Intrepid reporter Chad earnestly delivers news that the Visitors can now travel to America.  Several have been given visas and are now able to move freely among us.  Chad’s assistant tells him it’s all his doing, he shaped the public opinion.  Meanwhile, Father Jack is listening to his flock tell him they’re losing their faith.  The Visitors are so good, what does this mean about God and him loving his people – Jack is shaken by this.

This is a learning episode.  It helps us learn a little more about the V’s.  It helps the characters learn more about each other.  And it helps the show learn how to tell a story and find its voice.  We learn that Cyrus (seen on a business card by Ryan and his fiancée last episode) is a former college of Ryan’s in what was known as the Fifth Column.  Georgie resurfaces and goes to Ryan who says they must build the resistance back up, using the Fifth Column’s mythical leader John May to help.  He says he’s got someone he can talk to.  Cyrus (played by Charlie Jade‘s 01 Boxer, Michael Filipowich) has a lot of contacts and could be a big help find John May, but when Ryan goes to visit him, Cryus hits an alarm and tries to hold Ryan there until the Visitors arrive.  When they do, Ryan is gone, Cyrus is toast, and “John May Lives” is spray painted on the door.  Marcus is displeased.

Erica meanwhile has signed up, or has been ordered, to provide protection at the Visitor Center during the handing out of visas and the arrival of the selected V’s.  She gets a tip that there might be violence.  Protests are constant, fueled by one woman’s story of her fighter pilot husband who died when the V’s arrived.  Anna wants to talk with this Mary Falkner face to face and so she goes to meet the V high commander.  En route, Anna steps out of a small side corridor, intercepting her before they make their public appearance.  When the Mary reemerges, she’s minus her vitriol and says the Visitors are all peachy keen.

Prior to this, a gunman is at the Visitor Center and attempts to take out Marcus.  Erica intervenes and takes the assailant out which pleases Marcus.  The man is taken away and Erica shakes Marcus’s hand.  As she mentioned earlier to Father Jack, she could be helpful to their cause working from the inside.

Father Jack relieves Erica of her scanning through a huge packet of names, looking for survivors from the last meeting.  After apparently a day’s long search, he finds George Sutton.  He tracks down the address to a run down apparently with news clippings of a family murder pinned to the wall.  A woman enters saying George doesn’t live there anymore, wonders if the priest is there to counsel him after allegedly killing his family and blaming it on aliens.  Later, Georgie arrives at the church and at gun point Jack tells him he was the one with the photos from the last meeting.  Georgie agrees to get together with Ryan.

Tyler is still wearing his V jacket, is temporarily kicked out of the Ambassador Program but is allowed back in later.  There’s a scene where Lisa is visiting him and they’re making out and Erica comes home.  Rather than be busted wearing V jackets, Lisa takes her uniform off so it looks like Tyler was just busted nearly doing the ET nasty.  Erica is shocked, but not displeased.

Dale is alive and kicking aboard a V ship.  A medic named Joshua is helping him recover but Dale doesn’t remember much about his fight.  Joshua says that’s normal and they go through a computer holographic construct to regain Dale’s memories.  After a few scenes of him not recalling anything, he figures out he was an FBI agent and a V plant for nearly 20 years.  Finally he remembers that Erica was the one who “killed” him and she also saw his face.  When he makes like he’s gonna wreak his furious vengeance upon her, Joshua injects him with something and says, “The Fifth Column says, ‘Hello.’”

Father Jack, Erica, Georgie and Ryan all meet at the church and kind of stare at each other, obviously mistrustful but wanting to start this resistance thing before it’s too late.  Lisa arrives about the New York mother ship and meets Anna, tells her she wants Tyler.  Then calls Anna mother.  Chad reports on the assassination, but then talks about his upcoming exclusive interview with Mary Falkner.  Anna blinks a lot.

Snaptastic.

Again, this was a learning episode, but a good one.  A lot was revealed and while some of it was expected, if not completely obvious, some was not.  Personally I had hoped Michael Filipowich was going to be returning as I enjoyed his performance in Charlie Jade but being whacked early for being a traitor of a traitorous organization usually means “guest star” billing.

And is Dale dead?  Hard to say.  A metal stake to the side of the head and then through the chest (though not the heart, learn your alien physiology people!) wasn’t enough, I don’t know if some wimpy little drug cocktail will be enough.  I’m sure he’ll return to kill Erica.

Tyler is still a doofus.  I watch enough tween shows with my 8 year old daughter to know what decent teenage acting is like (it’s an arduous task.)  V‘s writers need to watch some as well.  Tyler is wholly 2 dimensional.  Of everyone, his will be a tragic story of family betrayal and as of yet I couldn’t care less about him.

If rated on the sheer number of times I said, “Crap!  I didn’t see THAT coming,” this episode would have been given more Anna heads than I’m allowed.

Four out of five Anna heads.