Dear makers of the show V: FUCK YOU!
You're all total dicks. You're also huge douchebags. The only reason you're not bigger douchebags is because you're total dicks and it's been scientifically proven that a large, quantifiable amount of dickishness has the unintended benefit of limiting the level of douchebaggery so they lucked out there. When your dumb little show premiered, I was apathetic about it. It wasn't the worst thing on television. I could take or leave it. It didn't matter to me if it got canceled or managed to hang on for a second season. In fact, I didn't even see last week's episode and didn't care. I did, however, see this week's episode. Now I care. Now I'm passionate. Now I wholeheartedly root for its cancellation. Why? It's really more my fault than it is yours. See, the makers of V are shitheads and I hate shitheads. It's my problem.
I've never been one to be outraged by fiction. It happens from time to time. Movies like Bride Wars or the finale of Battlestar Galactica have been known to invoke a reaction that can be described as apocalyptic. Even then, I can pretty much let go any sort of political or social messages contained in fiction that either actually exist or, as is more often the case, people imagine are there. I've written many times about how annoyed I get when people who can't tell fantasy from reality hold up a work of fiction as proof and vindication of their worldviews. This has been the case with V. The fact that the show's producer is an openly gay liberal Obama supporter hasn't stopped people from seeing it as a strident criticism of the Obama administration. Ordinarily, I'd have commented on such stupidity but as I said, I simply didn't care enough to do so. Until now.
Tuesday's episode was a smorgasbord of dumb. I wonder why the aliens refer to themselves by their human names when they're alone since, for the most part, they seem to have at least a mild contempt (in some cases not so mild) for our species. I find it preposterous that humans are so incurious about where the V's came from and what their world and culture are like. We as a race seem perfectly content to allow powerful aliens to set up embassies, healing centers, soft serve yogurt stands etc. while knowing so little about them. Another storyline involves the human resistance led by Elizabeth Mitchell thinking it would be a good idea to let a dangerously unstable man take the lead in a plot to kidnap a V. There's also a story about a V impregnating a human woman without the aid of genetic engineering, something that Carl Sagan once said he found to be the least believable thing about Star Trek. This shows the scientific ignorance of the show's staff from the producers on down who probably think Africa is crawling with human/chimp hybrids. Anyway, all this was just run of the mill TV stupidity on par with generations of science fiction shows that have called a solar system a galaxy. What pissed me off? I guess I've buried the lede long enough.
The V's were attempting to infect humanity with something called R6. I'll be damned if I can remember what the hell R6 is supposed to do but I doubt it's good. Anyway, supposedly the V's were mixing this R6 in with some sort of super vitamin supplement when they were actually mixing it in with flu vaccine. Yeah, that's right, the makers of V decided to reinforce the fears of Jenny McCarthy acolytes who believe that vaccines are evil based mainly on evidence they found up their asses. It's very rare that you hear me groan at a television show's plot. The last time I did that was during the one and only episode of the now canceled Eli Stone I ever saw in which a lawyer receives visions telling him that vaccines cause autism.
I have no idea if the producers meant to send the message that people shouldn't take flu vaccine. In fact, knowing them, I'd say they put as much thought into it as they did the idea of human/alien hybrids. Still, we currently are in the middle of a global flu pandemic that is literally killing people and V comes along to tell the more ignorant members of our population who were on the fence as to whether they should take the vaccine that yes, the crazy paranoid cousin who said that the government is hiding the fact that vaccines make your belly button close up and cause your urine to catch fire just might have had a point.
So, I will now join the majority of the nation and stop watching V altogether. Until it's canceled, I will practice the dance I'm going to do on its grave.
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