Tonight is the season finale of V on ABC and I’m thrilled to say that it’s just the season finale and not the SERIES finale. There was a time there where I was very worried that V would not be picked up for another season based on how it was doing in the ratings. Now that it has been picked up, the writers better make some serious changes if they want to get to a third season. Here are some suggestions from someone who was a HUGE fan of the original as well as this new incarnation.
- Show the damn aliens – At this point the only look we’ve gotten at the V’s that shows us their true nature is when Erika’s partner got killed and when Anna decided to munch on her baby daddy. Part of what made the original AWESOME was that we as the audience knew what we were up against. If you had only been exposed to V through this version you don’t even know what they look like. That’s gotta change.
- Give the 5th Column a win – So far, their claim to fame is some “John May Lives” message and killing a V soldier that no one knows existed. In the first incarnation, the 5th Column unmasked the supreme leader on national TV for Christ sakes!
- Show the V’s as “bad” – during a recent episode, a character said something to the affect of “Tell me something bad that the Visitors have done”. With the exception of spying on us and the fact that they’re concealing who they are, we don’t REALLY know why they’re so bad at this point. It was pretty early in the original when we found out that they were here for FOOD. If the audience is going to care, we need to build the V’s up as a REAL threat.
- Lose the CGI – I understand that this is TV and not the movies, but just about every shot from the mother ships are just terrible. This includes interior shots. We’ve got to do better.
I hate to continue to compare to the original but that’s all I’ve got to go on and that was a hugely successful cult classic. The fact that after tonight it WON’T be following Lost is actually a good thing. Lost is a phenomenal show, but as a lead in to another sci-fi I’m not sure it’s all that great. When Lost is over, people either run to message boards or blogs to chat or they’re too wiped out to try and get into another intense show. I’m not saying that it should follow a comedy, but Lost isn’t the best choice.
