Episode Report Card LuluBates: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Soul Searching
By LuluBates | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.11.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Anna is determined to get answers from her mommy. Apparently, the Visitors had a Shakespearean moment, and Anna overthrew her mother and stored her away for 15 years in case she needed any hints from Heloise or something. Anna needs pointers on how to get rid of the human emotions infecting the ship, but somehow Mama (original V star Jane Badler) deduces that Anna is infertile and the future of the race depends on Lisa's willingness to get funky with Tyler (*shudder*). Anna engages in some elder abuse until her mom gives her some clues as to How To Make Enemies With Your Emotions in 12 Easy Steps. The secret? Find the soul and destroy it. You probably need to come up with an evil laugh, too.
Lisa tells Erica that Joshua is alive, but he doesn't remember anything, not even being a back up singer in The Fifth Column. Anna tosses his reanimated corpse in a memory chamber so Anna can root out the terrorists who were working with him. The only face she finds in Joshua's reconstructed memory is Erica. But it's not Erica's involvement with the Fifth Column, it's her shooting him in the face.
Ryan has a funeral for Val, but he doesn't cry because they forgot to install tear ducts or something? Val's parents yell at him about that, but Father Jack reminds him to keep his eyes on the prize… and if he has a soul he should give it to Jesus.
Father Jack has developed an internet following and is inciting violence against the Visitors, which probably goes against at least one edict of the church. Suicide bombers ahoy! Chad Decker is reporting on the wondrous rejuvenation of Visitor-Human relations when the first bomb goes off. The bomber is just one part of concerted suicide bomb attacks across the globe. Obviously, the Fifth Column is blamed. Anna knows just the thing to fight back: Ryan Nichols. And now that she's skinned the baby (as in put skin on it) the darn thing is a cuddly little piece of bait to lure Ryan back to the fold. Ryan's putting up a good fight, but between Anna's bliss, the fact that she's torturing his daughter and Father Jack trying to bring him to Jesus, Ryan has had it up to here. But then he cries AND tells Anna to bliss his daughter and he's back on Team V.
Erica has realized that Chad Decker is the target of the Fifth Column bomb attacks because he's Anna's mouthpiece. She stops a second attempt on his life, which sets Kyle and Erica in a race against Agent Malik and the Visitors in the hunt for the Fifth Column. Kyle finds a clue that leads them to a repository of terrorist activities, but Malik lead the Vs to the same point and she and Kyle duke it out. After Kyle punches her out, her alien underpinnings are revealed. Then Kyle finds a clue that sends Erica and Malik on a road trip TO HELL. Accusations are hurled, the car flips over, and the feds are too cheap for airbags. Erica might be dead. CLIFFHANGER!
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Melissa Locker a.k.a. Lulu Bates is pretty sure you could destroy souls by making them watch this show for eternity. You can follow her on Twitter @woolyknickers.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Do you have short term memory loss due to years of sitting way too close to the television set, or can you remember way back to last week when it was revealed that Anna put her mother in a hole and made her put the lotion on her skin or she gets the hose again and again for FIFTEEN years? Cause, yeah, that happened. And that lotion really worked because her mama is pretty va-va-voom for being the Aged P and more or less a flesh-wrapped frog. But as I've mentioned before, I think V technology would be pretty bitchin' in the anti-wrinkle realm and Anna's mother proves my point delightfully. Seriously, she looks awesome for someone everyone thinks is dead. I should mention that Anna's mother is played by Jane Badler who was Diana on The OG V. I'm not sure whether this means that Diana is Anna's mother, or if this is just a subtle, "Heyyyyy." (Obviously you are supposed to say that like Jackee, and if you don't know who Jackee is... you have a lot of television to watch.) Since Jane Badler's name is Diana in both shows, maybe she is the same character? Although that would be pretty hard to mesh with the current storyline of The Visitors making their first appearance during episode one of the first season. But, what's a little ret-conning between friends, right?
Anyway, Anna's mama doesn't seem nearly as pissed as she should be about being kept in what looks like, well, a hairy ball sack dangling in the middle of a swamplike room for the last fifteen years. I mean, she's not thrilled to see her darling daughter, but she's not lunging at her throat or aiming her tail at her face or desperately begging to be free or at least caught up on General Hospital. Rather, she's cold and indifferent, but wants to know what's up and why Anna is paying her a visit. Anna explains that she wants to know all about human emotions and how she can rid her crew from the nasty things. Oh I can help you with that, Anna: Step One: Take off human skin. Step Two: Watch reality television until you are dead inside. That's how I do it!
Anna has turned to her mother for advice because Diana has lived in her human skin twice as long as Anna and should know something about human emotion. Diana is feeling a little less than forthcoming, but you really can't blame her considering her 15-years of imprisonment. Instead of telling Anna anything about emotion, she recounts the story of how the Vs discovered Earth. It was when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb and the light glittered across the universe and the Vs came to see if they could mate with us. Geez, guys, next time you're horny just buy a round for the house. Didn't you watch Earth Girls Are Easy? Also, thanks President Truman, you basically pimped out the planet with that whole Hiroshima thing. Diana continues that she came to earth, slapped on a skin suit and walked among the humans trying to figure out this whole mating thing as well as the rules to cricket, but both goals proved impossible. Diana warns that any attempts at breeding with humans will result in thinky, whiny, feelingy babies with no respect for authority, classic sci fi or their queen, and a love for musical theater that no V can understand. Anna swears that she will get human emotion under control and that she will begin interbreeding according to plan and on schedule. She hasn't been Employee of the Month around here for two years straight for nothing. Anna turns on her heel to leave, but accidentally mutters that Lisa is going to make a bazillion babies. Diana leaps on that like a dog on a bacon-covered dog poop: Lisa, huh? Lisa's going to have all the babies? That's because you're infertile, right? And there's no time to get to another planet and take them behind the bleachers and knock them up? So it has to be earth, huh? Earth or nothing? Anna doesn't answer, but heads for the hose.
On Earth, Tyler hasn't locked Erica up in a cave ... yet. So she is up early drinking coffee and reading her prenatal medical charts, which I guess she just kept around for this occasion? I mean who has their medical records just lying around? There is a highlight from her reading: Her phosphorus levels were way out of the normal range. Interrupting further highlighting and, I assume, based on my own study habits, Wite-Out sniffing, there's a knock at the front door. It's Lisa. She is there for Tyler, but also to pass along the news that Joshua is awake, but doesn't remember anything ...yet. Erica encourages her to stay as close as possible to Joshua because not only do they desperately need him on their side, but they also need to make sure he won't rat them out to Anna. If he's going to turn back into a V-loving blisshead, Erica may have to kill him. Again. When Erica and Lisa are standing side by side you realize how much they look alike and then you think about how Tyler should really talk to a professional about how he wants to bone his mom.
Erica adds to the laundry list of tasks she's already assigned Lisa to grill Joshua about any testing done on pregnant women in the last, say, 18 years. Oh, and can she pick up the dry-cleaning while she's at it? Lisa puts two and two together and realizes that Erica thinks she was tested on by the Visitors while she was pregnant with Tyler, but they can't actually talk about what that would mean because Tyler comes in and drags Lisa away to go procreate for the salvation of all V-kind. But before he runs off, Erica nimbly plucks a bloody piece of toilet paper off his neck and shoves it in some plastic wrap. She's like the MacGuyver of CSI! Where are your sunglasses of justice, Erica? Oh right, she has no David Caruso style, but is instead blessed with a purposeful stride to show off that she has both purpose and balls. Caruso only has sunglasses, but his show will last longer than this one.
Erica then purposefully strides into Dr. Sidney's office at fake NYU and orders him to start running his science tests on it to prove that Tyler is an alien implant. You can't blame her for wanting answers quickly; I wouldn't want to think Tyler was my son for a moment longer than necessary. Sidney wants to make sure that Erica really wants to know the answers and Erica assures him that she does. Has he met Tyler?
Now we come to a curious scene: It's Val's funeral. I guess the Visitors decided to repatriate her body? Or Ryan stole it on his way off the ship? Or the Visitors sent her body home to mom and dad? At any rate, everyone is standing around the grave sniffling and crying over poor dead Val and her unborn baby, everyone, that is, except Ryan. Do Visitors have tear ducts? Or is he just dead inside at this point? Have his human emotions fled him? Val's parents have decided that this is all Ryan's fault, so when he offers his condolences they slap him down. If he hadn't had pre-marital sex with their daughter she wouldn't have exacerbated her heart condition and then would not have died. What I think they are trying to say is: His penis killed their baby! Val had absolutely nothing to do with it. Then Val's mom notices that Ryan is not crying and accuses him of not having a soul, which has to sting a little bit. Or it would if he had a soul. I really hope this brings on a whole "Do I have a soul?" crisis just like the one in Twilight. That would be like a pop culture smorgasbord of deliciousness. Val's mom is about to spit on Ryan so her dad pulls her away, leaving Ryan alone. But not for long! He runs into one of Anna's messengers with a card from Anna that Ryan can use to see his daughter. Hey, pipe down, dude, these people don't know Val's baby is alive! Ryan takes the card, but does it skeptically.
Chad Decker is reporting live from one of the Visitors' Healing Centers. No. 2 is standing nearby and when Chad wraps his report, No. 2 introduces him to a pregnant lady who is going to be the first woman