I heard the hype surrounding V for a while and decided to check it out. It seems that the current trend is to combine sci-fi with mystery and elements from police procedurals and dramas. While I can't say this is a new invention (X-files pretty much made the mold for this in the 90s) its obvious that the resurgence of this formula has moved it from the fringe of off hour programming to front in center in a networks line up. ABC in particular has decided to try and push their dominance in this space by fielding Lost, Flash Forward, and V within a very close time frame. Good strategy for ABC, and overall a big win for story and imagination over the onslaught of cookie cutter reality shows that other networks are nickle and diming their audience with. ...enough about the business side ... As series pilots go, I thought this one did a good job of using the arrival of the ships as a means to pull various characters into the story and weave them together. There's a good sense of momentum from this, but I have to say that I am getting incredibly tired of having so many shows feature law enforcement agents as a main characters. Its the easy way to give one of the characters an investigative procedural thread, and it makes dropping information to the audience easier, but I think there are other roles that need to start taking the place of mr or ms FBI agent who happen to be at the center or Flash Forward / V (in particular this is one reason why lost was so good in my opinion. No one has legal authority on the island so no need to force FBI agents into the story line. One thing that is set up really well is the role of the Vs as the lethal seducer. This is going to be a major thread in the show and based on the first episode it appears that we will have some interesting moral and loyalty conflicts coming up. I would say this is a very good sign for a series like this because it indicates that the writers have developed these characters deeply and that we are going to be digging deeper into them in the future. The concept of the Vs being dormant cells that have been here and infiltrated the human world is always a good one to play with, I just hope they can do it without being too direct about it. Killing the mystery too early is one of the worst things that happens in series like this and I think the sense of mystery and never quite knowing what is going on in the world is what made X-files and Lost so iconic. All in all this is a good start to a show that has the potential to be a suitable network sibling to Flash Forward after Lost is gone for good.