V "Hearts and Minds" Written by Gregg Hurwitz Directed by Bobby Roth Original air date: May 4, 2010

The Fifth Column seems to prove themselves terrorists; Tyler prepares to move to the mothership; Chad seeks information from Father Jack.

Read the detailed episode recap at IMDB

Didja Notice?

When I originally wrote this study, just days after the episode orginally aired, I said, "The special effect of the Stinger missile Hobbes shoots at 1:01 in the episode is totally pathetic; it's just a CGI blob of light!" Now, I'm watching the Blu-ray complete set of the series (in 2018) and it seems the special effects for this shot were redone; the shuttle's explosion is reasonably impressive burst of smoke, fire, and blue light from the Visitors' power source.

There is a blue tint to the explosion of the V shuttle, meant to suggest the escaping power of the blue energy that powers V technology.

Walking in on their punching bag session, Hobbes comments to Erica and Jack, "Like Thorn Birds in here." The Thorn Birds is a 1977 novel by Colleen McCullough and 1983 TV miniseries. I presume Hobbes is implying a sexual tension between Erica and Jack, as a prevalent aspect of The Thorn Birds is a sexual tension (and eventual consummation) between an Catholic priest and a younger woman.

Erica reveals she has four brothers. 

Erica says her favorite boxer is Sugar Ray Leonard. Leonard is widely considered to be one of the best boxers of all time, fighting from the 1970s through 1990s. Later in the episode, Hobbes says his favorite boxer was Floyd Patterson, two-time heavyweight champion in the late '50s, early '60s.

Ryan tells his cohorts they need to get a hold of a Stinger missile to shoot down the V shuttle of tracker agents. He is referring to the FIM-92 Stinger portable homing surface-to-air missile developed by the U.S. in 1981 and still produced today.

Ryan explains the V trackers are like V soldiers but with more heightened senses, capable of following a scent and evaluating evidence at a crime scene.

Kendrick says that blue energy is highly explosive stuff, which is why little remained of the shuttle that was shot down.

Judging from the map held by Agent Malik, the shuttle crash site is in the area of the Taconic Parkway and Highway 84 in New York.

At 21:38 in the episode, the photo image on Erica's monitor disappears when someone (later revealed to be Agent Malik) deletes it from the database. This would not happen! When a file is opened on a computer, it is essentially showing you a copy of the file, not the original, so Erica would still see it and could even save a copy to a new location if she realized the original had been deleted.

At 21:50 in the episode, Erica looks at the list of agents in the office who are online in the FBI database at the time. We see Erica herself as well as Agent Malik and Director Kendrick. The other names are members of the V production crew, some of whose names also showed up as diplomats in "Pound of Flesh"! Jason Elsworth (an accountant on various Hollywood productions), John Gallagher (production coordinator), Katherine Gilroy (producer), Mark Lane (set decorator), Kristina Lyne (graphic designer), Nerissa McCormack (an accountant on various Hollywood productions) and Shaun Mckinlay (a Hollywood sound mixer).

   At 22:19 in the episode, Ryan defeats the electronic lock at Elysium Security. Is that a V device in his hand that does it?
   There are a couple of businesses in the world with the name Elysium Security.

Kendrick discovers toll booth video footage of Father Jack on the Taconic Parkway near the crash site and brings him in for questioning. But Agent Malik, at least, knows that Father Jack and Erica know each other from "There Is No Normal Anymore". Jack manages to talk his way out of being charged, but might Kendrick already know there's some kind of connection between Erica and Jack? Kendrick sure does seem to give fishy looks to her whenever we see him. Might Erica's promotion in this episode be a set-up?

The condition of the human skeletons at the crash site reveals that they were dead before the crash occurred. Why would Anna bother to put dead bodies on the shuttle when living people would have been a much more fruitful avenue for her deception? And how does she get away with it? Wouldn't the authorities expect a list of the passengers? She couldn't give them a list of already dead people! And if she gave them a list of living people, where are they now? If she's keeping them prisoner, she better hope none ever escape to prove the deception.

At 30:37 in the episode, there is Visitor writing on the doors which translates as: THOSE OF THE BODY ONLY. Yow! What does that mean? The phrase has been seen on some doors in the Peace Ambassadors Centers, but here the doors lead to where it seems some terrifying examination is taking place on humans who are part of the Live Aboard program.

At 34:40 in the episode, the Visitor guard has writing on the back of his uniform that is the same as Samuel's in "Pound of Flesh", saying OVER CENTER.

Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that Agent Malik is revealed as a V in this episode. The same actress, Rekha Sharma, played Tory Foster on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, who was eventually revealed to be a Cylon!

The news crawl at the bottom of the TV screen at 35:52 reads "...of shuttle disaster still unidentified. FBI held terrorist group "Fifth Column" responsible for attack..."

We see that our heroes are continuing to meet in the same location after Father Jack's seeming abandonment of the cause. Don't you think a military-minded man like Hobbes would have insisted they move immediately to a new secret location if a member quit like that, in fear that the rogue member would sell them out?