CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Highlander (1986)

A visually-dazzling cinematic example of Joseph Campbell's mono myth, "the Heroic Journey," Russell Mulcahy's 1986 fantasy Highlander spawned three movie sequels, a popular TV series, and a generation of devoted fans.

Yet today, what remains most memorable about this fast-moving, epic adventure is that it derives tremendous energy from its historical context; from both the prevailing "apocalypse mentality" of the 1980s and the connected fin-de-siecle movement, which a careful viewer can also detect in other genre pieces of the age.

In short, Mulcahy's film proposes the idea of a secret society living amongst us, so-called "princes of the universe" (according to the amazing soundtrack lyrics by Queen) who -- for good or evil -- will proves the"rulers" of us all.

Highlander stars Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod, an apparently normal Scottish man living in 1536 when he learns, simply, that he cannot be killed so long as his head remains lodged atop his neck. He is immortal.

Some years later, after Connor has been banished from his clan for being "in league with the devil," the bewildered immortal finds love with an innocent maiden named Heather (Beatie Edney). His peaceful sanctuary is soon shattered by the arrival of a mentor named Ramirez (Sean Connery), who explains to him the ways of the world. The so-called "Highlander" (MacLeod) is one of a small band of immortals fated to clash in an upcoming competition called "The Gathering." Because there "can be only one," the last surviving immortal will be given a great gift after decapitating his final competitor. When "the Gathering" will actually occur is anyone's best guess; and the exact nature of the "gift" is also undetermined.

Across the centuries, Connor adopts new identities so as not to arouse the suspicion of society at-large, occasionally battling other immortals and, upon their decapitation, absorbing their energy. Among the immortals is a Russian devil called "The Kurgan" (Clancy Brown), a giant brute also known as "The Black Knight" and rumored to be the strongest of all immortals. If The Kurgan should claim the prize at the conclusion of the Gathering, mankind will suffer for all eternity under his dominion.

In 1985 New York City, Connor (under the alias Russell Nash) is apprehended by the police at Madison Square Garden, after a decapitated body is discovered there. A lovely police investigator -- and expert in ancient metallurgy -- Brenda J. Wyatt (Roxanne Hart), begins to suspect that there is more to Connor than meets the eye. And finally, the Gathering looms...

An Irresistible Pull to a Faraway Land, Or Tonight You Sleep in Hell: New York as The Battleground of the Apocalypse

"The Gathering" of Highlander occurs in The Big Apple of 1985, smack dab in the Death Metal movement in rock music, and the punk aesthetic and resurgence in popular fashion.

In terms of the latter, think combat boots, studded belts, mohawk hair-cuts, and body art (or self-mutilation?) in the shape of tattoos and piercings.

In terms of the former, middle-class American parents worried about their troubled 1980s teens listening to Death Metal music and gleaning Satanic messages out of it (consider the suicide of two teens in 1985 after purportedly hearing subliminal Satanic messages in a Judas Priest album played backwards...)

What was the source of the tremendous nihilism and cynicism in the American culture that gave rise to this particular branch of pop-culture? Well, even people in authority apparently felt that the end of the world was nigh. America in the early span of the 1980s was enmeshed in a deep economic recession, locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and our elected government saw Armageddon around every corner.

On the campaign trail in 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan had noted (to televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Baker) that ours "might be the generation" that sees the Biblical Judgment Day. His belief was reinforced in a People Magazine interview in December 1983 when the Gipper noted that the eighties were "the first time in history" that so many Biblical prophecies were coming true. Even President Reagan's appointed Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, didn't believe the world was going to last. On February 5, 981, he said that America's natural resources didn't necessarily have to be safeguarded by government because he did not know "how many more future generations" could be counted on before "the Lord Returns."

Again, these were elected government officials making claims about the pending end of the world. So throw in TV movies such as The Day After (1984), Reagan's joke about bombing Russia in "five minutes" and it is no wonder that America's pop culture (especially genre films) became virtually-obsessed with the End of Life as We Know it. It wasn't the Millennium yet, but the year 1999 wasn't that far away either, and many people wondered if humanity was going to make it to the next century. As a culture, we obsessed on death, on the end of civilization, on self-destruction.

Highlander deals with the idea of an apocalypse rendered personal. Two warriors clash, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The Kurgan, remember, hails from Reagan's "Evil Empire," Russia, and battles the West, as represented by Connor. The Highlander may not be American by birth, but he's close enough, and he certainly shares our values (-- even rescuing an endangered Jewish child from evil Nazis, during one scene set in World War II.)

Moreover, the Kurgan has embraced the "death" culture he sees around him in New York City of 1985, reveling in contemporary music, black leather, and other forms of the day. A wound on his neck is highlighted by a ring of metallic clothes-pins, an affectation to make ugliness not merely noticeable, but perhaps even beautiful, at least in the 1980s configuration of that concept.

Outside the 1980s configuration, and in direct opposition to the Kurgan, Connor is a man not of the 1980s. As a man of a different age, a man of wisdom who has lived a dozen life-times, he is associated not with popular fads or trends of the times, but, in fact, with art itself; with a kind of timeless quality. In one seamless scene transition, we see Connor's face dissolve into the face of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, a signifier that this protagonist represents what is best -- and lasting -- in human nature.

As "The Gathering" nears, the human race has reached a point of decay and self-destruction. It was primitive and superstitious when Connor's clan banished him from home in 1536, but the New York of 1985 as depicted in the film is positively "one step beyond," to quote a police detective (John Polito). It's a culture that has, literally, embraced death. Graffiti dots almost every wall and surface you'll see in the film (from the parking garage in Madison Square Garden to the avenue where the Kurgan ambushes Connor and Brenda, pictured-above), and punks and armed survivalists seem to roam the streets by night.

Look closely at the film, and you'll see that Mulcahy adopts a low-angle perspective for many important sequences too. Oftentimes, a low-angle viewpoint makes a figure in frame seem menacing or over sized (and indeed, we often see the Kurgan in this fashion). However, low-angles can achieve something else too. They render visible the ceilings above characters, essentially "boxing" characters into their worlds . This is also a technique David Fincher utilized heavily in Alien 3 (1992) as well, showing us the limit of the sky, so-to-speak, generating claustrophobia.

In Highlander, we get low-angle views of decaying police station interiors, over-stuffed hospitals, parking garages, and more. The idea is that the characters in the drama are literally "boxed in" by urban blight; by a rotting infrastructure that is no longer being updated, tended to, or fortified. And, indeed, that was a hallmark of Reagan's 1980s era too: his "shining city" was actually falling apart (especially after a 40% cut in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during his second term.)

In the rain-swept back-alleys, fluorescent subterranean parking decks and sleazy motels of Highlander, the battle for mankind's future is being waged, almost unnoticed by the affluent "ruling class." The Gathering (and a new dawn) can't come a moment to soon.

It's important to note that Highlander isn't the only film of this vintage to suggest that the displaced, the disenfranchised will fight against forces of darkness in these anonymous places, unnoticed by society at large. Consider Kyle Reese of The Terminator (1984), hiding out in motels, wandering dark alleys, battling an over-sized nemesis to protect mankind's very future. Like Connor MacLeod, Kyle Reese is a 1980s-styled knight, his suit of armor, a trench-coat. Other films, such as John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987) also put the future on the line in out-of-the-way, unseen places, with the homeless, the street people involved in the war in some important capacity. The same director's They Live (1988) covers some of the same territory as well.

Why did this idea have so much currency in mid-1980s science fiction and fantasy cinema? I've written about it here before, but perhaps it was because the ranks of the homeless grew so dramatically in the 1980s. There were 35 million more homeless in 1983 than when Reagan took office in 1981, for example. And the gap between the rich and the poor widened to its greatest level since the Great Depression under Reagan's "new federalism." And by 1984, 13 million American children lived below the poverty line.

More simply, perhaps the battle for the future often fell to outsiders in 1980s genre films because Americans had lost faith in once-respected institutions, and felt that those who were materially-wealthy (yuppies) were not going to be the ones to champion a change in the status quo. That job would fall on the disenfranchised, those with a stake in change. Those above ground (in Madison Square Garden, for instance, to get back to Highlander) were too busy being distracted by bread & circuses, by the fake combat of entertainment such as professional wrestling.

But a close viewing of Highlander reveals that it is indeed a film about a cycle coming to an end. The outcome of the Gathering stops mankind's long slide into self-destruction, and starts a new day. It is no accident that the final scene of the film finds Connor in a pastoral, natural setting...far from the city where the last battle was fought. Or that Connor's gift is that he can gaze into the minds of "leaders" and see "what they are thinking." That the Gathering has given him the capacity to forge a new world peace between warring countries. Since Connor has won the "prize," he will save humanity from itself; from the destruction the world feared was coming within this "last generation."

Why Does The Sun Come Up? The Heroic Journey in Highlander

Writing about the human experience, Joseph Campbell identified several aspects of the hero's journey, a mono-myth found in virtually all cultures.

Not unlike Star Wars, Highlander fits that template perfectly. For instance, Campbell wrote about the "call to adventure" and the "refusal of the call," and we see that dynamic played out dramatically in this Mulcahy film. Connor refuses to believe that he is special (an immortal), and must be booted out of his life, out of his routine, for his journey to begin. More so, when Ramirez trains him, Connor still refuses to join the battle. He is in love with Heather, and would rather build a life with her than fight the Kurgan and join the immortals. Connor does not join the battle in earnest until after Heather passes away. Only then is the call heeded.

Campbell also identified "supernatural aid" as the device by which a fledgling hero learns of his role in a great, important struggle, and trains for the fight or quest. In simple terms, Sean Connery's Ramirez is Connor's Obi-Wan Kenobi equivalent, the wise elder who reveals to him the "rules" of being a hero. For example, Connor learns from Ramirez there is no fighting permitted on Holy Ground. He also learns of the "Quickening," a feeling of being at one with nature and other life-forms (and a key to the nature of the prize at the end of the quest). And, as in all such heroic stories, the mentor must sacrifice his life so that the hero steps forward; so that the hero grows up and becomes, well, the hero.

Campbell's "road of trials" is also depicted in Highlander's narrative. Connor fights Nazis, rescues children, decapitates enemies and keeps his real nature hidden from mankind at large as he prepares to fight for Campbell's "ultimate boon" -- the very purpose of the hero's quest. The Gathering is the source of that ultimate boon, gifting Connor with the power to heal the world, to bring it back from the precipice of destruction.

Finally, Connor emerges from the Gathering as "the Master of Two Worlds" (he has conquered his personal demons, and is now fully human, able to have children; plus he will use his gift to forge peace as a world leader). And also, free of the "Gathering" Connor experiences (at least until the unnecessary sequel...) Campbell's "Freedom to Live," to be his own man. His life need no longer be consumed with violence and death. With Brenda, we are led to believe, he will live a life of "love," a life of growing old; a life with children.

By mirroring the Campbell-style heroic journey, Highlander presents the audience a classic champion; one who is not concerned with petty, material things, but who takes the long-view of history. Connor has known the loss of a loved one, and the loss of entire Ages of Mankind, and is thus not concerned with the distractions of the moment. By making him a classic hero in the mold of Campbell, Highlander makes the immortal indeed feel "timeless," and bigger than the small thinking of the 1980s.

More Than One Short Moment: The Visuals of Highlander

Beyond its context, beyond its heroic structure, Highlander succeeds on the basis of its canny, artistic visuals. Late in the film, for instance, there's a wonderfully-staged shot during which The Kurgan -- the Specter of Destruction -- stands behind Connor and Brenda, unnoticed, as they converse. (See photo on the left...).

The Kurgan here is literally a shadow of death, a silhouette, stalking them (and all mankind). This is a perfect choice of visualization for the Beast: he's our own shadow of self-destruction, peering over our shoulders, threatening, if he should be victorious, to plunge us into his brand of perpetual darkness.

I've written here as well about the depiction of New York as a kind of hell on Earth in Highlander, but it's more than just the ubiquitous graffiti. It's the fact that steam seems to belch and hiss from the Earth at every opportunity; that signs of industry (like the neon SILVERCUP sign) dwarf the characters and suggest a de-personalized world; and that fluorescent lights cast a deathly, ghoulish pallor the players in the drama. Everyone walking these streets seems a ghost.

I appreciate too Mulcahy's conceit that every moment in the "now" sparks a memory from within Connor of his long past. A flashing red police siren gives way to a crimson sunset on the eve of his long-ago funeral in Scotland, for example. Or look at the early transition in the film during which we move from the Hades-like underworld of the present day Madison Square Garden parking garage -- up through the soil of the Earth itself -- into the sunshine, natural vista of Scotland in 1536. It's a return to nature, but also a return to Connor's age of innocence and naivete about the way the world works.

Even when the visuals aren't this artistically-rendered, they're still pretty damned memorable. Consider the breakaway castle walls during the explosive duel between The Kurgan and Ramirez, or the epic-nature of the scenes in which Connor and Ramirez cross steel blades atop mountaintops. And the final battle is both gorgeous and wonderfully minimalist. The Kurgan and Connor battle in an empty warehouse of vast proportions, the light from the cityscape outside behind them, pouring through an entire wall of windows. Mulcahy's camera has so much room to navigate here that he can pull back, race forward, and pan back and forth as if he's still ensconced on some natural vista. It's gorgeous camera-work, exciting choreography, and, in many ways, the film's moment of highest impact.

Highlander endures for all the reasons enumerated here. Watching it today, it does not seem to have aged, at least in terms of technique and efficiency in story-telling. There are some missteps in the film, particularly in a police investigation subplot that goes nowhere and brings little of importance to the narrative. But the overall impact of the film is still strong.

As for the sequels? Well, there should have been only one Highlander.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: 2012 (2009)

Once upon a time, producer Irwin Allen (1916 - 1991) was nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" because of his considerable efforts -- primarily during the 1970s -- shepherding disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), The Swarm (1978), When Time Ran Out (1980) and other epics to the silver screen.

Today, however, director Roland Emmerich has -- with the very important assistance of CGI technology -- largely assumed Allen's crown.

Emmerich has already obliterated the White House (ID4 [1996]), stomped Manhattan (Godzilla [1998]) and buried the globe in ice (The Day After Tomorrow [2004]). And now, in 2009, Emmerich presents his masterwork in the disaster genre: the epic 2012, which, in every tangible way, one-ups his own previous efforts, as well as Allen's now-quaint-appearing contributions.

Want to see a capsized ship? 2012 has it. Want to see buildings on fire? 2012 has it. Want to see massive volcanoes erupt (taking the initiative from Dante's Peak [1998] and Volcano [1998])? 2012 has it. Want to beat Allen's made-for-TV disaster, Flood (1976) too? Well, 2012 offers mountainous tidal waves wiping out whole populations. Oh, and I almost forget: there are also earthquakes in 2012, thus burying the non-Allen 1974 disaster epic Earthquake directed by Mark Robson (and written by Mario Puzo).

The only cataclysm Emmerich leaves out of 2012? The killer bees from The Swarm. Perhaps for his next project...

Besides CGI and copious amounts of green screening, what permits Emmerich to depict all of this global destruction is the screenplay's conceit of huge solar coronal ejections. In 2012, the sun roils with colossal solar storms, and the Earth is bombarded with neutrinos. These neutrinos create a "new kind of nuclear particle," ones super-heating the Earth's core and acting "like microwaves." This means that the world "as we know it...will soon come to an end." Humorously, the film also terms the event "the biggest solar climax in recorded history."

I sure hope the sun lit up a cigarette when that king-sized climax was over...

Following this giant solar climax, the Earth buckles under "crust displacement," otherwise known as cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis. What does this mean? Well, let's just say Wisconsin is the new Antarctica.

In more human terms, Emmerich's film follows the efforts of failed novelist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) to get his estranged wife and two children from Los Angeles to China, where the world's governments have constructed vast arks that can survive the end of the planet and re-colonize the globe. So, Curtis and his family outrun an earthquake that plunges Los Angeles into the sea, the fiery, volcanic destruction of Yellowstone Park, more earthquakes in Las Vegas, a crash landing on an ice glacier, and other calamities. They are literally only seconds ahead of every single disaster that befalls the planet. The Curtis family is clearly the luckiest one on the face of the Earth, given their survival success rate as dramatized here.

2012 is extremely lucky itself, to have a great actor in Chiwetel Ejiofor playing Dr. Adrian Helmsley, another lead character and the heart and soul of the film. He's the scientist who reports to the U.S. President (Danny Glover) about the coming end-of-the-world scenario, and fights, at every opportunity, for some humanity to dominate plans for "continuity of the species." Ejiofor invests every one of his key moments in the film with gravitas, decency, and emotion. It's a vain effort, but damn, he gives it his all.

A few weeks ago, I reviewed The Fourth Kind (2009) on this blog, and noted that any carefully-considered opinion of the film had to take into account the kind of movie it wanted to be: a pseudo-UFO documentary, like those crafted in the 1970s. I would be hypocritical if I did not, similarly, judge 2012 by the conventions of its form: the disaster epic. At a whopping two-hours and 38 minutes in length, 2012 is an example of this film form on steroids. It features dozens of characters, multiple subplots, and more impressive scenes of destruction than any you've ever seen. The shots of L.A. falling apart (with parking decks spitting out cars by the half-dozen...) are jaw-dropping.

2012, also like other disaster films, concerns itself with last goodbyes, heroic sacrifices, and human bravery in the face of terrible circumstances. I confess to feeling a lump in my throat during one moment, near film's end, when a sweet family in India is overcome by a tsunami. A tender father gazes down at his little boy's angelic face, and holds that precious visage in his hands...and then the tidal wave takes them away in an instant.

Outside that moment and a few others, however, I feel -- as I often do with Emmerich's work -- that despite rigorous adherence to the disaster formula, he relies too heavily on low-brow humor and cliched conventions for us to really connect meaningfully with his characters or storylines. This writing/directorial approach actually undercuts the formula in my opinion.

2012's final scene illuminates well both the highs and lows of Emmerich's approach. A few arks (think When Worlds Collide, but with ships...) have survived the crust displacement and solar climax. The exhausted survivors face the dawn of a re-shaped globe. Our heroes see that one continent, Africa, has survived the catastrophe, resurfacing and proving habitable. The captain of Ark 4 makes sail for the Cape of Good Hope. We get a good, lingering look at the continent of Africa on a computer display, and even get to ponder, for an instant, that this is exactly where mankind was born, generations ago. In all senses, we have returned to the beginning. Mankind has been given a second chance, and, ironically, it's where we began our first chance.

Then, this moment of quiet reflection, which actually approaches poetic levels, is immediately usurped by a scene in which John Cusack's seven-year old daughter tells him she no longer needs "pull-ups." Yep, his daughter is potty-trained...and only 6 billion people had to die!

A happy ending, right?

Emmerich's film veers wildly from high camp to human tragedy in just such dreadful fashion throughout its overstuffed running time. Though 2012's effects are no doubt impressive, the film never truly generates the impact of, say, Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005). Whatever that film's flaws, it did capture, in vivid terms, the sense of terror and dread as human civilization falls apart, and whole populations are displaced or destroyed. Here, ninety-nine percent of the human race dies horribly, and we're supposed to be soothed at the coda because one little girl is no longer wetting her bed.

Another cringe-worthy moment arrives relatively early in the film. Kate Curtis (Amanda Peet) and her new husband, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) argue in a grocery store. Right after Gordon states (out-of-the-blue, really...) that something "is pulling them apart," a fissure opens up between them on the ground...and literally pulls them apart. See? It's just...unnecessarily jokey.

The film also works against itself. 2012's central narrative conceit is that Jackson is an unabashed optimist and humanist. He believes that we stop being human the moment that "we stop helping each other." The last quarter of the film involves a pertinent question of morality aboard the ark, as Helmsley and the others must decide if they can take on additional passengers, even with a tsunami just fifteen minutes away and closing. This is an interesting take on human nature and our responsibility both to the species and our fellow man.

But, you know, 2012 doesn't walk the walk. At all. Why? There's a scene earlier, set in Las Vegas, during which Cusack's family and another family flee a packed airport and board a Russian jet filled with probably a dozen empty cars in the hold. It's obvious to anyone with eyes: the plane could house everybody in that airport if you dumped the cars. Not comfortably, perhaps. But adequately. But not once - not once -- does "Mr. Optimism" Curtis (or anyone in his group) think about saving his fellow man in this crisis. The Curtis family just flees the disaster and leaves everybody else to die in the earthquake. Don't tell me there's no time. Because there's no time to get those people aboard the ark in the finale, either, but Curtis and Helmsley still make the attempt in that situation. So the movie is inconsistent in approach and in the voicing of its theme.

Later in 2012, as people riot to board the parked ark, several rioters fall to their deaths off a high ledge. But Emmerich is more concerned with a pet dog walking a tight-rope to get back to its worried owner. Again, cheer for the dog! (And never you mind those human beings plummeting to their doom!). It's like the movie is schizophrenic. It has to pay the God of Generic Movie Blockbusters by offering bread and circuses -- and deaths by the hundreds -- but it also wants you to feel good about human beings. Yay us!

This is emotional manipulation pure and simple, and not good manipulation, either, since we see through the cynicism so easily. How is Emmerich's "disaster" approach different from Allen's canon? Well, in those older films, at least you felt sad when people died. Here, for the most part, the computerized victims (hanging on to perforated skyscrapers) are just pixels to be manipulated, and you don't, in general, feel so deep a sense of loss. Somehow, the destruction here -- while beautifully rendered -- feels a lot less human, a lot less personal.

2012 is the kind of movie that Hollywood does well, but that doesn't mean it is actually good. It features a lot of big names for marquee value, but the performances are all over the place in terms of tone. Danny Glover and Ejiofor grant the film some fleeting sense of dignity, while Woody Harrelson goes way over-the-top in a camp portrayal of a conspiracy theorist. Somewhere in the middle, between these approaches, is John Cusack...who showed up and read his lines.

2012 indeed hits all the notes we expect of the disaster film. Audiences get to vicariously experience something awful and wonder what they would do if facing the same crisis. We get to laugh and cry, and the special effects are amazing, but still 2012 doesn't manage to satisfy as a film. This is a movie about the end of the world; about the fact that there's nowhere to run, and half the time the movie just wants to play the circumstances for laughs.

Look at those two old ladies driving slowly through an earthquake! Look at the Tibetan priest handing over the keys to his pick-up truck and warning the driver about the "clutch!" Look at George Segal (our venerable movie-star elder) singing a song about the end of the world during his love boat routine with Blu Mankuma! The world is ending, but Emmerich wants to work in his shtick.

Blockbusters fail or succeed, I suppose, by trying to please everybody. All the demographics need to be satisfied. All the bases need to be covered. The irony is that by trying to satisfy everyone, by trying to cover everything, 2012 emerges a huge, inconsistent, manipulative mess.

Nice special effects, though.

CULT TV BLOGGING: V: "Welcome to the War"

ABC's re-imagined V returned with a new episode on Tuesday, after an hiatus of several months. When last I wrote about V here, I felt it was showing some signs of improvement after a diffident start. Following last night's show, Scott Rosenbaum's "Welcome to the War," however, I'm not so sure anymore. In other words, the series -- for all its admittedly interesting moments -- is still packed with infuriating contrivances and logical fallacies that more careful writers would avoid like the plague.

"Welcome to the War" (directed by Yves Simoneau) opens with an assassination attempt on Erica's life by the Visitor who was guarding the warehouse she blew up in previous episode. Erica, a mere human, successfully beats the alien warrior in brutal one-on-one combat with knives. We see a flash of the guard's reptilian skin here too, but once more, Erica doesn't think about dragging the alien's ass to the FBI labs, where her superiors can see that the Visitors are reptilian liars. Does she really distrust her superiors -- fellow humans and fellow Americans -- this much? That she wouldn't at least try to bring them in to the resistance?

Erica also doesn't even stop to photograph the alien body (of reptilian nature) so she can keep a record of the alien physiology/nature for herself (as exculpatory evidence in the event she is framed). Nope. It seems Erica is all about planning for the future...except when it actually comes to planning for the future. How about taking the corpse to a physician she trusts in the FBI and having a full autopsy and biological analysis run? So she can have a better understanding of her enemy?

Erica is quickly becoming a character I deeply, vehemently dislike. In this episode Erica projects a lot of swagger, but not much by way of brains. Her son, Tyler, is aboard the alien ship, and has told her himself that he will be home by dinner. Yet Erica nonetheless spends the entire episode in a rage, shouting "She's [Anna] got my son!" and threatening to kill (in her words) "the bitch." Yes, Anna has her son...for the moment. But is this character really that impulsive, that stupid, that she thinks she can raid the mother ship -- by herself -- and free her son from the technologically-advanced aliens? If so, she's the wrong woman to be leading a secret resistance, that's for sure. I get that the series is forging a "Battle of the Mothers" between Anna and Erica, but do the writers need to make Erica so unrelentingly dumb?

The contrivances really stack up in "Welcome to the War." The Visitors frame a man named Kyle Hobbes for the bombing of their warehouse (where their R6 compound was destroyed). They do so by creating a computer-generated image of the warehouse before the explosion, right down to Hobbes' fingerprints on the explosive device. This is indeed amazing futuristic technology, but no one in the F.B.I. seems to remember that extra-terrestrial, unexplained technology is not exactly admissible in our American legal system. No matter, these agents just take the aliens' word -- using never-before-seen, unexplained alien technology as their evidence -- without a second thought. If these guys actually caught Hobbes, he'd walk out of jail in a day because the evidence against him is alien malarkey, or at the very least untested in the legal system.

Realizing that Hobbes could be a valuable ally, Erica then sets off to find the mercenary/terrorist before the F.B.I does. Now remember, this Hobbes guy is an absolute master, a culprit whose name is listed on multiple "ten most wanted lists" according to Erica herself, and the F.B.I. has never been able to catch him. Well, amazingly, Erica apprehends Hobbes herself the very afternoon the Visitors frame him for the warehouse crime.

Sure, she got Hobbes' address from her turncoat partner's secret files, but this is still a huge contrivance. First, that Hobbes would still be living at an old address (it's been at least a few days since her partner died; and likely weeks since he was "observing" Hobbes). And second, that Hobbes would actually be there at the exact moment Erica showed up. And third, that he would be so easily apprehended. I mean, he's there all by himself. Does he "build armies" all by his lonesome? Not a soul to watch his back?

And again, V does something stupid. In Hobbes' hideout, we see that he has all the exits and entrances to his sanctuary scoped out on security cameras. This means, lest we forget, all that footage is being recorded. Well, when Erica spirits Hobbes away, the F.B.I. agents are already entering the building, meaning that they would see Erica and Hobbes on the security cameras exiting the premises (they don't), and furthermore, if they bothered to watch the recorded footage, they'd see Erica and Hobbes fleeing the building together; not to mention conspiring. None of that happens. I don't understand why you would even introduce security cameras into this scene if you didn't intend to follow through with the notion that, uh, the devices actually have a function and use, and the F.B.I. agents are smart enough to figure that out.

Pinpointing the logical fallacies in V episodes is still like shooting fish in a barrel. When the show isn't just being brazenly stupid, it settles for recycling lines from Jurassic Park ("Nature finds a way") and old X-Files plot-lines (the aliens are actually tagging humans, just like the Syndicate/aliens in Carter's series).

The best aspects of "Welcome to the War" all involve the Visitors. We learn from Anna that the Visitors do not attach emotions to memories the way that humans do. This is because, in her words, the aliens have been "designed" to be "efficient." This brings up some fascinating ideas: Designed by whom? Do the Visitors practice eugenics? I like that, finally, we are getting some development of the aliens. I still want to know more about their society and history, though.

Even more fun is Anna's sex scene with a strapping Visitor "volunteer" in the episode's last scene. This moment recalls the high camp of the original series. There, Diana was always bedding her underlings, and often depicted in the afterglow of a sexual romp. One of my favorite lines occurred while Diana was in bed with one of her men. "Peel you another goldfish?" She asked, in all seriousness.

Well, in the new V, there's no time for such silly species-specific small talk. Anna has sex with the poor guy, lays her eggs, and then leaves her partner behind as "nourishment" for her young. It's a pretty awesome scene (even if it ends with terrible CGI). And it shows just how merciless Anna is. Or maybe it's her nature as a lizard...we'll see.

My reservations about the new V continue to linger. The series needs to be smarter. Don't give Erica a George W. Bush-type, cowboy swagger, when she should be a clever chess player. Don't make the F.B.I unrealistically gullible (gee, let's take this alien video at face value and arrest someone...even if it won't stand up in our court system), and don't introduce unnecessary complications into scenes (like a building' security camera perimeter) if you don't know what to do with them.

Welcome to the War, V. Is this all you got?