So, I indeed gave ‘V’ a second chance, much like ABC did. More than that, I forced myself to watch the entire second season. Was there a change of direction in writing, the reboot I had hoped for? Absolutely not, it just got more dreadful as time went on. No interesting or original story lines, slow pacing, dull and cliched characters with little or no believability. Still just a run-of-the-mill cop show with a bit of an alien twist really. It ended with a cliff-hanger, but the only cliff-hanger which left me on edge was whether or not ABC would have enough sense to cancel it.

Thankfully, it was canceled late last week. Jammer you were spot on, V was for vacant. And forgettable, doubt I’d even remember it at all in a few years.

Now that it’s over, I think I’ll go re-watch the 1983 mini series and TV show so I can really forget about the remake!

I enjoy FF, and hope to learn how it was going to proceed. The story implies that it was to run until 2016, which was going to be the ominous “The End.” No idea how they could maintain the story that long. How many times can we find out the guy we thought was Mr. Big was really some other guy’s underling?

I like watching V for the Vancouver locations. The church is a well-known east-side landmark. My wife enjoys the episodes. A bit too intense for me.

Idiot-boy, as we call him, is the Wesley Crusher of this show. Seems he was put there to bring in a teen (girl?) audience. Idiot-reporter is as bad.

Really, this show is over when we answer the question, “Why don’t the Vs just slaughter and/or feast on humanity, and be done with it?” How long can they string that question along?

Ron Stewart

On another note, NBC canceled Heroes (okay, it’s more fantasy than sci-fi, but..) Can’t say I’m displeased. It started off as a fantastic show, and turned into complete dreck that I’ve been embarrassed to watch. Even so, it was more entertaining than V. Will I watch V next season? Well if ABC is giving it another chance, I suppose so will I, but if I see more of the dreadful writing and show going nowhere after the first few episodes, I’ll call it quits.

And saying it pales to the original 1983 mini-series (or weekly TV show) is the understatement of the decade. All this new series has done is make me want to re-watch the original.

All this is moot debating of course. I predict ABC’s V will be canceled shortly and be very much forgotten (like say other failed TV show reboots… Knight Rider anyone).

To distinguish itself from NBC’s V, of course. Speaking of which…

“”V” was the nickname humans gave them in the original series.”

Not exactly. “V” was for “victory” against the occupiers, explicitly recalling WW2. Only coincidentally did it also stand for “visitors,” which exactly nobody pointed out, ever.

But I’m sticking with it because I think its actually slowly getting better. Anna’s daughter (her name escapes me) has become infinitely more interesting now that she actually has feelings for Tyler. But they need to pick up the pace and reveal SOMETHING of what the Visitors are doing here.

I have found this programme to be more interesting than a lot of series out there that are trying to pass themselves off as anything but pretty lights and/or people trying to entertain a generation of dumbed down individuals.

I may be wrong, episodes 5 onwards may be utterly crap but from what I read from Jammer’s reviews, a lot of series have issues with season one, its what they do onwards that makes the programme count and most importantly, what the viewers take from them.

“V” was the nickname humans gave them in the original series. The aliens didn’t refer to themselves as “V”s. I don’t know, it sort of breaks the 4th wall in a strange and silly way.

I still can’t help comparing it with the original 1983 mini-series though (and later the weekly spin-off that followed it 1984-85 if I remember right). I grew up watching those between my years in elementary and junior high school. That was all we talked about, each episode was exciting, new, fresh and characters you cared about. Heck, and who could forget the strange alien-sounding voices the Vistors had, the humming noise of the shuttle craft, the cool noise of the laser weapons, those red uniforms, the symbol-icon used by the Vistors (to this day I still remember how to draw it!). As someone above mentioned, the allegory to the Nazis had a big affect too, it made the whole thing more frightening and on edge.

This new series is just so poor in many ways. I couldn’t care less for the characters, everything just plods along so slowly and without payoff (or any payoff is so paint by the numbers, you know what’s going to happen next). Hah, I love the uniform of the new Visitors, a jogging suit?? This all reminds me so much of ABC’s The Invasion, another sci-fi series that was greatly hyped, moved along so slowly and went nowhere, and then got cancelled after 1 season. You can almost bet V will be cancelled if not this season, certainty the next.

I’m still watching it for almost the same reason Jammer is, sometimes something is just so bad, it can be entertaining to see if they can top the level of badness by the next episode. I have been debating whether to keep watching it or not though.

The teenage son was certainly a negative from the start. And they need to give the priest a direction.

I don’t know why there was behind the scenes turmoil. I’d never seen the Kenneth Johnson original miniseries, so i can’t judge it that much. I did know Scott Peters’ work on the 4400, but that show also had Ira Steven Behr as showrunner, who kept it watchable.

But it feels like with this version, they’re simply plopping characters in front of us and not giving us a real compelling reason to care about them or their plight. The situations feel so wooden that the actors come across as simple plot devices and not characters, which makes it hard to watch. I ended up fast-forwarding through most of the week before’s episode because the whole “you’re not my real dad, sob!!” scene was just grueling to watch, and not because of any poignant emotion.

And what’s up with all the constant shrouding of intentions for everything on the show? By now in the original, we had some sense of what the aliens wanted and what the main characters had for motive. Hell, I rewatched the original V pilot miniseries recently and all of these things were clearly established by the end of that. We’re now a good chunk of the way into the series and I still have no real leads on WTF these people want on either side, and that’s severely draining any semblance of drama for me because it feels confused more than urgent.

I’m going to keep watching anyway for now to see if they can pull this series out, but I’m losing hope. They have potentially so many interesting things that could happen, even with the mess now, but I’m also thankful for my Tivo’s ability to fast-forward through those painful scenes involving that teenage kid.

FF is now watchable, diverting decent–not great– viewing. Personally, I’m fine with it lasting just a season and being considered a sort of extended mini-series. Afterall so many shows don’t have the material to sustain them for many seasons and tend to go off the rails such as HEROES.

I definitely prefer Flashforward, though I wouldn’t call it great. The worst part of that may be that the lead actor hasn’t gotten me to care about him for most of the season. That’s changed recently, but I think that has more to do with plot starting to come together. Then again, I’ve been watching Lost attentively for its whole run, and the pseudo-lead characters of Jack and Kate have been the least interesting for me for almost the entire run. It’s just these last few episodes where I’ve started to enjoy Jack’s character!

I really don’t care if this show continues or not, but I will probably continue watching it if it stays on the air. The emo kid needs to die die die!

The Tyler storyline is very annoying and keeps getting worse. Anna keeps going on about how he is so important which is just such BS, Anna’s daughter could easily lure some other teen boy since Tyler is so much trouble. It is offensive to the viewer who knows he is important to the writers because he is the lead’s son, but it’s a waste since their interactions are terrible.

They can’t seem to figure out what they want to do with the priest character, which is a huge waste of the actor (he was a lead in The 4400). Though really, they can’t seem to figure out what they want to do with any of the characters, except maybe Anna. Her interactions with the others tend to be the scenes I like the best: with the reporter, her direct underling, the V doctor who is a secret rebel, her daughter, etc.