Critic's Corner Tuesday: 'V' bows out quietly on ABC

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

"In like a lion, out like a lamb" doesn't just apply to March.

Take V (9 ET/PT), which roared onto ABC in 2009 as one of the season's most highly promoted series. Tonight, it quietly slips away with an early seasonal exit ? a victim of creative, marketing and scheduling mistakes that squandered all of its momentum and much of its appeal.

V's remaining fans will, at least, find an episode that's better plotted than last year's amusing but absurd season-ender. Big events do transpire, but if you were hoping they'd add up to a suitable series finale, in case one is needed, you're likely to be disappointed.

Still, the deeper problem with tonight's outing is one shared by the series as a whole: It's all construct and no character.

There's some camp fun to be had from the aliens, but the show's humans are like plastic pieces on a very expensive chessboard ? and while their movements may momentarily hold your interest, they themselves never do. Nothing they say surprises or delights, in the way that so many lines did on Lost and do on Fringe, and everything's said in the same end-of-days drone.

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