V - Serpent's Tooth recap/review

Let’s face it: V is probably the stupidest show on TV right now (The Hills was cancelled). Very little about this show is working lately. There are no characters that we care about. For a show that talks so much about human emotion, it’s been failing to generate human emotion in the people sitting in front of the screen. The premise has a lot of potential, but we’ve lost all hope that the show’s writers will be able to squeeze that potential out. And NOW, to top it all off, Anna is looking for the human soul to rid the world of emotion.

The face-off between Anna and Diana was a letdown. Nothing happened except that they bickered about whether Anna could find and destroy the human soul. Actually, it was revealed that Anna overthrew Diana because Diana developed human emotions. Diana has been in a creepy room in the ship for 15 years and this is the first time Anna has gone to see her. Diana figured out that Anna can’t lay eggs and the procreation job is all up to Lisa. Diana told Anna that in order to destroy emotions, you must destroy the soul.

Lisa told Erica that Joshua survived, but he doesn’t remember anything, including being in The Fifth Column. Anna put him in a memory chamber so that she could see who destroyed her eggs. All she got was Erica shooting Joshua, which Anna already knew about, obviously. This episode also included Val’s funeral. Ryan didn’t cry, and Val’s parents were disturbed by this. They also blamed Ryan for her death. This should have been sad, but it wasn’t. Father Jack comforted Ryan and told him he had a soul. Oh, priests. Even trying to turn aliens to God, haha.

A group that met on the internet developed a terrorist organization that is having suicide bombers blow themselves up near Visitor buildings. Everyone thinks it’s The Fifth Column, but it’s not. In fact, Erica was angry that there were human casualties in these sloppy bombings. She figured out that the target of the bombings is Chad Decker. Kyle found evidence that led to a base for the terrorist activities. Malik found the same spot, and she and Kyle fought. Kyle punched her, and we saw Malik pull out a large alien tooth. Kyle found another clue, prompting Erica and Malik to take a road trip together. Malik was onto Erica, due to Erica’s sloppiness. She pointed a gun at the driver, Erica, and Erica crashed the car. That’s how it ended.

Anna used Ryan’s new daughter to try to lure him back to her side. She put skin on it to make it cuter, and that didn’t help much. The show has a suffering baby now, but we don’t care that much because Anna is so cold with it and Ryan’s reaction doesn’t convince us of his grief. Also, that is one ugly baby. Anna started torturing it and tempting Ryan with an offer of her bliss for himself and his daughter. Ryan cried and then told Anna to go ahead and bliss the daughter. We guess Anna’s plan worked. Stupid Ryan…

Of course, the whole episode was worth watching to see Anna eat a mouse. That was terrifying and hilarious, so points for that.

One of the stupidest things about this episode was the assertion that the soul is the equivalent of human emotion. Umm, hello? Have the V’s and the humans missed out on the fact that there are chemical sources of emotion, as well as portions of the brain that produce and control them? Has anyone heard of an amygdala? Frontal lobes? There is an actual scientific source for feelings, and Anna could just give people some brain surgery and be done with it. Many scientists deny the existence of a soul, due to their inability to physically locate it. WE aren’t denying the soul, but to dumb the soul down to “feelings” is shallow. Maybe the soul has something to do with intuition (but our subconscious minds do a lot of that), and there is a decent argument to be made that the soul is important in explaining humans’ extreme level of consciousness. Mostly, the soul is supposed to be the spiritual part of us that lives on. It’s what we are aside from our physical material. It’s the core of us. Most of our emotions and thoughts are just parts of our bodies (the brain is part of the body). Maybe the soul has deeper emotions and a deeper voice (who knows?), but getting rid of the soul, even then, wouldn’t stop the amygdala and frontal lobes.

Also, if feelings come from the soul in this mythology, how does fake human skin for a long period of time create a soul? Does God give a soul to creatures who have been on Earth for a long time or who LOOK like humans? Whatever. We give up.

Episode grade: C-