Alias: Reunion (3.3)

Doesn't everybody hate Melissa George? It sure seems that way, folks rolling their eyes and yelling "boo, it's Melissa George!" whenever she pops up on a TV show somewhere. Me? I actually think she's really, ridiculously great (okay, maybe not on Hunted) -- but I can understand where the hate comes from, considering she first truly came into the public's consciousness playing a role that was doomed from the very beginning. On Alias, she has the misfortune of playing 'the other woman', the third wheel intruding on Sydney and Vaughn's epic love story, lingering around on the fringes of the show like some manipulative homewrecker. She's also been saddled with this wonky 'international' accent that is so often confused with a 'bad Australian actress can't do an American accent' accent, which only gives extra credence to those who can't stand her. In short, poor Melissa George.

What sucks is that it's sort of hard to like Lauren at all, even removed from the whole 'love triangle' thing. Her very first scene is confrontational and aggressive, she and Syd literally screaming over each other as they argue over how to best handle Sark. It's entirely unprofessional. Then again, Sydney herself isn't coming off so great in this story, either. While it's understandable that she's devastated over Vaughn's new marriage, she seems intent on yelling at everybody until they bend to her rule, while she doesn't seem to recognize that Vaughn believed she was dead for two whole years, and that he couldn't have been expected to stay celibate for the rest of his life or whatever. In short, it's a ton of girly whininess that feels jarring for a show that was at one point aggressively feminist.

I liked the quieter moments between the two of them, as well as Sydney and Vaughn's romantic slow-motion looks of mutual appreciation during their nudity-filled mission to Moscow. But the story itself just feels so damn obvious. It's an inevitability that another woman would momentarily break up the show's 'endgame couple', and it's so generic for both women to hate each other, while the man sits around begging both of them to give the other a chance. Grr. Those neurotic, unpredictable women and their seething jealousies! Time of the month, ladies? Those crazy chicks! Reeeer, catfight! Snore.

Reunion disappointingly isn't that great anywhere else, either. The writers are still getting mileage out of the Lazarey murder surveillance footage, this week Marshall slowly picking up an image of the killer in question, pixels coming together piece by piece. It's a traditional potboiler story, only made unintentionally hilarious by the fact that the blurry woman is so obviously Sydney Bristow in a blonde wig. It's all kinds of silly.

Elsewhere, the mission of the week involves Sydney and Vaughn trying to stop the purchase of a satellite-destroying device that is about to fall into the hands of Mr. Sark. There are fun moments, notably a child-in-peril stand-off in Mexico City, but it doesn't disguise the fact that this is major Alias filler material, every element of the story (Sark being dastardly, shady technology, gala infiltration, Sloane snidely-ness) having been used before to far greater effect.

I came into season three determined to keep positive and not ride the obvious wave of complaining, but it's hard not to recognize how underwhelming every episode has been so far. The show remains pretty cool and tightly-performed, but the writers are playing way too safe at this point in time, making Alias itself a better-than-ordinary, but still pretty derivative, action TV show. Boo. C

Credits
Guest stars Mark Ivanir (Boris Oransky); Scott Adsit (Pierre Lagravenese)
Writer Jeff Pinkner Director Jack Bender