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V
"We Can't Win"
Written by Christine Roum and Cameron Litvack
Directed by David Barrett
Original air date: April 20, 2010 |
Anna volunteers a
clean power source for Earth; an assassin begins killing members
of the Fifth Column.
Read the detailed episode recap at
IMDB
Didja Notice?
At the beginning of the episode, Chad has a dream about Anna in
which she asks, "Can I trust you?" At the end of the episode,
the real Anna asks him, "Do you trust me?" Doesn't it seem like
Chad had one of those almost precognitive dreams you
have sometimes (I've had them)? Was this just the typical
Hollywood use of dream as foreshadowing (and metaphor for
Anna's seduction and still-to-come betrayal of Chad) or is there
a telepathic aspect of the Visitors' presence developing?
Remember in the original V
series, Diana seemed to have a bit of telepathic control over
Julie after she'd been through the conversion process (in the
episode "The Final Battle"
and the novel "The
Pursuit of Diana").
Anna and Chad are in
Geneva for the annual World Progress Forum.
This meeting of the world's leaders and thinkers is a fictional
institution, it is not a forum held in the real world.
At 2:16 in the episode, Chad is wearing a t-shirt with what
appears to be a pair of crossed tennis rackets on the left
breast. I don't know if it was intentional, but they look a lot
like a pair eyes from the infamous gray Reticulans of alien
abduction lore! Notice the shirt is gray.
The water jet seen outside Chad's hotel room window in Geneva is
the Jet d'Eau, one of the largest water fountains in the world,
first installed at Geneva in 1886.
At 2:40 in the episode, a Zabar's bag is sitting on Erica's
kitchen counter.
Zabar's is
a well-known specialty food store in Manhattan. When Tyler walks
in, Erica tells him the bagel she offers him is from Zabar's.
Agent Malik tells us this episode opens 2 days after the
appearance of the "John May Lives" message during Anna's Live
Aboard broadcast in the previous episode ("John
May").
The enlarged driver license image at 8:55 in the episode reveals
that the Fifth Columnist Alex Caruso lives at 21133 Hicks St.,
Brooklyn Heights, NY. There is no such address in New York.
Alex Caruso's father is at the River Heights Veterans Hospital.
This is a fictional hospital made up for the episode.
After the deaths of Georgie and the three Fifth Columnists in
New York, Erica says of the Visitors, "The next blood that
spills is going to be theirs." But later in the episode she's
proven wrong when Alex Caruso is killed.
The Visitors seem to spend a lot of time standing around in the
corridors of the mothership. Don't they have quarters or
recreation rooms? We see Lisa standing in the corridor watching
a video of Tyler giving her a flower.
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When Lisa takes and fails her
empathy test, the Visitor
writing on Josh's holoscreen at
10:30 in the episode reads, TEST
FAILED. The horizontal string of
characters to the left appear to
be mostly made up of the
extraneous characters of the V
alphabet that signify long and
short vowel sounds and
sibilants, rolls, etc. |
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Father Jack sees a tattoo on the elder Caruso's arm that tells
him he was a member of the 1st Ranger Battalion. The 1st Ranger
Battalion is an elite special ops unit of the U.S. Army created
during WWII, based on the British Commandos, and has existed in
various forms ever since.
Anna takes advantage when a massive monsoon strikes the tiny
island nation of Timbal. As far as I can tell, Timbal does not
exist in the real world.
The song playing while Tyler and Lisa begin to make love is
"Cosmic Love" (2009) by Florence + the Machine.
At 24:03 in the episode, why are there a bunch of flowers
sitting on a table in the Visitor shuttle? (Although this may be
a personal shuttle of Lisa's or Anna's since we see a couch-type
piece of furniture as well.)
When they are about to make love, Tyler asks Lisa if she is okay
with it and she answers "no". But she continues anyway. Is the
"no" meant to suggest it's because the act is what her mother,
Anna, wants?
In previous episode studies of V2000,
I've speculated whether the V's prefer to use knives as personal
weapons because they have an instinct for killing with their own
claws. In this episode, Ryan says that their guns would draw
attention and cause people to start asking questions. So, their
assassins use knives (at least here on Earth). Still, what's to
stop them from using Earth guns?
Erica receives word that Fifth Column members have recently been murdered in London, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Sydney.
Alex reveals that his Fifth Column cell hid information in photo
files online, using a website called PhotoPhyles. This is a
fictional site. The photos that contain information are all
encoded in ones that contain the number five; five fingers, five
dogs, etc. The five must stand for Fifth Column.
At 33:41 in the episode, the sniper has taken position at the amusement park ride called Hellevator. Hellevator is a ride at the
Playland amusement park in Vancouver, Canada where the series was shot.
At 37:36 in the episode the words painted on a piece of debris
on the background image of survivors in Timbal says, "ANNA LIGHT
OF THE WORLD".
Anna explains to Chad that if the tragic hurricane in Timbal had
not struck then she would have been able to use "Myanmar,
Darfur, Sri Lanka." Myanmar (Burma) is known for its repressive
and abusive military regime; Darfur is known for the extreme
humanitarian crisis created by the armed conflict among many
different militias in the region; and the government of Sri
Lanka is suspected of human rights violations by the United
Nations.
Notice that the "vitamin" shot Valerie receives at 40:22 in the
episode is actually a dose of solution R6.
There is V writing on the medical holoscreen at 40:39 in the
episode during Valerie's medical examination. The horizontal
letters are partially obscured by the edge of the televised
image but seem to be: LNEL GHM. Doesn't seem to mean anything.
The vertical letters to the left spell HUMAN.
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