ABC Series ‘V’: Invading, Fascist Lizards Arrive With ‘Universal Health Care’ and ‘Message of Hope’

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“V” portrays a humanity so head-slappingly gullible that I feel like they kind of deserve to be invaded and eaten by lizard people. Each character lurches about like a drunk in a bounce house, planless in the most important hour of his existence.

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It’s a bit thin, but there are a few hints here and there in the pilot that seem to indicate that the fascism unfolding in the new “V” is not the classic Hitlerian fascism of the original miniseries but the paranoid projections of fascism that are imputed to Obama by the teabag set. There is a lot of talk of the Visitors “spreading hope” and “being at peace,” and even offering “universal health care.” There is even the obsequious press, represented by that Michael J. Fox knock-off from Party of Five as an unconvincing telejournalist who trades softball questions for access to the hot V spokesmodel. The buildup to their interview is a crude, but not entirely inaccurate, shorthand illustration of how reporters are cowed into obedience, but given the other political touchstones in the pilot it seems more like the kvetching of a disgruntled conservative against the “Obamedia.” The mindless enthusiasm of the teenage son becoming a “peace ambassador” seems an obvious corollary to a McCain voter’s impression of the verve of Obama’s young supporters, who will form his “civilian defense force” in the paranoid fantasies of Michelle Bachmann. There is also an obligatory “It’s like 9/11 never happened” line, which really makes no sense in the context of invading space aliens. If the original “V” was really about how Nazis came to power, this version appears to be a hysterical Glenn Beck-style vision of the coming Stalinist purges. ABC, after all, is the network that ran the ahistorical propaganda atrocity of Republican bias called “The Path to 9/11,” refused to run the Reagans miniseries because it wasn’t worshipful enough, and employed John Stossel for years after he became an obvious CATO flunkie.

So far, it’s just enough to be annoying, although the universal health care bit really was too much. I almost hope, really, that they get more heavy-handed with it—perhaps the Vs could form death panels, or take everyone’s guns.

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