Other rumors include ABC canceling Flash Forward after its first season but renewing V for a second year. Also, NBC has officially renewed Chuck for a fourth season. The CW previously announced that it was renewing Supernatural and The Vampire Dairies as well as Smallville. FOX announced earlier that Fringe would be returning for a third season.

CBS has yet to decide whether to renew Medium or Ghost Whisperer.

Hasn’t ABC learned anything from the old “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it” adage?  Didn’t they already try the old “mini-series taste…three month break…actual show run” idea with LOST season three?

And, correct me if I’m wrong…but I believe that idea almost killed that show.  People tuned in for six episodes of season three, but a huge hiatus knocked off a lot of the fanbase that never returned when the show did.  It’s the whole reason why LOST takes 8-month breaks and shows all their episodes in a row.  Because, in a show like that, your audience can’t be allowed to wander.

And I’m not comparing V to LOST, but I think it’s a similar kind of show.  And it seems like prime-time science fiction shows need momentum, and these kind of breaks don’t help momentum very much.  Because the people who are watching V right now are going to forget that it was on by the time March comes around.  And I’m afraid that, by May, we’ll be looking at this hiatus as the reason why the show wasn’t renewed for a second season.

But ABC’s schedule is really strange as it is.  I mean, speaking of LOST, the final season of that show is going to be one of the biggest events of the 2010 television year.  And they haven’t even announced what day that it will air.

Maybe they know what they’re doing.  I’m just afraid for the show because it’s pretty interesting.

The episode picks up where the last one left off, with the four members of the resistance trying to figure out a way to strike back against the Visitors.  I think it’s pretty interesting that it’s taken this long to get anything going, and at the moment, the resistance is so small.  I realize, unlike the original miniseries, they have a lot more time to work with.  But, at some point, they’re going to have to start recruiting people, right?

The episode revolves, mainly, around the Visitors’ healing centers.  Anna announces that they’re going to distribute a vitamin shot that will boost the human immune system, curing several diseases and preventing others.  Erica and the group are suspicious, and they use some leads from Ryan to track down a V scientist that was known to be experimenting on humans.

And while Erica is suspicious of Ryan, it’s George who complicates the plan the most with an obsessive urge to “unveil” the Visitor’s true nature to the world.  It ends up getting him shot, and Ryan is forced to admit that he’s truly a Visitor traitor.

I’m glad that Ryan’s secret is out so early, and I’m also glad that they didn’t really play up the “Erica doesn’t trust Ryan, anyway” idea.  They might do it later, but I’d like to think that Erica would accept that not all Visitors are evil.  Hopefully, when the two of them discuss Ryan’s motivations and the Fifth Column itself, a strong bond can be formed between the two.

Meanwhile, Ryan’s fiancee (who is also, apparently, Tyler’s therapist) goes to visit one of the healing centers to cure a heart ailment.  Tyler is able to get her inside (through Lisa, I assume), and the Visitor doctors tell her that they can cure her condition.  However, they also give her another surprise – she’s pregnant.

Now a human/Visitor hybrid baby was done in the original series, and I knew that it would come into play here.  But I figured that it would be Lisa and Tyler, not Ryan and Valerie, who would conceive a hybrid child.  In fact, that’s what I figured Lisa meant in referring to Tyler as “the one.”  I guess I was wrong about that.

But it’s definitely an interesting plot twist, forcing Ryan to reveal his true nature to Valerie a bit sooner than he wanted to.  I also wonder if the Visitor scientists were able to tell that the child was half Visitor.  If so, does that mean that they know about Ryan?  Should be interesting to find out.

Meanwhile, in exchange for another interview with Anna, Chad does a story on the healing centers.  He’s amazed at the medical technology in the facility but also bothered by the limited access he’s granted to doctors and patients.  And he seems very annoyed at the idea that the Visitors have found a deadly brain ailment that only they can diagnose and cure.

Now Chad is a character we haven’t really seen much of.  I’m guessing that he’ll play a bigger role later in the series, but we still don’t know a whole lot about them.  The Visitors are obviously trying to win more favors from him, perhaps even faking or causing the brain condition, and he seems conflicted by the idea.  But, since we don’t really know if his vanity outweighs his integrity, we don’t really know what to think about him.  And, at the moment, I don’t really care about his character.

There’s also a small story about Joshua, the Fifth Column agent serving as the chief medical officer on Anna’s ship.  Anna is eager to find the person who killed Dale in last week’s episode, and Joshua is forced to execute a comrade in order to protect himself.

The Fifth Column storyline is pretty interesting to me, and I’m hoping that Joshua’s story continues to play a part.  There’s not a whole lot to go off right now, but I was definitely intrigued by how the story played out.

The rest of the episode deals with Tyler, who is brought on board the Visitor mothership to meet with Anna (who, it was revealed last week, is Lisa’s mother).  Anna impresses Tyler with Visitor technology, continuing to conquer the young man’s heart with bright lights and smiles.

And, in the end, Anna and Lisa seem to agree that Tyler is important for some reason.  And I’ll admit that I’m pretty intrigued on what they want from him.  Just because I’m really not sure what the leader of the Visitors would want with some kid, particularly since it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the fact that he’s Erica’s son.

The episode ends in spectacular fashion, as Erica and company are able to blow up a warehouse holding the Visitors’ deadly compound (hidden in flu shots, not the vitamin shot).  But while they seem proud of their minor victory, the happiness doesn’t last very long.

First of all, when Erica returns home, she sees an instant message on Tyler’s computer that informs her that he’s been on the Visitor mothership.  I’m guessing that she’ll learn everything at some point, and it will probably drive a deeper wedge between mother and son.  I wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if Tyler were to move onto the mothership at some point in the rest of the season.

Meanwhile, we’re shown what appears to be a huge Visitor armada somewhere on the other side of the galaxy.  It’s the last image of the episode, but I’m really not sure it’s as ominous as it appears.  Because I imagine that, even at this point, there’s not much that a human resistance could do against the 29 ships that are already on Earth.  A couple hundred extra warships is scary, but it also seems like overkill.

The most interesting cliffhanger deals with Father Jack.  It is revealed that he has a military background, serving two tours in Iraq as a chaplain.  That training will certainly make him more helpful to the team, but the episode ends with Jack on the ground, the victim of an attack by a Visitor guard.

I don’t think that Jack will die because Joel Gretsch seems like a big part of the show, but it’s interesting to wonder how the Visitor knew how to find him.  I assume that the high priest at Jack’s church is a Visitor, but I’m not sure he’d know about the plan to blow up the warehouse.

And that’s really it.  As far as the entire four-episode run went, I was pleasantly surprised.  I still think the show is progressing kind of slowly, and I think that’s where the long break is going to hurt the show.  Because, if you think about it, not a lot has happened so far.  And not enough interesting things have happened to keep a lot of people who aren’t really into the show.

It might leave a lot of fans of the original series and generic sci-fi fans, but I’m not sure that’s enough to keep a prime-time show going.  I hope it is, however, because I think the show has some potential.

Either way, I’ll be back in March to continue my reviews.  We’ll see you then.

One of the themes that the writers on this show seem to be shoving down our throats is the idea that our heroes can’t trust anyone.  It’s symbolized in the first episode with the revelation that Erica’s partner was a Visitor double agent.  In the second episode, Father Jack and Erica both realize that their worlds are not as trustworthy as they were before, and there is reason to believe that both are surrounded by Visitor sleepers.  Heck, Erica can’t even trust her own son, who enjoys a nice make out session with the (surprise!) daughter of the Visitor’s leader.

But the one who’s getting the short end of the straw is Ryan, who is finally revealed to be a member of the Fifth Column.  Fans of the original series will recognize the organization of Visitors that fights against the “main” Visitors, and it was nice that they carried that over into the new series.

Last week, Ryan went to get his arm stitched up by a fellow resistance agent, only to be drugged and threatened because of his friend’s fear of being caught.  This week, he goes to find his old “right hand” in the organization, only to find that his friend has been betraying the Column by handing traitors over to Anna.

But the episode actually ends when we get our first real look at the resistance of the show, as Jack, Erica, and Ryan (along with George, the leader of the warehouse meeting from the Pilot) gather together in the same place.  It was a pretty nice sign to see, considering we really hadn’t see much of a resistance building so far.  I was beginning to wonder if they were ever actually going to do anything about the Visitors.

But they all seemed to do something helpful in this episode.  Erica is called to work with a Visitor security agent in response to a death threat made against the Visitors.  And while she gains entry to a restricted area of the building and seemingly gains the trust of Anna’s second in command, all she really learns is that the Visitors’ jackets are also cameras.  I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t see anything else, perhaps even the “true form” of one of the aliens.

Jack makes a bold move himself, trying to track down George.  I thought it was interesting that he’d do such a thing, especially since he’s been afraid to do much of anything so far.  It’s good that he’s actually facing his fear of the Visitors head on, carrying his own weight as he put it.  Hopefully we’ll see more of his growth into a heroic character.

As far as the Visitors go, they make a couple moves to gain public favor.  As Anna states to the captains of the other ships, one of the greatest weapons the Visitors have is public opinion.  And when the wife of a man killed in an accident caused by the Visitors’ arrival begins protesting against Anna and her people, the V spin doctors go to work.

And while her subordinates don’t really understand the reason to go after one woman, Anna definitely seems to get it.  I wonder if they’ll ever explore how Anna has such a great understanding of the human people.  Has she been on Earth before?

I did think that it was a bit odd that people were so convinced by the widow’s sudden change of policy.  I would assume that people that don’t trust the Visitors would immediately assumed that she’d been brainwashed by the alien menace, but public opinion of the Visitors rises nonetheless.  I’m not sure that’s the kind of thing that would really work, but maybe it just worked on people that were undecided.

Then there was the assassination attempt that Erica stops.  And while it was fairly obvious that the gunman was a Visitor himself, I found it pretty interesting to note Erica’s reasoning behind helping the Visitors.  Because she knows that a human killing a Visitor would give more reason for people to empathize with the aliens, and that’s exactly what she didn’t want.  It was a good move by Erica, even though the failed attempt still garners sympathy for the Visitors.

Although I have to wonder if, according to Anna’s plan, the assassination was supposed to take place.  If so, perhaps the intended target (Anna’s aforementioned second in command) had no idea.  A future ally of Erica’s, perhaps?

But the most interesting development comes in the form of Dale (Erica’s former partner), who was revealed to be healed in the previous episode.  A Visitor doctor revives him, trying to help him put his memory back together so that they can understand what happened during the attack.

And Dale quickly regains his memories from Earth, including the assault on the warehouse from the first episode.  But the joke’s on him as the doctor reveals himself to be a Fifth Column agent, who promises to seek out Erica as an ally.

From the way Ryan described the group, it seemed like the Fifth Column was in a form of extreme hibernation (if not completely dead).  But the idea that an agent is on the Visitor’s main mothership seems to speak against that.  And if there are friendly Visitors on the motherships, it almost evens out the playing field of this “sleeper agent vs. sleeper agent” war.

All in all, I was pleased with the movement of the episode.  Hopefully, the resistance continues to move after next week’s “fall finale”, and the promo seems to indicate that something big will happen.  One thing I’m kinda interested in learning is the plan for Tyler, especially after learning that Lisa is Anna’s daughter.  I wonder if it will be the conception of human-Visitor hybrid, which would be another carryover from the 1980s series.

Either way, all the characters seem to be coming together, and the show is starting to form into what it will be for the rest of the season.  Hopefully next week’s episode does enough to grab the fans, since there will apparently be a hiatus for a couple of months.  If not, I’m not even sure the Fifth Column will be able to save V’s prospects for a second season.

I want to start off with a simple question – does every hero on TV need to be named Jack?  Father Jack is another in the line of heroic people named Jack, added to Jack Shephard and Jack Bauer.  And I can’t help but smile at the idea of Elizabeth Mitchell forming up another alliance with another man named Jack.

So one of the themes of this episode is paranoia, especially since so many characters are looking over their backs.  Jack and Erica are obviously at the top of the list, as they deal with the horrifying truth that Visitors are all over the place on Earth.  As Erica says, there’s simply no one that they can trust, and it’s something she’s a lot more ready to handle than Jack.

I like that Jack, despite his fear, tries to do the right thing with the photographs he was given in the Pilot.  It’s something that I believe a priest would struggle with, and I think he’d be just naive enough to think that the government is infallible.  I’m surprised that he’s not suspicious of the other priest in the church, who just seems way too accepting of the Visitors’ arrival.

Erica, however, is able to handle it a bit better.  She’s not doing a fantastic job, but you also have to understand her fears.  Working as an FBI agent, she’s trained to trust every member of her unit with her life.  Now, all of that has been thrown out the window, and she has to look at all of her colleagues with suspicious eyes.

Erica doesn’t know it yet, but she also needs to be suspicious of her son, Tyler, who is growing more and more enamored with the Visitors.  He hides his “Peace Ambassador” uniform from his mother, and he starts spending more of his time spreading the Visitors’ message of peace.

I find it odd that he’s able to completely turn on his mother so quickly.  I realize they’re trying to set up the cliched story of a son rebelling against his mother, but their relationship doesn’t seem that strained because she trusts him at his word.  But apparently there’s enough angst there, and I have a feeling she’s going to push him towards Lisa and the Visitors when she finds out how he’s been spending his time.

Also suspicious is Ryan, the Visitor who is working against his own people.  He seeks out Angelo for help with the wound he received during the Visitors’ attack on the resistance, but he finds that he can’t even trust other “traitors” when Angelo knocks him out.  He also learns that, if someone wanted to get to him, they would be able to get to him through Valerie.

Ryan’s story is pretty interesting because he’s obviously a sleeper agent (like Dale) who decided that it isn’t right to destroy the humans.  I’d like to know what his original mission was, and all that he’s done to try and usurp what the Visitors are doing on Earth.  You have to think that Anna and her Visitors are going to want to contact all their sleeper agents, and that should be a pretty nice conversation to watch.

Elsewhere, Chad decides to combat Anna’s media tricks with a lively point/counterpoint on whether or not the Visitors can be trusted.  Obviously, it upsets Anna, but he shows that the move worked for them…helping influence public opinion on the Visitors.

It’s a bold move for the journalist – one that I wouldn’t really be apt to try.  He obviously suspects that there’s more to the Visitors than simply peace and love, but he decides to try and strong-arm them with a potentially dangerous segment on his news show.  The Visitors have shown no fear in launching an attack on Earth, and they obviously have all their ducks in a row when it comes to attacks (as shown by their interception of Erica’s 911 call).  Chad’s lucky that they didn’t snatch and grab him, putting him on his own torture bed.

He was able to get some favor with them, although I don’t think he impressed them as much as he thinks he did.  I look forward to seeing what he tries to pull with the favor he believes he’s earned.

As far as the progress goes, it’s hard to believe that there have only been two episodes.  There’s already been a lot, mostly due to the fast-moving Pilot, and we already have a good feel for the characters and their motivations.

One thing that’s bothering me is Anna’s transmissions that always end in “We are of peace.  Always.”  I really can’t believe more people wouldn’t think that’s a bit suspicious, and I think it needs to stop.  When someone keeps saying that they’re peaceful, people tend to start thinking that it doesn’t mean anything.  Hopefully someone (maybe Chad) gets her to stop.

One thing I really liked was the development dealing with Tyler.  When a bunch of protesters start verbally abusing Tyler’s friend Brandon (who also became a peace ambassador), he actually punches one of them to defend his friend (and, presumably, to impress Lisa).  Lisa is horrified by it, and it seems like Tyler will get in trouble for the act.

And I thought that was pretty interesting.  We obviously know that the Visitors aren’t really peaceful, but Tyler’s act would go against everything that they’re supposed to be preaching.  It’d be a nice public display of their message if they threw Tyler out, and it would do a lot to prove that the Visitors are actually backing up what they’re saying.

It does make me wonder if there are Visitors who don’t know the treacherous plan that their leaders have for Earth.  Is there a chance that Lisa is, in fact, peaceful and was actually disturbed by Tyler’s behavior?  Hopefully we will see that not all the Visitors on the Mothership are evil, and perhaps even Lisa will join the resistance at some point.

All in all, I’m enjoying the show, and I look forward to seeing what they have coming up.  From what I’ve read, there are only going to be four episodes before an extended break (until March) so we’re already half-way to the end of this sneak peak of the show.  I’m sure there will be some kind of big development before the break – hopefully it will be enough to keep the show alive until it returns.

I remember first watching V on the Sci-Fi channel about 1996.  Independence Day had put me into a sci-fi mood, and V looked enough like that movie to quench my thirst.  What I found was a lot deeper than anything Independence Day ever came up with, and I found myself watching the original movie and the concluding mini-series.  I loved it.

And when I heard that ABC was going to do a remake of the series, I was excited.  Cautiously excited because “remakes” seem to screw up a lot of the value of older, cooler things.  But as things started to leak out (casting and eventually scenes from this episode), I started to allow myself to get excited.  Because, if done right, I think the world is ready for V again.

In addition to the original series, I kept thinking about this summer’s District 9 while I was watching last night.  Just like that movie, this series takes a different stance on the alien invasion.  Instead of coming in with guns blazing, both of these sets of aliens hover their motherships above a city in need of our help.  It’s a much more interesting approach, as opposed to the tired formula where the aliens come, blow up a lot of our stuff, and we narrowly defeat them by the seat of our pants.

In this series, the fight is much more behind the scenes because these aliens don’t even have their guns out.  And why would they when they give us so many good reasons to love them?

But I did find it interesting that, at the end of the Pilot, we already know so much about the dark side of the Visitors.  With the original TV miniseries, there wasn’t enough time to trick the audience into thinking the Visitors were being honest – they only had two hours to tell their story.

This time, they’re starting off with an entire series to work with, and I thought they might trick some of the people who don’t know a lot about V (a pretty large group) into thinking that the Visitors are, indeed, God’s gift to mankind.  I thought there would be clues that they’re not here to help us (the interview with the Visitor’s leader, Anna (Morena Baccarin), is something like I was thinking) and doubters (for example, Jack, the priest played by 4400‘s Joel Gretsch).  But I didn’t think we’d know, for certain, that the Visitors have ulterior motives until a few episodes into the series.

Not so much.  By the time the credits rolled last night, we knew that the Visitors are up to no good.  We know that they’re reptiles that are simply disguised as humans.  We know that some of the Visitors are good and actually trying to help humanity.  We even have the beginning of the resistance, whose concerns are confirmed by an open attack at a meeting.

Outside of the blood-red V symbol, we’re basically all caught up with the plot of the original series, and we’re only one episode in.  That was surprising.

Of course, things aren’t identical.  There are a couple of updates, including the idea that the Visitors have been on Earth for years getting ready for the arrival of the motherships.  I love the idea that the Visitors have been destabilizing our world for years, making it easy to fix with their arrival.  So not only are the Visitors not here to fix our problems, they’re the cause of them.  That’s a nice addition to the original plot.

Now that all of that is out of the way, let’s talk about the plot.  Like the original series, the Visitors arrive on Earth, and their leader preaches about peace.  From the beginning, some people are skeptical (Jack and FBI agent Erica Evans, played by LOST’s Elizabeth Mitchell) about the Visitors, but the rest of humanity (including Erica’s young son, Tyler, played by Logan Huffman) immediately falls in love with the saviors from space.

And why wouldn’t they?  The Visitors immediately bring cures to many Earth-borne diseases, and they promise to share other Visitor technology with humanity in exchange for a mineral that is abundant on Earth.  When people get upset or scared by the Visitors, they reach out to the media (headlined by Chad Decker, played by Scott Wolf) to help calm the public before things get out of control.

Decker isn’t seen a lot, but I really liked the scene he was in.  Anna pushes hard on him, making sure that he doesn’t “ask any questions that would paint (the Visitors) in a negative light.”  When Decker’s journalistic integrity gets in the way, Anna assures him that she can help make his career.

And even though Decker sells out in the end, it’s obvious that he wasn’t comfortable with it.  You have to think that the battle between his morals and his career goals will play a huge part in the series, although I’m not quite sure that Decker is a complete mirror of the original series’ Mike Donovan, despite their common careers.

Then there’s Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut), a Visitor who has been on Earth for a long time.  It seems he’s been helped the resistance in the past, but he’s kept his identity from everyone in the past (including the resistance).  He’s fallen in love with a human woman, but the arrival of the Visitors makes him choose between his mission (to overthrow the current Visitor government) and the love of his life.

The “Visitors helping humans” storyline was always one of my favorites in the original series, and I hope they can capture that same feel in the new one.

One part of the update that is hard to miss is the allusions to the current political climate.  It’s hard to see a show with a bright and attractive figure arriving onto the scene with a banner cry of hope, change, and peace without thinking of President Barack Obama.  The Visitors even promise to deliver Universal Heath Care, furthering the comparison.

And, honestly, I don’t really worry about that stuff.  I don’t think the show is coming at us with any agenda, and I don’t think they want us to think that President Obama is an evil reptile.  We have to remember that this is a remake of a show that was originally supposed to be about the Nazis.  And if there’s a message in the show, it’s simply that you need to think for yourself.

Just my thoughts on that – since it’s being discussed a lot in the media.

Altogether, I thought the series got off to a pretty good start.  Because of all of the revelations in the first episode, it felt a bit rushed.  I think it might have been a better idea to stretch the Pilot into a two-hour event, but I’m guessing that wasn’t an option.  And since it wasn’t, the writers did the best they could.

But it was a good start, I thought.  Where they go from here is the important part, and from the looks of the promo at the end of the episode, they have some pretty good ideas.  Hopefully they’ll be able to act on them.