Academic

Farewell, ABC's "V"?

By Tung Yin

I'm not exactly proud of having stuck with ABC's "V" remake to what looks like the bitter end, but the combination of a serialized sci-fi drama and pleasant memories of the cheesy 1980s mini-series (x2) and TV show made it irresistible to me.

And yet, last night was the season finale -- and given the fairly anemic ratings, likely the series finale. Naturally, it ended in a cliff-hanger, which is especially dissatisfying if it doesn't return to the fall schedule.

Here's a pretty good dissection of all that went wrong with the series (finale spoilers abound within):

After ineptly attempting to make viewers care with and root for a rag-tag bunch of wretchedly written, poorly portrayed freedom fighters for the better part of 22 episodes, "V" surrendered on Tuesday night and just admitted what's been blatantly obvious since the premiere: Morena Baccarin's Anna is the show. Period. And she isn't just the show. She's the freakin' hero of the show. If that makes Humanity and The Fifth Column the villains on "V"? So be it. I'm not sure that there's a single human character on the show that I don't view as cannon fodder and it was almost courageous of the "V" writers to admit that over 22 episodes, they'd shaped The Fifth Column into the most useless resistance force ever.

Yeah, there were some human characters that I hoped would become cannon fodder . . . .

Oh well, here's the next serialized sci-fi series on my radar, coming this summer.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on March 16, 2011 (boomark / email).