V

Following my last post and rant against early cancellations, here’s another small gripe I have.  ABC canned V after 2 seasons, evidently too late for the producers to come up with a cogent ending, which left us with a fairly good cliffhanger and not much else.

V was one of my favorite series from the 80s, so I simply couldn’t pass up on the remake/follow up (I never understood which angle they were going for, and I don’t think they knew either), even though the new series was marred from the beginning.

For starters, the writing was poor and the show as a whole didn’t seem to have a good sense of direction.  At first it seemed to hold back too much, so they remedied by increasing the action and heightening the mystery/conspiracy level, but one thing that worked against the show was the advances in technology that have occurred since the first series premiered.  These made the visual effects cooler but also made us wonder why the rebels weren’t using a simple tool like the Internet to spread the word about the Visitors.

By the middle of season 2, the show had definitely gotten better, and by the end I was looking forward to each new episode, but it wasn’t meant to be.  Honestly, part of me is glad that they put it out of its misery, because it really did feel like there was no one who knew what the whole picture looked like.

The casting was off too.  While I loved Elizabeth Mitchell in Lost, I never bought her as the leader of the rebellion on V.  I’m not saying she can’t play tough, since she did it when necessary on Lost, but I never saw her actually disappear into Erica Evans.

Morena Baccarin as Anna, the Visitors’ leader, also was at times good but often just all-right.  On the contrary, when they brought Jane Badler (the original show’s V leader Diana) back to try and salvage the series, she owned every scene she was in.

The same mediocrity plagued many of the other principal actors, so I think that when it comes down to it, the writers and producers are to blame.  They weren’t clear on what they wanted to achieve and couldn’t make up their mind.  The series was lackluster and wanting and that’s unfortunate, because they certainly squandered one of the best properties of the eighties and a show that offered countless possibilities in terms of plot development.

Too bad.

Grade: 5