” we already knew — the Visitors want to invade! OMG! — but hey, it’s something. I don’t mean to belittle the series but at this point, I’ve recognized it’s not “good” and have embraced the few positive things I can find in each episode. Who cares if we’ve actually known about the alien invasion since episode four while the characters have been left entirely in the dark! Now they do know and it could mean something cool in the finale! Again, it could also mean absolutely nothing have no impact on the finale, but the promise of something great is better than the promise of nothing.

Sarcasm aside, I really did enjoy the primary thread here. The team’s plan to take down the initial Concordia site in hopes of delaying the construction of the rest of them was surprisingly intelligent and thought-out. I’ve had lots of problems with the writing of each episode’s “story” where Erica and company come up with a plan, try to execute it and ultimately fail only to fight another day (i.e. in the next episode). But here, the plan feels well-formed and calculated and for once, actually features a tinge of urgency. When Ryan and Lisa show up at the last minute in hopes of convincing Sidney, Erica and the rest of the crew to not blow up Concordia with Blue Energy, there was a legitimate sense of pressure and stakes, something the series has lacked from the very beginning. Again, most of that has to do with the fact that this is a penultimate episode, but for once, my pulse was moderately raised during a sequence of V. The sequence also looked tremendous, as I joked on Twitter that it seemed like the production team saved all their budget for that one bit.

Like I said, V is never going to be a “great” television series, we’ve come too far and it’s been way too mediocre for too long. But if it can provide some cheap thrills and a few good-looking sequences, I won’t have as much to complain about.

Other thoughts:

• The small story with Chad and his fellow news anchor Carrie felt like it probably should have been in an episode that aired three weeks ago (you know, right after they introduced the character in the first place), but it was well done. Scott Wolf has had a lot less to do this season, so it’s nice to be reminded of how sleazy the world thinks Chad is.
• Glad to see that Joshua remembered his true nature, stupid amnesia/mind-wipe plot or not.
• Father Jack likes to preach, even when he’s not in front of a congregation. Someone needs to give that guy something to do.
• The final sequence sees the whole gang get together in hopes of taking down Anna, but it’s still sort of pathetic that “the whole gang” is still only eight people. No stakes, no scope, this V.