This Word Does Not Go With This Word…
…so, paired together—comic gold! Mike Hale reviews the pilot of V in the Times:
Most of the episode’s time is spent introducing the small and hackneyed band of humans who will, however implausibly, be the key players in the coming battle.
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the same technique in The Great Gatsby, sparking delightful little mental shifts to process items that are grammatically correct but combined in violation of conventions for parallel construction:
[they had] drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.
Writing has to do interesting things word-by-word if the larger concept is going to fly, and after seeing the full pilot, I have to agree with Hale that V is done in
a cramped, underwritten style, content to fall back on prime-time formulas to get from one set piece to another.
