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V
"Serpent's Tooth"
Written by Gregg Hurwitz
Directed by Steve Shil
Original air date: January 11, 2011 |
Anna confronts her
long imprisoned mother; Erica has Tyler's blood analyzed; a
fringe of the Fifth Column gets violent.
Read the detailed episode recap at
IMDB
Didja Know?
The title of this episode
is borrowed from a passage in Shakespeare's 1605 play King Lear.
Notice, from the passage below, that the title here may
represent several subtexts of this episode such as: the
Visitors' reptilian nature; Ryan's, Erica's, and Anna's children; Anna's infertility;
Agent Malik's tooth.
It may be so, my lord.
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
Didja Notice?
Anna's mother is not named in this episode, but she is
designated as Diana, the same name actress Jane Badler's
character had in the original V.
Is there a particular reason Diana would still be wearing her
human skin while imprisoned for 15 years?
The large plant in Diana's dungeon home, at 1:06 in the episode,
looks like an unhealthy version of the one seen
in the entryway to Anna's executive suite
in "Red Sky".
Diana remarks, "When the humans set off the first atomic bomb it
shone across the universe like a brilliant flare. Another
potential home world for our species." This suggests that the
first atom bomb test, code-named Trinity in the New Mexico
desert on July 16, 1945 is what first attracted the attention of
the Visitors.
Diana realizes that, while there may be other worlds with the
potential to become a new home, Lisa's fertitlity now
means that the survival of the
Visitor species depends on Earth or nothing.
At 2:31 in the episode, Erica is going through the records of
her pregnancy. They list her as a patient of New York Medical
Services Clinic at 13524 91st St., Queens, NY. This is a
fictional clinic and address. The phone number listed for the
clinic has a legitimate New York area code (212), though it's
not one of the ones used in Queens. The 555 prefix of the phone
number is a long-time convention in
Hollywood TV and film.
The medical records give Erica's birth date as 5/23/1971.
Notice
the yellow highlights on Erica's comprehensive metabolic test show a
phosphorus content not in the normal range, as she stated was
the case during her pregnancy, in
"Red Rain".

Near the end of
"Red Sky", it seemed as if the
Visitors' medical technology had managed to bring Joshua back to
life shortly after his death. But, here, Lisa reveals that they
saved him before he would have died from his injury.
At 3:12 in the episode, there is
what appears to be a
wall-hanging of
Oriental glyphs on the wall of Erica's house. They almost look
like characters from the V alphabet
actually, especially the
second-from-the-bottom, which
looks like the V character for
J. |
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It appears that the shadow of the microphone may be just barely
visible on the ceiling beam right above Erica's head at 3:19
on the Blu-ray.
At 4:11 on the Blu-ray, a box of Stranan's Multi Mart sandwich
bags are seen on the countertop in Erica's house.
Stranan's Multi Mart appears to be a fictitious store.
In his news report, Decker says that, with Anna's explanation
that the red skies were a gift to humanity, the Visitors are
once again being largely embraced the world over. Is this true
or just V propaganda? Even if the red skies had been a gift to
Earth (which we know it wasn't), the manner in which Anna
unveiled it and refused to speak to world leaders for several
days while the event was going on, is enough to make a large
segment of Earth's population suspicious, I would think.
In this episode we are told that the fringe Fifth Column group
attacked V healing and peace ambassador centers on 6 continents
in all 29 cities in which the V's have a ship. Again, like last
episode, why no mention of the additional ships that arrived at
the end of
"Red Sky"? Did the ships re-cloak
themselves, becoming invisible to Earth detection equipment?
Valerie's mother points out that Ryan isn't crying at her
funeral. In this episode, it's somewhat played towards the
question of whether the Vs have souls, but it may be an
indication that they have no tear ducts, similar to the Visitors
of V80, as revealed in
the novel Death Tide.
However, at the end of the episode, we do see Ryan shed a tear
over the pain his child is in; was this from a tear duct
existing as part of his cloned human flesh covering or a legitimate V tear?
Anna explains to Marcus that she is putting human skin on Ryan's
baby in order to prey on his loss and make him think of Valerie
every time he looks at his child. Of course, the real reason is
that it's cheaper to hire a real baby for the role than it is to
constantly pay for the CGI rendering of the reptilian baby!
Why does the hybrid baby suddenly sound like a human baby
just because it has been sheathed in cloned human skin?
In this episode, we finally get
a reprise of the famous
guinea-pig-swallowing scene from
the original
V
("Visitors,
Victims and Victory"), this
time with a rat. The new scene
goes the original one further by
depicting Anna regurgitating the
rodent into the mouth of the hybrid
baby as a method of feeding!
Note also that Anna's tongue is
not the forked variety seen at
various times in
V80. |
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"Serpent's
Tooth" |
"Visitors,
Victims and Victory" |
|
Anna gives Ryan what I am
referring to as the "V-card"
(don't leave home without it!).
It allows her to communicate
hologrammatically with him.
There is V writing on the card
that appears to spell out "THO A
OF SH BODY". There's obviously
some omission and jumbling of
letters going on, but it seems
to be an approximation of the
phrase printed on some of the doors on the mothership
and Peace Ambassador Centers: THOSE OF
THE BODY ONLY. This phrase has
not yet been explained, but
perhaps it is the actual slogan
of the Visitors, referring to a
sense of superiority over all
other life forms? (Not the
obviously untrue "We are of
peace. Always.") |
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The V-card |
from
"Hearts and Minds" |
At 15:50 in the episode, a military ammunition box is visible on
a shelf just behind Ryan in the New York Fifth Column hideout. (I
was able to identify it because I have one just like it; it was
originally my grandpa's.)

When Father Jack recognizes the photo of the bomber, he tells
Erica he lived in Hell's Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen is an area of
Manhattan, once known as a poor and rough part of the city. The
area has since been gentrified, but the old nickname continues
to stick.
At 20:17 on the Blu-ray, Hobbes is seen
flipping through a copy of the 1960 book Love and Death in
the American Novel by Leslie A. Fiedler
while searching the bomber's home. This is a real book
studying the American novel form in contrast to the European
novel.
Seconds later, Hobbes finds a copy Sun Tzu's
The Art of War. This is another
actual book written in the 6th
century BC by the Chinese general Sun Tzu, still studied today
in military academies. Hobbes then shoves the book into the
waistband of his pants, behind his back. Why does he keep it? A
professional mercenary like Hobbes has probably already read it!
It's even available to read for free at
Sonshi.com! Later, he is seen leafing through a book at the
hideout; we don't see if it's The Art of War, but I
presume it is. He finds a list of names on a sheet of paper
inside it. So, I guess he took the book thinking there might
have been some notes in the margins, etc. that may have led to
other Fifth Column members or hints about their plans.

Searching the bomber's home, Erica and Hobbes find a connection
to Israel and Erica mentions Mossad. Mossad is the national
intelligence agency of the nation of Israel.
While Erica is rifling through
the bomber's bookshelf at 20:45
in the episode, we see a copy of
Prelude to Terror by Helen MacInnes. This is a real novel,
in the Robert Renwick series,
published in 1978, about the
world of international
terrorism. |
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The map that Hobbes finds in the trash at the bomber's home is a
map of Manhattan.

Anna refers to the pills that are capable of disintegrating a
living Visitor body as "immolation pills".
Anna's mother asks her for a necklace that allows her to hear a
piece of Earth music that has been in her head while imprisoned
for 15 years. (If anyone knows the name or author of this music,
let me know at
enik1138 at popapostle dot com).
The Visitors track the New York bomber to a company called Five
Brothers Textiles. This is a fictitious company. Note that the
"Five" in the name is a reference to the Fifth Column using the
number five as a code symbol in public discourse.
At 28:57 in the episode, Erica shows Melanie Singer, the second
attempted bomber, the V-shaped cut behind her ear. She received
this in "Pilot", a cut made to prove she
(and others) were human and not reptilian underneath.

At 30:21 in the episode, we see a
Mood Bead spinner
display in the warehouse of Five Brothers Textiles. Mood
beads are beads covered with a thermotropic liquid that causes
them to reflect different wavelengths of light depending on the
body temperature of the person wearing it, changing the bead's
color.
Agent Malik and Hobbes wield
Glock 19 and
SIG-Sauer P226
pistols respectively against each other during their altercation
at the warehouse.
When Agent Malik pulls the broken fang out of her mouth after
getting clobbered by Hobbes, we see red blood on it, seeming to
confirm that the V's have red blood, as I speculated in the
study of "Red Rain".
At 34:28 in the episode, Hobbes is standing next to two
newspaper dispensers, for USA Today and The Local
Dispatch. As far as I can tell,
The Local Dispatch is a fictional paper.
USA Today is a real newspaper, published in
editions for all 50 states, many U.S. territories, and a few
foreign countries.
Hobbes and Kendrick both separately uncover evidence that the
fringe Fifth Columnists may have a connection to Ossining.
Ossining is a town in Westchester County, New York state.
This and later episodes seem to imply that humans are the
Visitors' first introduction to the concept of individuals having
a soul. Yet, it is also later implied in
"Birth Pangs" that the Visitors have been advancing their
own evolution by incorporating DNA from other species for some
time now. Can Earth really be the only civilization that has
developed the concept of having a soul?