1.04 – It’s Only The Beginning – V Review

Posted by Samuel Walters

“It’s Only The Beginning” hardly feels like an event, or like a series that is about to take a four-month break. The episode itself is fairly mundane in its approach, with only a few really memorable or important moments. More to the point, this is a series that is fairly limps into its hiatus without creating very much by way of intrigue, character or plot. I can hardly imagine a more pedestrian episode. The show isn’t atrocious, but it sure isn’t anything close to exceptional. It is, at best, average entertainment. And this episode is no different.

In fact, there’s much less to “It’s Only The Beginning” than previous episodes of the series. Although flawed in their presentation, at least previous installments at least tried to establish some kind of thematic content. Here, the episode is all about setting up the plot for a cliff hangar before the series heads into storage for a few months. The problem is, without any real character work (there is one minor element), the episode really has nothing else to work with. Put simply, the story just isn’t interesting enough to carry the day without something meaningful to accompany it.

The story itself is built around a non-linear plot structure which turns out to be little more than a cheap tease. When the episode opens, we Georgie being shot, and then Ryan firing at Erica. We then flash backwards fourteen hours to learn how we ever got to this fateful moment. But it’s a tease because Erica isn’t the target of Ryan’s gun – it’s the Visitor they’ve been tracking for information. So instead of using the plot structure to generate real interest, all it does is provide a kind of “gimmick” because the rest of the tale is, simply, too mundane to generate enough real interest on its own merits.

Perhaps the most interesting element to the episode was Georgie’s challenge to Jack: “You’re going to have to decide whether you are a Father or a soldier.” This choice that Jack faces: whether or not to cast his lot with the Resistance, is certainly an interesting one, given his profession. But it is revealed that Jack had once been a Father in Iraq, with U.S. servicemen. Violence is not exactly a stranger to him. But as interesting as the question is, it thoroughly deflates the episode’s most “traumatic” moment: When a Visitor enters Jack’s church and stabs him.

Really now, is Jack going to be killed off? And if, for some inexplicable reason he does die, then the entire basis of Georgie’s question is devalued. Put simply, if that happens, it means that Jack never had a chance to truly make his decision. So either way, the episode is devalued.

Another aspect of the story involves Taylor’s trip to the Mothership to meet with Anna. His conflict with his mother is already much too stale to be of any dramatic value. More interesting is how Anna uses her knowledge of him – his love of mechanics – to further entice his interest in the Vs. That, along with the advances of Anna’s daughter, are more than enough to make him an Ally. Incidentally, the episode’s best bit of irony comes by way of Tyler’s praise of how the Vs are “so much more advanced” than humans – which is promptly followed by the execution, by way of skinning, of a Fifth Column member.

The final subplot of the episode centers around the healing centers. Chad Decker does an expose on the healing centers which are being touted as a place where humans can get amazing cures to whatever ails them (except for the common cold). But all of this is a front: The Vs are using vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, to perform experiments on humans (why? who knows). At any rate, Erica, Ryan and Jack manage to blow up a warehouse which had stored these vaccines (prompting the retaliatory stabbing of Jack).

But more interesting are two developments. First, Chad is informed that he will die as a result of a brain scan he received during his expose. He can only be cured by the Vs, and they’ll only do it for special favors on his part (a useful bit of coercion, no?). Secondly, Ryan’s wife, who is also Tyler’s shrink, discovers that she is pregnant: She’s about to have a hybrid baby. Though, one wonders how the Vs, with all their advanced medical technology, couldn’t detect a hybrid baby (unless, of course, she’s had an affair and is having an all-human baby).

Overall Grade: C

But these are all plot-based developments, with almost no impact on character or theme. The result is an episode, and a series, which just doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself. “It’s Only The Beginning,” we are told … but after four episodes, the series needs to move on from the beginning and do something worthwhile.

Topics: Sci-Fi, TV Reviews
Filed under: V The Series