V - Red Rain recap/review

Last season, Erica destroyed Anna’s eggs, and Anna flipped, finally developing human emotions. Then Anna turned the sky red, and all of us said, “That’s it?” But the show has gotten a little better already. Stuff happened in the premiere, so if you missed it, be sure to read the black text.

The episode opened with Erica having a disgusting dream where Anna melted Tyler’s face. We knew it didn’t really happen, but it was gross. We actually kind of wish it happened. Tyler’s not our favorite character, by far. Marcus let Anna know that the ship captains were afraid that Anna was weakening because of her reaction to the death of her potential soldier children. She confronted them and made mincemeat out of one, to make an example. Ryan, meanwhile, worried about his lizard daughter, but Anna kept her to experiment on and expelled Ryan to earth. It is Anna’s hope that Ryan join the Fifth Column and that she will be able to control him better now that she has the daughter to hang over his head. Ryan went right back to Erica and the gang.

Chad reported that the red sky caused riots and earthling unease, and Anna refused to say a word about the Visitors’ involvement with the red sky. Chad also went to Father Jack’s church looking for forgiveness and redemption for helping the Visitors trick the humans, using the media. To gain Father Jack’s trust, Chad had to tell him that humans were being tortured on the V ship. To prove it, Chad gave Father Jack recordings of the human test subjects in interviews. Chad has now joined the Fifth Column as a spy. Right as the red sky started raining what looked like blood but probably wasn’t, Erica used her son to get onto the V’s ship and question Anna. Anna put her big face in the sky and told the humans that the red sky and rain would heal the earth, including that pesky global warming problem. Because people are stupid, they believed her at her word. Anna told Lisa to hook up with Tyler, probably to provide Anna with another half human/half lizard.

Anna found out that a human scientist was close to figuring out the real cause and purpose of the red sky, so she sent someone to kill him. Lisa told Erica about the scientist, and Erica went to the university to grab him first. Then we found out that the red rain has lots of phosphorous (Dun dun dunnnnn). No, really, that’s bad, because that makes the humans better vessels for V babies. Erica remembered that she had very high levels of phosphorous in her blood when she was pregnant and wondered if she and Tyler were V test subjects.

Anna killed her remaining babies to stop herself from having emotions. This doesn’t work, because we see her cry a little. Then she went to some weird, dirty cave room to talk to her mother. What’s with Anna’s mother stepping out of her weird cocoon dressed like she is the next drag queen at a Vegas show? Were those fishnet stockings and platform heels?

This episode would probably get people at least a little interested in this show, so that’s good. The show still needs more action/tension and for the characters to hook our emotions, and we still wonder if making Elizabeth Mitchell the lead was the right choice. But we liked this premiere. At this point, we are still unhooked, but we are still curious. Erica is pretty cool, but none of these characters wring any emotion from us. And Anna needs to be scarier. There needs to be some sort of Big Bad behind her, especially if she is just going to start acting like your typical woman right before her period (remember how 24 used to show us the real scary dude at the end? V should take note). The alien takeover needs to be more horrifying. We need some real tension and a real reason to care.

Episode Grade: B