Episode Report Card M. Giant: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Skin to Win
By M. Giant | Season 2 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.18.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Erica survived the car crash, but the ensuing smackdown with Agent Malik is a nearer thing. Father Jack and Kyle show up to take Malik away, figuring (correctly) that the Fifth Column will be blamed. Waving Ryan's baby in his face, Anna tasks him with finding Malik's kidnappers, unaware that he's already tight with them. He and Erica search Malik's place for clues, one step ahead of Anna's Trackers. Erica's disappointed that Malik doesn't seem to have anything to do with whatever the reason is for Tyler's DNA to be all effed-up, but at least they can try to figure out what she was up to instead. With Malik refusing to talk, Erica lets Ryan and Kyle torture her until she gives up what she knows. It has to do with Joshua's soul-extraction project, which needs tons of human test subjects. The team follows that lead to a van that was used to nab a bunch of them. They retrieve the one victim we're supposed to care about, but the V kidnapper commits suicide, so that's another dead end, and they're too late to save the rest. Oh, well.
Anna asks Chad to interview Father Jack, but Father Jack has a more immediate problem: his service deploring the recent violence almost devolves into violence, incited by an undercover V and captured on a cell phone for the whole internet to see -- exactly the way Anna wanted it. Even after this, Jack is not only cool with Chad, he introduces him to the rest of the gang, which is when Chad finds out what they're really up against, lizard-wise.
Anna congratulates Tyler on being the one who filmed the fight at Jack's church, and Lisa -- traumatized after Anna forced her to take an active part in Joshua's soul-extraction experiment -- turns to Erica. Finally, when Ryan reports to Anna, he says he knows what she wanted him to find out. But as for whether he's really going to tell her, that's going to have to wait until the next episode.
Watch a clip from the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then refresh your V-knowledge with our guide to the A to Z of V.
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We left Erica with no-longer-secret-Visitor Malik holding a gun on her, while Erica was driving them along a conveniently abandoned highway. Whereupon Erica decided that being in a car crash for sure was preferable to maybe getting shot, and flipped the car over. So now, fade up on one inverted Fedmobile. Erica comes to with the top of her bloody head resting on the ceiling, and immediately starts trying to get free. But where's Malik? Oh, there she is, her hands clamped around Erica's throat. Erica manages to escape both the seatbelt and Malik's clutches, but once they're both out in the open field where the car came to rest, all that means is that Malik has that much more room to beat the crap out of Erica. It's a pretty one-sided battle, until Erica goes down for the umpteenth time and Malik stops fighting so she can stand there for a long time doing nothing but unhinging her jaw and unsheathing her fangs. Scary-looking, yes, but it also gives Erica a nice long opening to slam her into a tree. I think she just found the Vs' biggest tactical weakness.
With that, Malik is down for the count, seconds before another vehicle comes screaming around the curve. Erica hides behind her flipped car, but soon shows herself when the new arrivals prove to be none other than Kyle and Father Jack. They do some quick catching up, which doesn't take long: "Malik's a Visitor," Erica reports. Kyle quickly gets over his surprise and walks over to put Malik down for good. This means poor Erica has to interrupt her tender moment with Father Jack to protest that they need her alive. She tells them to get Malik back to Kyle's place and she'll meet them there, doing a pretty good job of sounding all slurred, as you'd expect someone to sound after she just got beat up by both a car and an evil lizard-woman. There's still the question of how Erica's going to explain this to her bosses, until Kyle shoots out the Fedmobile's tires and lights a rag in the gas tank. Well, that should clear things up.
Aboard the Mothership, Lisa sleeps alone in her king-sized bed, seemingly covered by nothing but white sheets. One of her outflung arms starts turning green and scaly, which wakes her up right quick. And there ain't no snooze button for that. Lisa's in the process of commencing a freak-out when Anna appears in the room to explain, like waking up with Anna in your room is going to calm down anyone.. "It's your breeding-skin," Anna says. "It's begun to grow." As Lisa's arm goes back to looking more like that of a human TV actress, Anna goes on to explain that it means Lisa will become fertile soon. You know, this show is always coming up with ways to make Vs seem biologically off-putting, but when it comes to signs of reproductive maturity, I think humans have got them beat. I mean, it's not like Lisa has to change her sheets now. Anna goes on talking about how Lisa's true nature will emerge, just like hers did. "And my mother helped me through it. Before she died I promised her that I would mold you into a great leader." There are so many lies and dramatic ironies packed into that statement I don't even feel like going into all of them. Anna promises to teach Lisa to "lead in my own image... You'll become just like me." Lisa looks duly terrified, because a) Anna's staring at her like she can unhinge her eyelids as well as her jaw, and b) what's scarier than turning into your mother?