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.
Legacy is a routine breaking-and-entering episode brought to life by a series of fun character moments. Most of the cast have a singular goal here: to rescue Nadia, who is slowly being drained of Rambaldi information by a troubled Sloane. That story isn't hugely rewarding on its own, but does at least feature Sloane once again battling between his conscience and his heart. Nadia means so much to him, only he's still driven by his thirst for Rambaldi and all that that entails. In the end, he abandons further attempts to drain her, proving that there's still some emotional warmth there, even if it may sometimes be buried beneath elaborate myth-arc hooey.
It's funny that the show is once again returning to the ever-changing concept of family, a theme that brought the show to a whole different level in its first two seasons. Season three, up till this point, never really had a major overarching theme, instead a bunch of storylines drowned out in romantic tension and intentional vagueness. Here, with the arrival of Sydney's secret half-sister Nadia, we begin to see more of a mythology building, pulling in everybody from Vaughn's deceased father to Sloane and his wavering devotions. It goes without saying that the show seems to have a sense of direction once again.
There's something about putting Jack and Sloane together that brings out the best in character-driven drama on this show. Both characters have this elaborate history full of deceit and betrayal, and have recently been granted additional layers of intrigue with the revelation of Sloane's affair with Irina. It's still hard to entirely trust Sloane, despite his pleas of wanting to meet the daughter he never knew, but he seems to have a greater handle on Irina's powers of seduction, confronting Jack over how much she has affected him for the worse. But while it originally looks like Sloane is occupying the moral high ground (shocking, right?), it still winds up being Jack who holds all the cards, sending Sloane to his death only for it to be revealed as a lengthy ruse.
The only scene this week that bristles with vintage Alias intensity is the one in which Jack and Vaughn compare notes on their evil wives, Jack informing him of the warning signs, having experienced so much pain and turmoil as a result of Irina's betrayal all those years ago, and Vaughn steadfastly denying that Lauren could ever work for the enemy. It's a moment with real dramatic weight, instigated by a man who can't help but distrust those around him, spoken to another man far too naive. But it also brought home the obvious parallels between Lauren and Irina, something I embarrassingly hadn't really noticed up till now. Then again, Lauren is such an unintentional enigma, even this far into the season, that it's sort of understandable why the connection flew over my head.
Okay, Sydney needs to stop crying all over the place. This episode, more than any before it, is driven almost single-handedly by the season three love triangle, Lauren going to extreme measures to keep Vaughn in her pocket, something that leads Syd to once again weep silently in a fetal position on her couch. I get that this probably humanizes her. She's had a traumatic year filled with sudden life changes and the loss of her soulmate, but yeesh what's happened to her? Sydney was once this strong female action hero, somebody who turned her fiancee's bloody murder into the impetus to change the world and bring down a vast criminal organization. Now she's somebody incapable of standing upright without Vaughn motivating her first, every action guided by her lack of a love life. It's all a little embarrassing.
Dixon's transformation this year is one of those things I'm sure the writers were initially really excited for. What better way to grant Carl Lumbly greater importance on the show than by making his character head of Sydney's department? Dixon moves up in the world, a TV veteran like Lumbly gets a bigger role to play -- what could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, it's a decision that has so far resulted in saddling Dixon with a couple of lines of expository dialogue all season, turning a person who was at one point Sydney's closest secret agent ally into a less interesting version of Basil Exposition, lacking in any real personality and merely telling his underlings about the latest threat or a vague new device that shady groups want to get their hands on. It's incredibly disappointing.
Ugh. Isn't Ricky Gervais just the worst? I think a stapler to the testicles would be more of a laugh riot than spending thirty seconds in his company. And what's even more aggravating is that I have to be all objective and stuff and have to... you know... sort of admit that Gervais isn't... totally... terrible here. Like, he's actually kind of convincing. Which just freaks me out, but is something I need to admit if I aspire to be considered sort of legit as a writer. Facade is the very best standalone episode in a long while, an episode that catapults from fun moment to fun moment, utilizing most of the key players successfully and featuring various levels of unpredictability along the way.
Something that's been missing this season is a sense of characters living their own double lives. Alias' original premise was heavily rooted in Sydney existing in two forms: one mundane and normal, a girl-next-door college student; and the other full of action and bullets and extraordinary spy hijinks. Since Phase One, Sydney has been somewhat neutered as a character, now a sort-of-routine secret agent pursuing shady organizations. What Blowback does so well is actually bring the show back to that idea of double lives and dueling agendas, only it's no longer Sydney balancing both sides of herself -- it's Lauren.
As a character, Sydney is becoming far too reliant on Vaughn. Every one of her recent actions seems driven by him, and following the uneven resolution to the lost years arc, Sydney's main goal is seemingly trying to get back together with him. She tells him that she doesn't want to be "the other woman", but it's still all she ever talks about. The story is just another thing making Sydney a little less absorbing this season, especially as Vaughn isn't all that interesting. She's become more and more one-note, at least compared to how multi-dimensional she once was.
I think this is around the time that an in medias res opening begins to mean not that a shocking twist is right around the corner, but more that you're about to watch something assy. Crossings tries to explore the Sydney/Vaughn relationship and how it's changed this year, and I feel this is as good a time as any to talk a little about season three itself. While I haven't got a total downer on the show, there seems to be a real lack of direction this year, the Covenant arc remaining vague, Lauren's evilness so sudden that it becomes a little jarring, and characters changing dramatically or being killed off before they really do anything of note (Simon Walker, Allison Doren). The first two seasons were so tight in terms of narrative, and it's wildly different to season three, which feels a lot like a show made by committee and lacking in a connecting thread, especially with the lost years arc bottoming out like it did.
When a series has teased its audience for so long about the possibilities of a certain mystery, it's unsurprising that the audience at home builds up a greater explanation on their own than the one employed by the writers. I bring this up because Alias' big exposition episode, in which we finally discover what actually happened during Sydney's lost years, can't help but feel underwhelming considering all the ambiguity of the previous ten weeks. Surprisingly, I had no issue with Kendall being used as exposition fairy here, or that Sydney sits in open-mouthed shock for the far majority of the hour. The actual disappointment only arrives once we discover the truth, and we're left in open-mouthed shock at how half-baked it all is.
Of the numerous changes that have occurred this season, none has hurt the show more than the removal of Will and Francie. Certain fans may disagree, but their presence really supported the two distinct sides of Sydney Bristow. And while Francie barely featured last season up until she was killed and replaced by a clone, Will became the friend and confidante that Sydney desperately needed, particularly once he learned about her double life. It gave her somebody to open up to, somebody aware of her work life but distant enough to be a somewhat objective presence that she could seek advice from. With Will gone, Sydney has become a little less multi-dimensional, which is unfortunate. The writers have tried to replicate Will's role with Weiss this season, especially in those first couple of episodes, but they only come off as a little phony... Greg Grunberg unable to convey the sense of long-term friendship and tightness that came so easily to Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey.
With dream episodes, there's definitely a "been there, done that" familiarity most of the time. Every genre show does a dream episode at least once, and they usually rely on the same visual tricks over and over again. But what's unusual about these kinds of episodes is that they rarely get old, in spite of how generic the plotting usually is. Conscious is no different. While it utilizes the same devices, from split-screens to characters dressed in unusual outfits, it's hard to not get absorbed by Sydney's hallucinations, primarily because it latches onto that familiar dream scenario: you're chasing after something that you don't recognize, and your feet feel like their sinking in quicksand. Sydney keeps on running this week, bouncing between various locations, that illusive answer getting closer and closer.
This is the kind of episode that looks like one thing on the surface, only for it to actually be a lot deeper on closer inspection. Sydney spends the week locked in an NSC prison getting her brain sucked out, leading all of her CIA buddies to launch a rescue mission. Being Alias, what follows is a bunch of routine action sequences, mostly involving people running down corridors and shooting tranquilizers at each other. From that angle, Breaking Point becomes a little repetitive, Sydney only an active protagonist when she launches into various doomed escape attempts. But then, around the episode's midpoint, Breen Frazier's script becomes a little more layered and interesting, exploiting character dynamics over lobotomy thrills.
So far, Sydney's lost years have produced a mixed bag of results. The effort put into making most of the cast seem either blind or ludicrously moronic in regards to ambiguous hitwoman Julia Thorne has become majorly contrived at points, particularly when characters seemed to be going out of their way to not suggest that "Julia" could have been a code-name for Sydney during her trip to amnesia-ville. When the story has truly worked is when the writers have capitalized on the real horror of having your memory wiped, the idea of your body being out there and doing irrational things but you yourself not being in the driving seat. It's a terrifying idea, explored here through hazy visions and body-horror nightmares, and it finally feels like this arc is building to something screwy.
Sydney has become a lot more ruthless this season. While she's still friendly and unassuming most of the time, there's a real mean streak to the character this year, particularly when it comes to Sloane, who she has been assigned to handle. In an elaborate game of payback, she's happy to pump him for information and use his contacts, all the while having no problem in pushing him so far that he could end up dead. It's actually really similar to something her father would do, Jack another character who is generally kind and protective, but also somebody fully prepared to become a dangerous killer if the circumstances call for it.
Repercussions works like a reminder of how strong Alias can be. After an opening stretch that felt more 'off' than 'on', it's almost like the writers finally stood up and wanted to prove something: "See, we're still here -- doing our thing". There's too much to love this week, Jesse Alexander's script rapidly spinning through subplots and stories that grant every cast member something crazily fun to do, working like a kind of assault of awesome as the Covenant arc heads into some intriguing new directions that grant an anonymous force of evil an actual face and agenda.
This is the most successful episode in season three thus far, primarily because Sydney is an active participant in the story. That probably sounds a little strange, considering she's still front-and-center of the series, but the lost years arc has so far positioned her as something of a blank slate, drifting around to various clues and trying to piece things together. But A Missing Link drops her straight into her past, forcing her to slip undercover as 'Julia', the identity she assumed during her missing years. The story forces Sydney to 'own' her amnesia, and not merely be a victim of it, and with her character resorting to drastic measures to keep her alias intact, it feels like the most purposeful episode in a while.
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.
