It's not like V couldn't be improved, say by the addition of Michael Ironside...

Y'know, I was just trying to be snarky there, but goddamn if Mr. Ironside wouldn't improve the new V. I had half-forgotten, but he doesn't show up until midway or so through the second miniseries of the original; and then he just arrives, no backstory, no foreshadowing, Ham Tyler and his chunky hetero sidekick show up with Uzis and Teflon bullets and just level the playing field in the war against lizards. (In hindsight, I don't think his sidekick was like really fat, but he was way more overweight that is allowed for a heroic character anymore.) That would be delightful, honestly: I don't need a cutesy cameo, or Ironside playing a V, or a traitor, or a pacifist; just him gunning down some alien scum. Well, maybe they're saving him for when the series returns.

I brought V up the other day, but I might've just trailed off because I was still trying to work out how burned I felt by the Prisoner. (Answer: some, and getting more so. A couple episodes still sit in my VCR, and I haven't yet felt the inclination to watch them now.) But what I was trying to get at, was that the burn on V is a little slower than it needs to be. We know the V are lizards, we know they don't have humanity's best intentions in mind, and we know the humans are up a creek; so they don't need to tease it out. It's not friggin' Lost...

So, what are the V up to? It would be interesting if they were building up goodwill, so they could suddenly announce they were there to tell the people the good word of the prophet Xemmu or something. ABC would never have the stones for that: the V would be here to form rape gangs before they get into anything serious. But then again, like I said, I would be just fine with Michael Ironside, or even the actors already on the show, fighting a guerrilla war and blowing crap up. As long as it's not turned into an allegory for 9-11, or Obama's presidency, or even Bush's presidency. (In fact, I could really do without any allegories for anything for a while, with the possible exception of South Park, which gets a pass not merely because it's funny, but because it can do it and get out in twenty-some minutes.)

It's probably hypocritical of me to harp on V for plot holes that I would let slide in any of a number of comics; but there's little things. How many saucers are there, 20-some? And what is that, a peace armada? Is everyone really going to be caught flat-footed when the V are revealed as invading monsters? It'd be kind of nice if the army or some government actually was on the ball and had a contingency plan for when that goes south. And why do the V seemingly spend all their time in those stupid man-suits? Are they really method? Maybe they're cold? Perhaps it's an atavistic evolutionary mechanism, and they were hunters that would camouflage themselves to trick their prey? Maybe I'm having a hard time trying to think of an in-story reason for not blowing the entire show's budget on unconvincing lizard-masks or computer-generated effects.

Damn, I started this post, um, six hours or so ago, then left to do this and that. Well, maybe I'll write about some other show later, but in other news, I splurged and bought myself some gloves today. I kind of had to, my son said my old ones smelled like feet.