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V
"There Is No Normal Anymore"
Written by Scott Peters and Sam Egan
Directed by Yves Simoneau
Original air date: November 10, 2009 |
Decker decides to
take a hard line on Anna on his next broadcast; Erica is
pressed by her superiors on her partner's disappearance.
Read the detailed episode recap at
the V Wiki
This episode introduces FBI Agent Sarita Malik, portrayed by
Rekha Sharma. Malik is revealed in a later episode to herself be
a Visitor masquerading as human. The same actress portrayed Tory
Foster in the reimagined
Battlestar Galactica
series, who is eventually revealed to be a humanoid Cylon!
Didja Notice?
At 2:53-3:13 in the episode, we see the POV
screen of a V seeker probe as it chases Erica and Father Jack.
The same Visitor alphabetic characters we saw on a seeker screen
in "Pilot" appear here.
When Erica faces the fact that her partner of 7
years, Agent Maddox, was a Visitor, she realizes that anyone
could be a Visitor. This is similar to the "who are you really?"
paranoia-inducing realizations gained by the characters that
appeared in such classic sci-fi films as John Carpenter's
The Thing and the
Invasion of the Body Snatchers original movie and
remakes.
During her morning shower, Erica has a vision of Maddox holding
her own gun to her son's head. Is this a true vision of
significance for we, the viewers, to keep in mind? Or just a way to
represent Erica remembering that she left her gun behind in
Maddox's car the night before?
As the camera moves through the FBI office at 10:04-10:08 in the
episode, there is a woman in a yellow shirt sitting at a desk on
the right-hand side of the screen. On her computer monitor, an
animated diagram of a Visitor mothership can be seen.
At 10:12 in the episode, we see that Erica has walked past the
woman in a yellow shirt. Then at 10:17 we are shown Erica
walking past her again!
FBI Assistant Director Kendrick says that half his team has been
reassigned to the FBI's Visitor Threat Assessment Joint Task
Force.
At 10:39 in the episode there is a nice, subtle shot of a flock
of birds flying underneath the looming mothership.
Agent Malik mentions to Father Jack that the man who died of a
knife wound in his Church (in
"Pilot") had
been on an FBI list for having made dozens of calls to them over
the years about a supposed alien invasion.
As already mentioned in the episode study of
"Pilot", the
warehouse at which the resistance recruitment meeting took place was at
4400 Pier Avenue, an allusion to Scott Peters' previous series
The 4400.

In the sequence from 14:36-14:49 in the episode, we see
motherships hovering over Japan (presumably
Tokyo) and
Mexico
City (identified by the presence of the Metropolitan Cathedral).
At 14:51 in the episode, the news crawl at the bottom of the
television screen is too blurry to identify other than the words
"at the UN Building".
At 14:59 in the episode, the news
crawl at the bottom of the television screen reads "...from
reporters at the U.N. Building in New York. U.N. Secretary..."
In all of his discussions with Father Jack, Father Travis is
always on the pro-Visitor side. Is he already converted? Or,
possibly, a Visitor himself? We've no evidence of conversion
technology among the Visitors in this series so far, but there
is an emphasis on the aliens having been on Earth clandestinely
for decades. Perhaps series developer Scott Peters is using the
early placement of Visitors on Earth in place of the conversion
theme of the original series.
At 19:00 in the episode, Anna's assistant, Marcus, views footage
from the seeker probe that attacked the resistance meeting in "Pilot".
The Visitor alphabetic characters that appear on the screen
appear to be the same ones we've seen previously.
During the scene outside the Visitor peace
embassy at 22:21 in the episode, one of the signs being held up
by the
protesters says "Trojan Horse". That is probably
a good way of putting the Visitors' arrival to our world.

At 23:53 in the episode, we see a V "repair kit"
that heals the cloned human skin over a Visitor body.

When Ryan goes to Angelo to get his human skin patched up, he
says, "You looked up in the sky lately? Wasn't supposed to
happen yet." Apparently the Visitor motherships have arrived
early! Why? Has the situation on their world grown more dire
unexpectedly?
At 29:07 in the episode, the news crawl at the bottom of the
Visitor holoscreen reads, "answers tough questions from
reporters at U.N. Building..."
At 30:13 in the episode, Erica speaks the episode's title,
"There Is No Normal Anymore." Take a drink.
Angelo says Ryan's fiancée's name is Valerie Stevens, but I have
found other sources calling her character Valerie Holt. But the
series itself takes precedence, so Valerie Stevens she is from
here on!
The Visitor peace embassy has a sign/symbol mounted at the front
that is basically a stylized V! We will also see it on the backs
of Visitor uniforms in later episodes.

At 38:18 in the episode, the news crawl at the bottom of the
television screen reads, "U.N. Secretary declares meeting with
Anna a..."
At 39:35 in the episode, Erica remarks to Jack that there are
probably Visitors on the FBI's Visitor Task Force. This will
turn out to be true in "Hearts
and Minds".
When Erica sticks Maddox's photo in the shredder, it doesn't do
a very good job of shredding. It only shreds into strips
instead of crosscut shredding, so it
would be easy to put back together. You'd think an FBI agent with access to confidential
documents would use a crosscut shredder. Although, why did she
bother shredding it anyway? It seems to have been merely a symbolic
gesture of her dismissing her traitorous partner from her life.
