V Recap: 1.02 There is No Normal Anymore

So what do you do after you’ve killed your partner of seven years and discovered that he was actually a space alien in disguise? For FBI agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell), it means lying through her teeth when her boss and the FBI wonder what’s happened to agent Dale Maddox (Alan Tudyk, who gets two brief cameos in tonight’s episode). There’s good news and bad news for our FBI heroine: the bad news is that Erica, as a good liar as she is, has a very insightful boss (Roark Critchlow) who sees holes in her story, but the good news is that the Visitors know how to cover their tracks. By the time the FBI shows up at the warehouse where the fledging human resistance and Visitor commandos threw down at the end of the pilot, there are no traces of a fight or bodies. Erica is safe … for now. Meanwhile, Father Jack (Joel Gretsch) struggles about what to do in the aftermath of the warehouse debacle, especially when the FBI come calling.

“There is No Normal Anymore” picks right up after the events of the pilot, with Father Jack and Erica sitting on the roof contemplating their next move, when a Visitor shuttle swoops down to clean up the warehouse. Our plucky resistance fighters barely escape one of those deadly Visitor floating balls, thanks to a nice swing by Erica. As it turns out, throwing a mean right hook runs in the family.

Back at the Evans household, things continue to go south for our heroine, though she’s blissfully unaware of it. Erica’s son Tyler (Logan Huffman) proves to be just as good a liar as mom when he promises Erica that he won’t get involved with the Visitors, despite carrying home a Peace Ambassador uniform. The next day, Tyler and his plump buddy show up at the Visitor center, where the Visitors, along with the comely Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) are kept while the American Government decides if it will establish diplomatic ties with the aliens. Tyler, looking to impress Lisa, gets all caveman on a couple of anti-Visitor punks. Kids and first love, what’re you gonna do, right?

Meanwhile, over at Grownsupville, fresh-faced newsman Chad Decker (Scott Wolf) ponders his lack of cojones when he weakly acquiesced to Anna’s demand not to ask her hard questions during their first sit-down interview. Chad has an idea about how to rectify his lack of journalistic integrity by making Anna come to him for their next interview, but first he has to show her that he has clout with the people. What, being the ridiculously young looking guy from “Party of Five” isn’t enough? You wonder how long it’s going to take Chad to finally see the light, and even if he did, will he turn his back on the truth? Ah, the ethical battles of a wannabe journalist. I wonder how long this storyline is going to keep going before we get bored by it and wish it would just concentrate on the resistance fighters some more. Time will tell.

But Chad is not the only one conflicted by the Visitors. Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut), who was revealed to be a Visitor himself, has decided against leaving his beloved Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto), and has decided to stay and fight. Ryan, we learn, isn’t the only Visitor sleeper soldier that has gone south on the mothership. He locates another fellow traitor, with hopes of finding others like them who are willing to put up the good fight for ol Mother Earth. No signs of human resistance leader George this time around, though. I guess ol Georgie is still on the run, having realized at the end of the pilot that the “human” he’s been trying to recruit back into the fold was, all this time, one of the enemy. Hey, that’ll freak anybody out, I suppose.

“There is no Normal Anymore” works as a continuation of the pilot, but it’s not much of a stand-alone episode. If you didn’t see the pilot coming in, you probably have no idea what’s going on, and that definitely isn’t going to endear the show to new viewers. This is definitely one of those shows that will reward loyalty. Since ABC has announced that they will air “V” as a four-hour (four episode) “event” before putting it on hiatus until 2010, here’s hoping the final two episodes pack more of a punch than what we’ve seen so far. The fourth and last episode is titled, “It’s only the Beginning”, which gives me hope the producers have something big planned before the hiatus. Hopefully.

“V”: 1.02, “There is No Normal Anymore.” Written by Scott Peters and Sam Egan, and directed by Yves Simoneau.