What I’m Watching: V (Season Premiere)

V: Season 2, Episode 1 “Red Rain” (C+)

It seems that this show is entering its second season as if it did something horribly wrong in the first. I think that most people were disappointed with the entirety of the first season, while I thought it steadily improved and got pretty good by the end despite a less than promising start. Now, however, we’re diving headfirst into a season two that is only slated to be ten episodes, cut down from thirteen this past fall. That means that action and plot development are paramount if this show wants to live to see a third season. Things seem almost too over-simplified, with Erica easily able to get an immediate audience with Anna after her son is very mildly hurt, Ryan released right back into the welcoming arms of the Fifth Column, and Lisa so determinedly on Erica’s side that she’s willing to risk whispering clandestine information in her ear while her mother is standing two feet away. I’m continually baffled as to why Elizabeth Mitchell just isn’t good on this show, and no one from the rest of the cast is impressing me too much at this point, not even Laura Vandervoort or Morena Baccarin. I know that the appearance of Anna’s mother at the end of the episode is meant to be a gloriously exciting thing for fans of the original series, but as someone who has never watched it, I don’t see its relevance. A good remake shouldn’t require knowledge of the original, and therefore I’m hopeful that this, unlike the red sky, is a legitimate and intriguing twist with some reasoning behind it.