Recap – V 1.01 – Pilot

It was a morning like any other in New York this morning.

FBI Agent Erica Evans woke up to her alarm only to find that her 17-year-old son Tyler Evans had snuck out of the house with his friend Brandon to go to a party in SoHo.

Father Jack Landry opened up the church doors to find regular, Roy, waiting at the top of the steps in his wheelchair. (Okay, just going by the commercials, I bet five bucks that Roy is one of the people the Visitors heal.)

Ryan Nichols made a special early-morning stop at a jeweler’s to pick up an engagement ring for his almost- fiancee, psychologist Valerie Holt. The jeweler threw in some proposal advice as a freebie – going down on one knee to propose is a classic.

Reporter Chad Decker has his rebroadcast of the country’s economic shambles playing as he takes his shower.

They have a little time. Erica prepares to go pick Ty up from a clinic where he is getting patched up after getting into a fight at a house party. Father Jack brings Roy into the church. Valerie waits anxiously at home for Ryan to return. Chad pitches another news idea to a production assistant but is rebuffed again; they like his ideas but the big bosses keep passing the stories onto other reporters. And then IT happens.

If it were L.A., people would have just assumed it was a quake and moved on. But this is New York so it must be Godzilla (boy, is that close). Valerie stops trying to hold up her bookcases and gets out of the way before they come crashing down onto the desk where she was working. Father Jack races to shove Roy’s wheelchair out of the way before he gets squished by a falling plaster Jesus. Ty huddles under a gurney and loses cell phone contact with his mother, who races out the door. And Ryan is on his way home when he sees a fighter plane crash into the middle of a downtown street and the pilot land not too far from the wreckage.

And then they see IT. A spacecraft, huge, round, hovering over the city. Erica sneaks past some army/national guardsmen (how did they get on site so fast?) and finds Ty in the middle of a crowd that has been barricaded outside in the middle of the street. The underside begins to tilt and whirl until it forms the biggest plasma television EVER! A woman’s face appears and she says, “Don’t be frightened.” Her name is Anna and she gives her spiel. They want our water and an Earth mineral (hey, I’ve heard that before) and in return they will provide us with technology. They then return us to our regular scheduled programming. People in the street start applauding.

The Vatican says that the Visitors are God’s creatures too, and Father Jack has trouble with that. Father Jack’s boss (not the Big Guy, just a more senior priest, Father Travis) tells him to hold the party line, not that it’s going to make a difference because their congregation pretty much consists of 2 drug addicts and Roy. They come around the corner and see a full house.

Erica has her partner Dale Maddox on the phone while Ty and Brandon watch the endless broadcasts. They are entranced by the visitor’s cleavage arrival. Erica noted that all terrorist activity dropped off at the Visitor’s arrival; all except the one cell they’ve been tracking. They were chattering about C4.

When Anna and her entourage arrive for their first meeting, some reporters get in her face about the scientific likelihood of two species ending up looking the same. Chad jumps to her defense and as a reward, gets to ask a question. He goes with “Are there any ugly visitors?’, giving Anna a chance to flirt back. She decides that she wants Chad to be the Visitors’ spokesman.

3 Weeks Later

Chad announces that the Visitors, or the Vs, as they’re now called, have opened healing centres that can cure 65 diseases. The “We of are peace. Always.” line is catching on fast.

Erica and Dale finally have a lead. Despite the fact that the last 20 leads have gone nowhere, and that they seem to have a leak in the department, she’s found something. Satellite imagery traces back a truck that had C4 to a warehouse on Long Island. There’s nothing there but Erica wonders why the surveillance photo has the truck parked next to an old shed. She finds a trap door in the shed that leads to an underground tunnel system. They find a dead guy, a bunch of forged documents and enough C4 to put a hole in the world.

Ryan gets a call from a man who needs his help. But Ryan’s not that guy anymore and hangs up on him. He then proceeds to take Valerie to lunch.

Brandon and Tyler sneak away on a tour of a V mothership. We get a look inside, and it looks like a huge floating city. There is even greenspace. They are met by a pretty Visitor named Lisa who, and hand to God I’m not kidding, has her uniform unzipped almost to her navel. Ty is entranced by the cleavage Visitor. She invites them to join the Visitor Youth Ambassador program but they can’t because they aren’t 18. She tells them that they can join at 17 with a parent’s approval but Ty knows he’s not going to get that.

Back at work, Erica and Dale discover that the dead guy had been dead for less than a day. Among the fake documents, they find a passport for a creepy looking guy named Jeffrey LeClair.

Father Jack preaches against peace, love and harmony and tells his congregants not to treat their neighbours as they would like to be treated. The Vs should have to earn our trust, not just get it. Father Travis calls him on it, calling the Visitors a blessing because they have scared people back into the church. Father Jack is afraid that people will move from admiring the Visitors for their aid to worshiping them. Smart fellow. Then Roy tells them that the V’s healed him, gets up out of his wheelchair and does a happy dance (nobody took that bet, did they?)

Erica and Tyler have a touching mother/son moment, where she shows him a video of him tagging a wall with a “V”. It’s to spread the Vs message, he says. She asks if his bad behaviour is because his father left them. He says that his dad may have left but she’s never there. Burn.

Chad is selected to do Anna’s first full interview but balks at the her rule that he can’t ask any questions that may show the Visitors in a bad light. He pulls out his journalistic integrity and says that he reports the truth, not just what people want him to say. Anna promptly cancels the interview. He puts his integrity back into his pocket and does the interview, becoming the Vs puppet.

Erica and Dale have another lead on the terrorist cell. The dead guy’s name was Owen Chapman. They go to search his house but someone beat them to it; it’s been tossed. Erica finds a message directing them to a secret meeting.

A guy named Georgie Sutton, the one that’s been calling him for weeks, approaches Ryan. He tells Ryan that they need his help. There are 25 of them now. Ryan remembers all the people that died last time. He has an almost fiancee now, and he doesn’t want back into the life. Unfortunately Valerie thinks all the phone calls means that he’s cheating on her but she doesn’t come out and ask.

Back at the church, Father Jack is stopped by a man in a pew, who tells him that he is right to question the Vs. A Visitor shot him. He gives Father Jack a package and tells him that he must deliver it to the address on the envelope. Then he dies.

Erica and Dale show up at the meeting. She’s going in and he’s to wait 30 minutes before bringing in the Marines. Father Jack is there. Georgie gets up and welcomes them to the Resistance. They’ve all been specifically invited there. And, after they all are tested (by cutting away a flap of skin to reveal their skull bone), he tells them that a Visitor would have alien skin under human skin.

It’s a conspiracy. They’ve been here for decades, infiltrating, preparing. Revealing themselves was only the final step in their plan for planetary domination. The message was psycho but his delivery was pretty good. Erica is a skeptic until Father Jack steps forward with the envelope. In it is a picture of a man. It’s Jeffrey LeClair, a terrorist, Erica says. A V terrorist infiltrator, Georgie corrects. And they are all convinced.

At the same time as this meeting is Chad’s interview, where Anna announces that they want to put a healing centre in ever major city on the planet. Tyler watches at home and is entranced by the broad…cast. He forges Erica’s name to a permission slip to join the Youth Ambassadors (YA) program.

A ball (strangely reminiscent of the training drone that Luke uses in Star Wars) flies into the meeting. It centres itself in the middle of the room before it is noticed. Then it explodes, firing darts everywhere. Armed men rush the room and kill everyone in sight. Erica is attacked… by Dale. We found the leak. They fight and she whacks him in the head with a serrated crowbar thingy. He’s knocked out and she sees that his skin has peeled off his face. He’s a lizard. He comes to and she stabs him through the heart. Father Jack grabs her and they are two of only a few who escape.

Georgie is almost killed but Ryan jumps in from out of nowhere and saves him. As they run away, Georgie apologizes for dragging him back into this mess. He doesn’t know what went wrong; they’d been so careful this time. Ryan was right to stay away. Ryan says he was wrong. They have to fight. But the Vs aren’t all monsters. Ryan reveals his arm – there is lizard skin underneath. He assures Georgie that there are others like him, traitors and deserters, who will fight and help the humans fight the Vs.

He goes home and finds Valerie in tears. She was searching for evidence of his infidelity and found the engagement ring. Now she feels horrible. Ryan says that he still has something important to tell her.

Chad is disgusted with himself but Anna’s assistant Marcus assures him that compromising his principles for the greater good was the right thing to do. Good for the people of Earth and good for his career. Anna wants to use him again for future announcements, and Chad knows he will feel used. But he doesn’t say no.

As Erica and Father Jack make plans for the future now that they know the truth (recruit, arm themselves, fight), Tyler gets his YA uniform. The Vs have armed themselves with humans’ devotion and it will be a hell of a battle now.