It’s been a while since I last checked in with ‘V’ here in the blog. There’s a reason for that. Frankly, I often find myself wondering why I continue to watch the show. It’s not very good. Nonetheless, I’m in a rut where I feel like, since I’ve already watched it this far, I might as well just see it through. (There’s no way this thing is getting renewed for another season after this one.) So, let’s use this opportunity to take a look at where the series is at these days.

A lot has happened in Season 2, and most of it’s been very badly written. In recent weeks, Erica (Elizabeth Mitchell) reconnected with her ex husband, only to watch him get killed off via an incredibly contrived chain of events that made no logical sense at all. Her annoying teenage son Tyler blames her for his father’s death (he’s right), and has run off to live on the V mothership.

Oded Fehr was on the show for a little while as a former Mossad agent named Eli Cohn, who led the human resistance movement (which calls itself the Fifth Column, even though that was the name of the alien resistance movement, and there don’t seem to be any aliens in this Fifth Column). His primary form of attack was to use suicide bombers (an odd tactic for an Israeli to approve of). Erica objected to his methods, but now that he’s been killed off, she’s in a position to take over his organization.

In this week’s episode, ‘Birth Pangs’, Tyler has joined a V shuttlecraft pilot training program, making him the first human to do so. This means that he needs to get a buzz cut, which somehow makes him look even douchier than the boy-band hairdo he sported earlier. V queen Anna (Morena Baccarin) has big plans to use him as the lynchpin in her lizard-human mating program, but for some reason his body’s not accepting all the phosphorous they’re pumping into it. She uses Tyler’s training as a convenient excuse to keep him busy while she brings in a backup stud named Rafael. She then orders her hottie daughter Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) to immediately begin copulating with Rafael. But Lisa’s developed human feelings. She’s actually in love with Tyler and can’t bring herself to cheat on him.

Anna has begun to suspect that her daughter is working against her. She revived turncoat doctor Joshua from the dead and purged all of his memories. Now, she’s ordered him to pretend that his memories are coming back, in an attempt to trick Lisa into revealing her plans. While Lisa isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, she’s smart enough not to fall for that. She pretends that she has no idea what Joshua is talking about.

Meanwhile, Lisa stumbles upon the secret dungeon where Anna has imprisoned her own mother, Diana (original ’80s ‘V’ star Jane Badler). Lisa’s been sneaking in for secret meetings with grandma, who encourages her rebellion and her embrace of human emotions. Badler is a good addition to the cast, but she’s been given basically nothing to do so far.

Lisa’s refusal to sleep with Rafael leads to a bitch-slapping match between her and Anna that’s kind of hot, really. Anna at first chalks up Lisa’s actions to her queenly aggression instincts rearing up, but also has a backup queen egg that she pulls out of storage and instructs Joshua to hatch as Lisa’s replacement.

Ryan (Morris Chestnut) turned traitor against the humans after Anna kidnapped his ugly baby. Somehow, the queen egg is hatched inside the baby or something, which causes the baby to age rapidly. (This isn’t explained well at all.) I sense a revival of the sparkly “Star Child” crap that ruined the old ‘V’ series.

The last we saw Ryan, he was tied to a chair in a building that blew up. Yet somehow he’s back in this episode, with only a few minor cuts and bruises on his face. He approaches Father Jack and begs him for a second chance.

Erica is officially on bereavement leave from the FBI. She uses the time to take a trip to Bangkok (which amazingly looks just like the Los Angeles Chinatown) with Hobbes to secure her leadership of Cohn’s army. Since her husband’s death, Erica has taken a dark turn. You can tell because she wears designer sunglasses all the time, which is a sure sign that she’s now a badass.

The Fifth Column people are skeptical of Erica’s leadership, and demand that she prove herself to them. Since they’re already in Asia, Erica and Hobbes follow a tip about the doctor who experimented on her when she was pregnant with Tyler. They hop over to Hong Kong (which also looks just like the Los Angeles Chinatown) on the woman’s trail, break into her high rise apartment, confirm that she’s a V, and attempt to interrogate her. The doctor outwits them by jumping off the balcony and taking a suicide pill that makes her incinerate in mid-air. However, Hobbes busts into her safe and finds a hologram file and a crazy pill filled with nanobots. They send the data to science boy Sidney (Bret Harrison, who hasn’t been given anything interesting to do at all since joining the cast). Sidney determines that the Vs have been stealing human DNA to fast-track their own evolution. (I suppose that would address my earlier complaint about why the alien lizard people would want to have monkey sex with our species.) Erica gives this information to the Fifth Column, and it impresses them enough that they formally make her their new leader.

The other thing Erica learns is that, in addition to Tyler, Anna has 28 other potential candidates lined up to mate with Lisa (or the new queen baby, I suppose).

Whereas alien Lisa is just starting to explore her human emotions, Tyler has suppressed his in order to devote his energies to the pilot training (which is never actually shown, because that might require decent VFX that the show can’t afford). He essentially brushes Lisa off. When she goes running to tell this to granny, Diana gives her a hug.

By the standards of this show, ‘Birth Pangs’ is a decent enough episode. It’s certainly a big improvement over the previous week, which was thoroughly inane on a lot of levels. Even so, the series is cheesy and dumb, and I’m getting really bored with it. Will I continue watching? Sadly, I probably will. We’ve been promised an appearance by Marc Singer in the season finale, and I can’t miss that.