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V
"Pound of Flesh"
Written by Charles Murray and Natalie Chaidez
Directed by Dean White
Original air date: April 6, 2010 |
Erica takes Tyler to
see his father; Valerie's pregnancy takes a serious turn; the
resistance takes action to stir up further resistance.
Read the detailed episode recap at
the V Wiki
Didja Notice?
Anna believes that the Fifth Columnists are made up of Visitors
who have grown empathetic due to proximity or interaction with
humans. She orders everyone on the ships to be subjected to an
emotion test that shows horrifying and unpleasant images such as
battlefields, hooks piercing human skin, and nuclear mushroom
clouds. We also hear a baby crying, presumably accompanied by an
image of a baby in pain.
Do all the Visitors have first and last human names? At 11:30 in
the episode, Erica looks up the names of V diplomats in the FBI
database and we see that they all have surnames. Do Anna, Marcus,
and the rest all have surnames as well? As an in-joke, the diplomat names we
see all seem to be those belonging to members of the
V production crew in
various capacities. Some of them are listed in the closing
credits, others I was able to look up on the
Internet Movie
Database (IMDB) as working on V.
A few I wasn't able to confirm as being members of the
V crew, but they are all
listed as working in showbiz on IMDB. The names we see on the screen are Clark Candy
(production coordinator), Moni El Batrik (art
department assistant), John Gallagher (production coordinator),
Nerissa McCormack, Peter Ochotta (assistant art director),
Josephine Ochej (assistant), Phil Pacaud, Norman Spence, Jeff
Singer, Dennis Swartman (production manager), Tiara Motem.
Ryan reveals that Visitors returning to the motherships must
pass through a scanner that reads the individual's core
temperature and fingerprints to prevent infiltration.
Hobbes meets a woman in a cemetery and pays her for dossiers on his
four new resistance cohorts. Is this merely an
example of his mercenary paranoia? Or is there something more
sinister to his information gathering? Could he himself be a V?
We haven't seen him prove his skin is more than skin deep like
we did with Erica and Father Jack at the first resistance
meeting in "Pilot". And he
seemed awfully determined to go aboard the mothership until Ryan
insisted on going instead.
The information received by Hobbes reveals that Georgie was a
chemical engineer when his family was killed.
When Ryan comes aboard the mothership and goes through the scan
process, there is a woman still in line holding a baby. Why
would anyone, Visitor or human, be bringing a baby on board? The
crying of the child causes Ryan to look back towards it in
concern, which tips off Samuel that he may be compromised by emotion. Why was Ryan
seemingly concerned about the baby?
Was it a Visitor woman bringing a human baby aboard? Or is he
just more conscious of a baby being around since learning that
Valerie is pregnant with his? Is he simply concerned about an
innocent child possibly coming to harm?
At 17:39 in the episode, one of Marcus' advisors, Phillip, fails
the emotion test. On the original V
series, Phillip was the Visitor Inspector General and twin
brother of Martin; he eventually began to become sympathetic to
the cause of the human resistance.
The mystery of why Erica and her husband Joe split up and of
who Tyler really is suggests that perhaps Erica had
an affair with another man and this man is Tyler's true father.
Could the Visitor holoscreen that had Tyler labeled as "Corey
Ryan" instead of Tyler Evans (as I pointed out in my study of
"Welcome to the War") be
another clue to this possibility of his identity?
Visitor writing appears on the canister from which Ryan obtains
a vial of phosphorus. The characters in the circle translate as
"PHOSPHORUSP". Not sure why there's an extra "P" at the end!
| At 21:02 in the episode, we
see a Visitor tag on the back of
Samuel's uniform. It translates
to OVER CENTER.
OPER CENTER would seem to make
more sense, but the second
letter does not look like the V
character for "P". |
 |
While looking for Ryan, Georgie visits Valerie in her apartment
and spots the book Baby Before Birth by Lukasz Madziag
on the coffee table, clueing him in that she and Ryan are
expecting a baby. This is just a prop book, not available in the
real world, and the author's name is the name of the assistant
to producer Kathy Gilroy on the series.
In speaking of truth, it's ironic, considering he's a priest and
they're speaking in a church, that Father Jack tells Chad,
regarding his questions about the V healing centers, "You have
access to the ships, to Anna. You want the truth? That's the
place to look, not here."
Joshua tells Ryan that John May had an outdated, untraceable
communication device in Reedsville. He doesn't say what state
Reedsville is in. Are we (and Ryan) to assume it's in New York?
Or is there some reason that Reedsville would already be known
to Ryan? (Note: In the following episode, "John
May", we learn that Reedsville is in New York.)
Joshua warns Ryan that once he gives the phosphorus to Valerie,
"...there's no going back. Ever." What does this cryptic warning
signify? Since the phosphorus is intended to benefit the baby
during the pregnancy, will Valerie be partially transformed by
the hybrid child's growth in her body?
Meeting Jack and Erica at the church, Hobbes refers to the
mothership as "the UFO". Technically it's not a UFO
(Unidentified Flying Object) because it's identified!
As he heads for the boarding area to leave the mothership, Ryan
discards his V uniform jacket on the floor. I suppose it's
intended by the writers to symbolically show him leaving behind
his Visitor past, but 1) isn't it possible the resistance will
need V uniforms on occasion for infiltration purposes? 2) It
seems dumb to intentionally leave a clue like that behind. In
fact, a few minutes later, we see Marcus has the discarded item
of clothing in his hand when he tells Anna they'll find the
traitor. Stupid, stupid Ryan.
On the TV screens seen during the news broadcast of Anna's
announcement about the Live Aboard program, we see the network
identification in the bottom right corner is WNT, World News
Television. This is a network made up for the program, it does
not exist in the real world.
Visitor writing appears on the holoscreen at 34:04 in the
episode as Joshua prepares to embed the resistance message in
Anna's speech. The characters translate as ACCESS DENIED, just
as the English words state below it. But why would there be
English words showing at all??
As we observe Anna's message playing in cities throughout the
world, at 34:11 in the episode we see the
Madrid mothership. It
is hovering over the Puerta del Sol, one of the main ancient
gateways to the city. The Tio Pepe sign seen there is a famous
landmark, referring to
Tio Pepe Sherry, the best-selling brand
of sherry in the world.
| Starting at
34:29 we see several screens of
V writing as Joshua attempts to
break into Anna's broadcast. |
 |
 |
| The words on
this screen translate as (from
top to bottom): SAVE TEMPLATE,
EDIT PROFILE, SAVE MACRO, CUE
ACCESS, RUN OUT BOUND, PARSE
INCOMING, DOCS USER DOC |
This is the
same screen as previous, but
with a new line at the bottom:
LOG STATUS |
 |
 |
| ACCESS
GRANTED |
RESET
PARAMETER, COM* CONNECTION, DATE
LOCATION, RUN PROGRAM ED, FILES
SYSTEM LOG, ID UAV CONTROLS |
As Ryan is walking down the corridor to board the shuttle off
the mothership, the same security guard who initially scanned
him in sees him and seemingly becomes suspicious of him for no
reason. Is it because he notices that Ryan is no longer wearing
his uniform jacket? Then he calls out Ryan's undercover name,
Jeff Singer, and knows something's wrong when he doesn't respond
to it.
Georgie's not too smart at the end of the episode. By screaming
"long live the fifth column" as the shuttle is taking off, isn't
he essentially telling the Visitors that there was a fifth
columnist aboard it? All the Visitors would have to do is review
their video files of the individuals who boarded the shuttle to
narrow down the suspects of who it is.
| As Ryan fixes the
phosphorus-spiked tea for
Valerie at 37:28 in the episode,
we see the V label on the
phosphorus vial. It translates
as PHOS. |
 |
Ryan isn't very generous with the hot water in Val's tea! At
37:37 in the episode, we see that the freshly brewed cup is only
half full!
Lisa shows up at Tyler's father's house. How did she know he was
there? Erica took him there in secret when he wasn't wearing the
spy-camera Peace Ambassador jacket. I suppose he must have
called her to let her know he was staying there so she wouldn't
worry.
As we see the baby move around under Val's skin while she
sleeps, the impression it leaves is that it has a tail. Do the
Visitors normally have tails? We've never seen any evidence of
this previously in either V2000
or V80. (Note: Later episodes
reveal that the females do have tails.)
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