Alias: Resurrection (3.22)

Alias' third season is its most divisive in the show's history, many believing it to be the show's death knell, others finding its awfulness was more than a little exaggerated. When I first watched it nearly ten years ago, I was more in the latter camp, believing it to be less interesting than its predecessors but still generally absorbing. Watching it again, I'm more inclined to say it was an elaborate misfire. Granted, those first two seasons were so above anything else in this genre, an irresistible blend of high-octane thrills and moving character-based drama, that any lesser season would be treated worse by mere association. But it can't disguise how muddled and annoying season three wound up being, an opinion not improved a whole lot with this confused finale.

Lauren was a real problem. She was intriguing before the Full Disclosure reveal and there were a couple of moments during her Sark-shagging hiatus that were really fun, but the writers never seemed to get a total handle on her character. Sometimes you got the impression that she was in way over her head and exhibited regret over how everything had turned out -- other times she was a cartoonish super-bitch sexually aroused by blood and innards. It was all a little disorienting, despite how much Melissa George tried to make the character work. Everybody seems to blame her for Lauren being such a wreck, but you could always tell that she was really trying to make every facet of the role somewhat believable, in spite of how frustrating it must have been for her as an actor.

Resurrection abandons most of the 'crazy family dynamic' material that made the prior stretch of episodes so absorbing, instead focusing deeper on Lauren's betrayal, Vaughn's rage and Sydney's anguish stuck right in the middle. The triangle was never particularly interesting, notably when the show removed any possibility of Lauren actually sticking around by making her an evil caricature, and I grew a little uncomfortable at all the bloody murder here. Yeah, Lauren is a villain, but it got a little much seeing her strung up from the ceiling, tortured, beaten, and pumped full of bullets. It's like the writers were saying, "See, we know you all hated her, so let's make her really suffer". Blah.

There's also a huge dose of crazy this week, those Mission: Impossible masks failing to work on even a trashy sci-fi level, as it's such a huge leap in technology for the show that it can only read as a little silly. Katya, too, is randomly evil this week, introduced and removed from the story with such relaxed ease that it's hard to discern if she was a Rambaldi acolyte after all, or just a directionless character. Even sillier is that last-minute cliffhanger. The show tries to offer one of those "bigger picture" twists, but the execution is so awkward (Lauren dropping vague ambiguity between kicks to the face) and the final scene so lacking in absolutely anything concrete that it only feels like another example of this season's writing staff making a lot of the story up as they went along.

It was evident all season, from the underwhelming downer that was the lost years arc, to Lauren's ever-shifting personality. The Covenant never went anywhere interesting and remained this anonymous presence lurking in the background, while the show never seemed to know whether to totally run with Rambaldi or retreat just before it got a little too complicated. Irina, too, has been a problem this year, kept around to satisfy our craving for a return from Lena Olin, only for Jack's recent string of behavior (particularly the way he here expresses regret over keeping her alive) to undermine their 'online communication' thing and general unity that seemed to be going somewhere before it was abruptly dropped.

Worst of all, Sydney became less interesting. There were times this season where I struggled to write a whole lot about her, as a lot of her depth was removed and replaced with weepy mourning over Vaughn. It was like she became Ally McBeal instead of remaining this complex protagonist with unparalleled strength, even in the face of personal anguish.

Gah. I had fun this year, and there were definitely a couple of stories that felt propulsive and like the Alias of old. But there was this noticeable decline in quality, too, something that made various episodes seem like any generic action drama on the air. And that's not what Alias is. At all. C

Credits
Guest stars Isabella Rossellini (Katya Derevko); Mia Maestro (Nadia Santos); Cotter Smith (Hank Foster)
Writer Jeff Pinkner Director Ken Olin