'V' recap: A Matter of Trust

And that was episode 2 of the new, rebooted V. We are now halfway through an initial pod of four episodes; if ABC deems the series worthy, we'll get another nine in March, after the conclusion of the Winter Olympics. Hence one more reason why I'm so hard on this promising show: by all accounts, the pressure's on these four installments to connect and impress in order to earn prolonged life. But what did you think? Did ''There Is No Normal Anymore'' earn a below average grade in your book — or did you feel it was superlative entertainment? And do you find yourself as obsessed about the Vs and speculating about their origins and true agenda? Here's my theory, which came to me while mowing the lawn last Saturday. Call it ''The Vicious Circle of Vendetta Hypothesis,'' and it goes like this:

All of V hinges on a time loop. Eventually, the humans will get the best of the Vs and take control of their spaceships and travel to the Vs' home planet to finish the fight on their turf — the idea/fear being that unless we conquer if not exterminate these barbaric lizards, they will continue to terrorize Earth. The twist is that the Vs' ships use wormholes to travel through space — and if you know your sci-fi (see: Contact; Star Trek), you know that wormholes are shortcuts through space and time. And so the humans will arrive on Planet V in the distant past, before the Vs ever got the idea of invading Earth. The humans will be conflicted. The leader — a beautiful, charismatic woman who radiates peace; i.e., Elizabeth Mitchell's character — will have an epiphany: Hey! We have an opportunity to change time! Instead of squashing these lizard-people, why don't we try to rehabilitate their culture and inspire them to become more peaceful lizard-people! But cynical, militaristic members in her leadership team will oppose her and execute a conspiracy to push forward with the warmongering. In the end, Planet V will repel Enemy Earth. And then — ironic trippy logic alert! — it will be the V's turn to think: Unless we take the fight back to Earth and conquer and subjugate them, they will continue to terrorize us! And then they travel to Earth via wormhole and arrive in our distant past, before Earth even knew of the Vs. A familiar epiphany fires in the mind of the Vs' beautiful, charismatic leader, i.e., Baccarin's Anna: Hey! We have an opportunity to change time! Instead of squashing these lizard-people, why don't we try to rehabilitate their culture and inspire them to become more peaceful lizard-people! And so the cycle begins anew...

(It all sounded really good in my head when I came up with it while mowing the lawn.)

Until next week! Now: Chatter!