Episode Report Card LuluBates: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT V is for Hiatus
By LuluBates | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 11.24.2009
t, until you go to college. Tyler moans that Erica doesn't understand how important the Visitors are to him. She just wags her finger in his face and tells him not to get involved with them. He shows Val his Super Awesome Junior Peace Ambassador uniform. He knows his mom would freak out if she knew about it but he thinks the Vs are, like, totally hot and stuff and healing the world, right? Val's ears perk up at the mention of the healing centers and she pops out of her therapist role to ask Tyler to see if he could help her cut the line at one of those there healing centers, what with his connections and all. Yeah, that's appropriate. Tyler continues to moan about how (sigh) parents just don't understand when we are taken onboard the mothership where Lisa and Anna are both watching Tyler's therapy session via the uniform cam. How did they know they were going to have anything to see? And before Tyler took the uniform out, were Lisa and Anna just watching the inside of his bag? I don't think we get that channel on earth. Anyway, Lisa uses Tyler's impassioned defense of the awesomeness of the Vs to prove to Anna that Tyler is ready. For what we don't know. Anna instructs Lisa to bring him up to the ship. She wants to eat him. Er...meet him. Same difference? Either way, isn't it way too soon for Tyler to meet the parents?Anna's Executive Assistant stands next to Chad Decker, thanking him flatly for doing the story on the Visitors' healing centers. Chad didn't really feel like he had a choice because Anna wouldn't do the interview with him unless he did this report. Ooh someone wore his grumpy pants today. Chad turns that frown upside down when he sees how easily the Vs can fix the woes of the world and the scar on one girl's arm. His eyes widen in amazement and the Executive Assistant nods knowing that Chad will happily do the story now. Well, you know, after he goes to HR and gets those papers filled out. There is just something about that guy that screams HR lackey. Like he is totally going to screw Chad out of a paycheck because he forgot to sign in triplicate and entered the wrong number of deductions.
Erica and Father Jack are staking out the parking garage. While they wait for Peter Combs, the V lab assistant, to come out, Erica tries to call Tyler. He doesn't pick up and she hangs up annoyed, hopefully at herself. Father Jack asks if she wants to talk about it, but she really does not. Luckily Ryan calls, saving her from further intervention by the church. He and Georgie have the place staked out on the inside. Oh hurry up and shoot somebody already!
Up on the mothership, Anna is not happy with the results of the criminal investigation. She tells Dr. Joshua and his second in command to gather the medical staff. She is going to investigate herself. Joshua's friend is a fellow member of the Fifth Column, which I've decided sounds like less of a gay club and more of an early 90s boy band. His friend thinks Joshua needs to get off the ship STAT (he works in medicine), but Joshua won't run. His nameless friend who kind of looks like Griffin from Party of Five insists that Dr. Joshua is too important to the resistance and he cannot be sacrificed.
Back at the garage, Erica and Father Jack loiter outside looking really out of place. Inside, Georgie draws his gun and despite the plan to follow the scientist, Georgie fires first. Of course he is a total crap shot and while Georgie shoots wildly, the guy has time to get his gun out of his car, put on some music, and then shoot Georgie in the stomach. Ryan and the rest of the team come running. Erica finds Georgie on the ground and Ryan comes running, gun drawn. He aims and shoots. But he's not gunning for Erica, he hits the V scientist standing behind her. Um...I am at a complete loss for why they would bother doing a flash forward at the beginning of the show. Did they really have nothing better to do with those three minutes at the top of the show? I guess it built dramatic tension or would have if we cared enough about the Ryan/Erica tension, but they didn't really give us enough time to notice it, let alone be shocked by the possibility that Ryan would shoot her. Whatever. He doesn't shoot her. Father Jack shows up with the car and promises to take care of Georgie who is TOTALLY LYING IN FRONT OF A PRIEST and claiming that the Visitor shot first. LIES MAKE BABY JESUS CRY, GEORGE. Ryan has gone to tackle the V who is not too pleased about this turn of events. He calls Ryan a filthy traitor and swallows a suicide pill before Ryan can bitch slap it out of his mouth. Ryan curses angrily, but he's even angrier when he turns to find Erica's gun trained on him. She knows he's a Visitor. They stare at each other some more. Twenty minutes later Ryan breaks the silence and claims that he and Erica both want the same thing: to figure out what the Vs are up to. That's not what Erica wants to do. She wants to shoot him. And then maybe go home, order some Thai food, and curl up under her nan's afghan on the couch and watch Beaches and let her poor heart break a little. That's what she wants to do. Besides, Ryan killed their only lead. So what's stopping her, huh? Ryan swears they are on the same side. Besides, he never said he wasn't a Visitor. So there. Nyah nyah nyah. Erica shrugs in defeat in the face of that logic.
Tyler's connections have paid off and his therapist is now first in line for an appointment at the Visitors' healing center. The Vs use iMacs with the logo covered up. Elsewhere in the clinic, Chad Decker has his reporter face on as he leads a camera crew through the clinic and gets one of the Vs' highly sensitive body scans. When the Executive Assistant comes to check on his progress, Chad grouses that he would like a little more freedom of the press because this is still AMERICA, dammit. The Executive Assistant smiles and nods and apologizes that there is just not more time for Chad to talk to patients or walk around unescorted. Then he asks if Chad has filled out his paperwork yet.
Father Jack is hastily stitching up Georgie's gun shot with some handy frontline medical skills that he picked up during his two tours in Iraq as an Army chaplain. Father Jack knows that Georgie went after the V in the garage. As a priest he's trained to see that bullshit. As penance he will sew up his gunshot wound with no anesthetic. That should get Georgie praying in no time. Georgie glares up at him and tells him he needs to decide whether he is a priest or a soldier. Hello, not mutually exclusive. Have you not heard of that little diddy called "Onward Christian soldiers"?
Ryan and Erica have fled the scene of the almost crime and are parked somewhere. Ryan tells her to go ahead and shoot...WAIT WAIT, WITH QUESTIONS! Put the gun away, Erica. He knows they won't get any work done until she gets her need-to-know fix. Her first question is what happened to Combs. He explains that all Vs carry a suicide pill. Why was he called a traitor? He is a part of the rebel alliance known as the Fifth Column, and no, it's not a boy band OR a gay bar. And that ends the Question and Answer portion of the show. No, really. That's it. Two questions and Erica is satisfied. They go through the briefcase Combs left at the scene. They find a clue that leads them to a shipping company. They decide to go check it out.
Anna has organized the medical team on the mothership into a nifty V formation. I wonder how long they had to practice that to get it perfect? It's a nice touch, although I can't imagine that they refer to themselves as Visitors. And I sort of expect them to pull out flags and start doing precision drills. Anna is berating the medical team for allowing the murder of the valuable sleeper agent Alien Dale to take place on their watch. His murder deprived them of potentially useful information. Anna stops in front of Dr. Joshua's second in command and asks him to join the formation. She tells the team that unless the guilty party steps forward to take responsibility for their crime, she will pick someone at random to punish. Joshua looks like he is about to confess when his second-in-command does. With a simple, "Long live the Fifth Column" he is sentenced to be skinned. Wow, boy bands garner a lot of loyalty. And I guess we understand why Ryan is so darn sensitive about the subject. Anna tells Joshua to skin his friend.
Tyler takes a tour of the mothership with Lisa, who has an expertly tailored and low-cut uniform. Tyler asks her if he is in trouble with her mother. See, even he thinks it is too early to meet the parents. They haven't even shared a malt, carved their name in a tree, or given each other gonorrhea of the throat yet. So why the rush to meet her mom? Lisa just shrugs that her mom wants to meet him and Ty thinks that it is just dreamy how advanced they are. Tyler stops short in his tracks when he sees Anna up ahead. He is completely googly eyed and star struck and is in shock when it turns out that Lisa not only knows her, but is her daughter. Crush Level turned up to 11. Tyler gets all tongue-tied and ridiculous in Anna's presence and to make matters worse, Lisa leaves him alone with her. Those Vs sure have some wacky genetics what with Anna being all tall and thin and dark-eyed and brunette and Lisa being a petite buxom blonde with blue eyes. Tyler doesn't seem to mind eit