By Dean Robbins
Plan 9/11 from outer space
Suspicious-looking aliens come to Earth in ABC’s remake of the 1980s series “V” (Tuesday, 7 p.m.). They resemble humans and claim to have peaceful intentions and their leader announces that her race doesn’t believe in negative feelings.
Some Earthlings jump right on the alien bandwagon, regarding them as a boon to humanity. Others don’t, especially when normal-looking people are found to have green reptilian scales underneath their skin.
Perhaps defensive about its 25-year-old concept, “V” strains to be relevant to 2009. It explicitly connects the alien invasion to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and suggests that recent crises (the Iraq War, the economic meltdown) were plotted by politicians with scales just below skin level.
I don’t want to come down too hard on “V,” because I did enjoy the pilot. And besides, I don’t believe in negative feelings.CV
‘The Cleveland Show’
Sunday, 7:30 p.m. (Fox)
“The Simpsons” and “South Park” show how effective sick humor can be in the hands of comic geniuses. “The Cleveland Show,” an animated spinoff of “Family Guy,” shows how ineffective sick humor can be when non-geniuses get hold of it.
Cleveland, the black “Family Guy” sidekick with a nasal monotone, starts a new life with his old flame in Virginia. Because creator Seth McFarlane is incapable of shocking us with brilliant satire, he tries to shock us with grotesquerie.
These jokes weren’t funny when that twisted 12-year-old nerd told them on your sixth-grade playground. Now imagine that the twisted 12-year-old nerd grew up and got his own primetime TV series. CV
