One New York Life

Back when this original miniseries aired on NBC, I was just a single-digit TDL. Since I sat through Nightmare On Elm Street way too early in life, I ended up not watching this because I was over-sensitive to scary things. When I found out this was coming back out, I decided to watch the old version. Great for a miniseries, awesome Nazi Germany allegory done in sci-fi right down to the Visitors’ Logo. Jump forward 26 years and we’re back.

The Good

• Wash and Inara from Firefly as a sleeper spy and the leader of the Visitors, Tom from The 4400 as a priest who finds out what’s going on, Rekha Sharma from Battlestar Galactica as the head of the FBI’s Visitor Threat Assessment Task Force, and Supergirl from Smallville as an ambassador. The only person missing is Summer Glau (who, it might be noted, has become the Ted McGinley for sci-fi television). Successful nerd-cred cast selection.
• Juliet from LOST as the FBI agent who discovers her partner of seven years was part of a terrorist cell they’d been investigating. The twist being he was a Visitor and that the Visitors have been on Earth for quite some time. She’s essentially the lead and delivers the two best lines of the pilot. After seeing a video of her idiot son tagging a red V on someone’s shed; “I just want you to know: The fact you’re tagging now — SO proud.” And, upon finding out that the V’s aren’t being completely honest and have some ulterior motives to the priest: “They’re arming themselves with the most powerful weapon there is. Devotion.” The fact that line was being delivered to a Catholic priest was a nice touch.
• I do like the sub-plot of the church being the voice of reason. The best science fiction has the ability to turn preconceptions on their head. There is a scene where Fathers Jack (4400 guy) and Travis are discussing that the arrival of the Visitors has essentially turned hundreds of years of church canon on its head. As the discussion about what the Vatican’s response continues, Father Jack says he doesn’t know how this will affect people’s relationship with the church. Then they turn the corner and surprisingly walk in to an overflowing congregation room — awesome. Father Travis’s almost selfish “the Visitors are the best thing that’s happened to us. I haven’t seen a mass so full in 20 years” was another great touch. And, really, wouldn’t the Church be the voice of reason if something like this were to happen? Wouldn’t people retreat to spirituality if their entire existence was suddenly redefined? Great stuff.
• Just as I was ready to complain a bit about the “they are among us!” Battlestar Galactica or They Live! subplot, they switched it up. The idea of them living among us, but traitors living among THEM was enough. I’m a simple man

The Bad

• So, let me get this straight. The visitors have figured out how to travel through space, make gravity work in the absence of a large object, broadcast a gigantic HD image out of ship’s hull, create a possibly-automated Snitch that explodes and shoots spikes through people, clone human skin and wrap their lizard bodies in it, and cure paralysis… but they haven’t figured out how to record identifiable HD images via their spy cams? They get infrared images with blurred faces? Really?
• I do find it a touch unbelievable that Manhattan would function pretty much as normal with a giant spaceship parked over the city. Minus some protesters, people seem to be just going on about their daily lives. I mean, have they never seen an alien movie before? Even if they hadn’t — when I watched Cloverfield, the scariest part of the movie, for me, was the consistent reminder of how screwed 8 million people would be if they ever had to evacuate Manhattan at the same time. To quote: On some level, everyone who lives here kind of understands that any massive GTFO exodus will cause most of the island to be generally screwed. Do you know where I’m not going to be with imminent destruction hanging directly over my apartment? Not in my f*cking apartment.
• I really could do without another “stupid teenager angry at his FBI agent mom” subplot. It’s predictable and we already all pretty much see where it’s going to end, right? Right.

The Rest

In case you didn’t see where they were going in the first half-hour, the Sledgehammer Of Plot alerted you when patsy reporter Chad Decker (Scott Wolf) interviewed Anna (Inara!) who informed him the Visitors would be setting up free clinics in every city. Decker responds with “So you mean UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE?” It’s easy, right now, to take shots at the GWBs of the world in entertainment. What’s not so easy, in the current climate, is to take shots at what the Obamas of the world are doing. At this particular moment, the masses are fine with the Democrats (specifically Pelosi and Obama) promising them the world without questioning the cost. V has successfully taken that all the way to the full, Utopian view. A pretty, smiling, short-haired woman telling Decker “it’s acceptable to compromise your principles for the greater good” and was excellent. It’s not an error that Anna, in her initial broadcast, tells people “we need a substance that we are out of but exists plentifully on Earth. But before we ask for it, we want to give you all this good stuff.” By the end of the second episode, which covers six weeks or so, NO ONE has asked what, exactly, they want in return. People are too busy taking medical cures and scientific advancements to concern themselves with cost.

Though blue state folks (in a shocking twist) are going to seize on this as a Conservative Conspiracy Against Obama, I think it’s more a dig at the entire political structure. When Decker goes to the New York mothership to interview Anna, she informs him he’s not allowed to ask her any tough questions or paint the Visitors in a poor light. If he doesn’t do this, she threatens to cancel the interview and find someone else to interview her in front of 80 million people. Later, his producer tells him this is fine because ratings were huge. This is the world we live in right now — where the people who supposedly represent us limit the information they’ll give to the press and have the ability to only visit friendly shows. Shows refuse to ask tough questions because, if they do, they lose access to the person. That’s not good.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the entire show is something of an Illuminati allegory, too. The supposed “New World Order” uses reptilians in a lot of their symbolism. The really crazy conspiracy folks believe the real Illuminati are a hidden race of reptilians who have control the world through human hybrids in positions of power.

Definite series recording. Love the first two episodes. Best new show of the season so far.