Episode Report Card LuluBates: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Little Help From My Friends
By LuluBates | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 04.27.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Erica, Kyle and Father Jack have the Vs' hired human assassin in custody, but he isn't much use to them, since he doesn't have the stolen list of the other Fifth Column members. Plus, he claims that the Visitors threatened his family if he didn't help them. Kyle has a few medieval ideas to get more answers out of him. But Erica goes to talk to his wife and finds out that the assassin's daughter was saved by the Visitors, and he would do anything to help them. Yes, that extends to killing innocent people. Erica finds the missing hard drive at the assassin's house and finally gets the address they are looking for. The torture might be a bit much for our beloved priest, though.
Up on the Mothership, Anna is pretty sure that the human-Visitor baby will be the end of the Visitor way of life. If a Visitor is born with human emotions, the Fifth Column could breed an army of hybrids to fight the Visitors. When the normal V retrieval team fails, she sets loose a Hot Tub Soldier to bring Ryan and Val and Ryan Jr. back to the ship.
Anna also accelerates the plans for the humans involved in the Live Aboard Program. We still don't know what that means, exactly, but it can't possibly be good. Tyler has been given an invitation, and he happily accepts, except for a niggling concern that his mom might be a tetch unhappy. Anna assigns Lisa the task of convincing Erica that the Live Aboard Program would be just like sleep-away camp but without the pesky mosquitoes and lousy grub. But when Lisa goes to talk to Erica, Erica cries Real Person Tears and Lisa's new feelings interfere with her mission and she ends up telling Tyler that he shouldn't join the program. This ticks Tyler off to no end and he blames his mother, obvi. What he doesn't know is that Anna wants to kill him when she's done with him and Lisa isn't too keen on that. But sure, Tyler, blame your mom. She's used to it!
Chad Decker is finally getting that Aneurysm of the Future taken care of, and, taking a page out of Katie Couric's Book of Journalism, he feels it is his duty to do it on camera. Anna sits by his bedside to make sure he doesn't wake up alone and this one act of manufactured kindness convinces Chad to help Anna spread the word about the evil of the Fifth Column. So who does he go to for answers? Father Jack.
On the lam, Ryan finally tells Val his secret and the only reason she still wants to be with him is for the sake of the baby. And she's going to need Ryan's help, since the entire Visitor army is after her. Dr. Pearlman joins up with Ryan to offer Val some on-the-run prenatal care, because that baby is MAGIC. Ryan takes Val to some old friends who ran the Fifth Column Underground Railroad back in the day. But Anna's soldier knows where they live and stakes out the house. He attacks and quickly takes out Ryan's friends. Ryan barely manages to get Val out of the house while struggling with the soldier. Erica and Father Jack show up just in time to fire a few rounds into the soldier, which does not stop him. Nor does the axe that Kyle slams into his chest. Ryan bids farewell to the Fab Four to go take care of Val, but he didn't check with her. Val doesn't forgive him and she doesn't want to see him again. She leaves him alone on the train platform.
Watch the episode here, discuss it in our forums, then refresh your V-knowledge with our guide to the A to Z of V.
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.
Melissa Locker a.k.a. Lulu Bates would definitely let Tyler join the Live Aboard Program. You can follow her on Twitter @woolyknickers.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Erica, Kyle and Father Jack have the V's hired human assassin in custody. And by "custody," I mean hog-tied to a rafter, arms hoisted overhead with a gag in his mouth, looking like an extra in one of the S & M episodes of CSI or a protagonist in a Stephen Elliot novel. Erica cannot believe a human -- even a human assassin who you know has to be kind of a dick already -- would turn against his entire species and start offing Earthlings at the behest of the Vs. The assassin ...Wait: Here's the only thing I remember from an entire semester of high school Arabic classes: "Assassin" derives from the word hashasheen (no I'm not writing in Arabic letters), which referred to the crazed hash fiends roaming the streets of Cairo back in the good old days and offing people just for the offing. They were basically the crackheads of yore. Not that there's anything wrong with crackheads, in case any of you crackheads are going to get offended by that and start e-mailing long hate-filled missives about how I misuse hyphens and can't write in Arabic script. Sensitive lot, you crackheads. Anyway, Erica is by no means calling her prisoner a crackhead. That would go contrary to the Geneva Convention Against the Torture of Prisoners. Instead she is all ACTING! in his face, which is just as cruel, but not mentioned in the Geneva Convention at all, which is clearly a gross oversight. I'll alert my representative at the United Nations. The assassin swears up and down that the only reason he killed those nice, kindly, innocent Fifth Column members was because the nasty old Vs made him. They threatened his family! His wife! His daughter! His guinea pig! He had no choice. Kyle, heartless mercenary that he is (or at least, that he plays on TV) knows the guy is lying and smacks him around a bit. The killer hones in on the softie of the group -- Father Jack, wearing his clerical collar -- and pleads for clemency, or at least to hold off on the pummeling, Erica, who is playing the Goodish Cop to Kyle's I'll-Fuck-You-Up Cop, keeps her line of questioning to the matter at hand, namely: where is the hard drive with the names of the other Fifth Column members. He swears he has no idea, has never seen it, doesn't even know what a computer is. Kyle winds up for another punch, but Father Jack stops him. Morality can be a real party pooper.
Ryan and Val have just escaped from the Visitors' Healing Center and are trying to make it on the mean streets of New York City. Val doesn't understand what is going on, because, well, the more I get to understand Val the more I think she's a few nuts short of a pie. Is that a saying? If not, it should be. Yes, most of us would have a hard time accepting that our fiancé and baby daddy has a dozen passports and a gun collection to rival Charlton Heston, but wouldn't you just maybe TALK to him before running? I mean, maybe I've watched too much Burn Notice, but I would think SPY and then I would be all kinds of excited. Especially after Ryan's daring rescue of her from the healing center. I mean, right? Those were some bold moves he showed on that V doctor and then he immolated the guy in about three seconds. That's some serious spy shit. Anyway, Val is hesitant to go on running without some answers, so Ryan just blurts it out: He's a Visitor. She doesn't believe him. He explains that some Visitors came earlier than others. She shouts: I'm pregnant! And I'm pretty sure Ryan is aware of that. Val still doesn't get it. Why are the Visitors chasing her? He explains that the Visitors want their baby. That's enough for Val to start running again.