As season four comes to a close, it's probably the right time to ask what type of show Alias wants to be. Alias has obviously never been afraid of reinvention, both the events of Phase One and the two-year flash forward radically altering relationships between characters as well as the 'mission controls' they call home. But there comes a point where constant reinvention can only jeopardize the show's foundation itself, resulting in something potentially unrecognizable. Before the Flood is as big and as loud as any other Alias finale, but it's also smeared in overt blurring between sensibilities. Where does Resident Evil end and Alias begin?
There's something refreshingly cut-and-dry about Irina's return here, the show refusing to make her all shifty and suspicious, instead running with the idea of Irina as a doomed martyr -- a woman trying to do the right thing, in spite of the outcome always landing her in hot water. She has some fantastic scenes this week, her teary-eyed reunion with Nadia particularly moving, while Lena Olin once again arrives with this forceful, commanding presence. She's headstrong and tough, but also tender and vulnerable. It's an astoundingly assured performance, and everybody else seems to up their game by proxy of just having her around once more.
It always gets positioned as the thing that sort of killed Alias, the narrative barrel well and truly scraped, but I never found the Milo Rambaldi story particularly aggravating. The never-ending bluffs and double-bluffs that it inspired (looking at you, Arvin) were absolutely driven into the ground, but the idea itself was always so cool and intricate, like something out of Indiana Jones or one of those choose-your-own-adventure novels from when you were a kid. So there's naturally something rousing about characters hunting down a related component of it, be it the Hourglass, or the Il Dire or, as seen here, the Sphere of Life. Sure, most of it is just a means to an end, but when it's sparkly and fun, who are we to complain?
Alias is still capable of greatness, In Dreams being an emotionally-draining and ultimately rewarding episode for long-term fans, but it also drives home where the show has gone wrong over the last two seasons. With J.J. Abrams stepping down from day-to-day EP duties at the end of the show's second season, Alias lost its proverbial 'voice', the God figure controlling where the show went, how the characters would grow and evolve over time, and how the show itself would change. What's left is an Alias made up of random components, a narrative rendered fractured and frequently unsatisfying, and strong storytelling only ever buried between the mess forming elsewhere.
Back when Alias first began, the relationship between Sydney and Jack was one of its most important sources of conflict. The writing ensured that their estrangement was uncomfortable yet relatable, while the chemistry between Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber made sure that, in spite of Syd's outward hostility towards her dad, the two of them were always sort of crying out for a real bond once again. But like so many of Alias' major stories, it's a conflict that's become a little directionless over recent seasons, the writers bombarding us with ill-conceived plot twists or a general lack of interest when it comes to the character's actual emotions.
Alias season four was a victim of major scheduling changes, episodes aired out of order, the year front-loaded with standalone hours in an attempt to attract new eyeballs. I bring this up because it's easy to assume that A Clean Conscience is an episode intended for earlier in the season, forgotten about for months, and randomly dropped in at this point when somebody on the crew remembered it existed, it being a huge filler episode that feels entirely out-of-place considering the hours that came before it. Only it's actually not the victim of a switcheroo at all. While last week ended with Sloane beating a man to death in front of a horrified Nadia, an event crying out for some kind of follow-through, the incident is entirely overlooked here, APO all distracted by the same old stuff as always.
And things grow ever murkier. Alias has gone in this direction countless times over the years, so much that the words "Sloane's allegiances" are enough to break me out in hives. But we keep coming back, regardless of the plot holes or dropped storylines. There's a moment here in which one of Sloane's contacts brings up his short-lived venture as a globe-trotting philanthropist, and what that whole thing was supposed to be, whether his interest in genetic experimentation went anywhere interesting, and just what kind of game he's been playing. Sloane deflects the question, naturally, but it works well as a metaphor for the show itself, how the writers frequently bypass logic or continuity in pursuit of the story they want to tell at any given time.
Despite the plot twists and surprises that seem to make up so much of Alias as a series, it's rare to hit a point where everybody at home is constantly several steps behind the characters on the show. Whenever we've been put in that position before, it's usually because we're echoing the shock and surprise of the protagonists themselves. See Sydney and the Rambaldi manuscript in season one, and how we were supposed to mirror her own reaction, feeling just as taken aback as she was by the strange plot detour she'd encountered. But in Pandora we're repeatedly left flailing around in ambiguity, a whole bunch of scenes ending with characters being clued into something, or experiencing some grand epiphany, that we're all still in the dark about.
Alias has been many things over the years, but 1970s-style conspiracy thriller isn't one of them. Until now, anyway. Nightingale is more about the tease than anything else, events building to a variety of cliffhangers instead of anything concrete or defined, but it's an episode heavily reminiscent of espionage dramas of the past -- conflict created via characters going in over their heads, all the while unaware that people they know are secretly orchestrating their own dueling agendas. It's a different kind of episode, but one that feels welcome after a season of smaller, albeit entertaining, stories.
Tuesday is an episode split right down the middle, one half more pulpy and interesting than the other, the latter half casually fun but lacking in comparison to prior detours into Marshallville. It's also an incredibly popular episode, which makes sense on certain levels, but one that I've never had a huge affinity for. The first twenty-five minutes of the hour are almost unbearably tense, heavy on the Kill Bill riffs with Sydney getting buried alive while out in the field and contrivance ensuring that Marshall is the only APO spy able to rescue her. It's unsurprisingly exhausting to watch, capitalizing on a universal nightmare scenario (seriously, does anybody not consider premature burial a fate worse than anything else?) and featuring an uncomfortably helpless performance from Jennifer Garner... but the episode sputters out soon after.
The clashing between past and present is an important subject here, Nadia struggling to align the woman she is today with the girl she used to be, an issue already present for her throughout a lot of this season, but even more pronounced with the arrival of a crooked old flame. Alias has frequently driven home the similarities between Sydney and Nadia, but The Orphan exploits how their respective differences sent them briefly down vastly alternating paths. Both women spent years under the tutelage of organizations they believed to be heroic, only to discover they were being lied to all along. And while their backgrounds are in parallel, it's the shock revelations themselves that set both women apart.
Something that initially separated Alias from its contemporaries was its thematic interest in duality and double lives, Sydney flying around the world in the middle of all kinds of international espionage, before coming home and hanging out with her friends. Season four seems to be constantly returning to the show's old characteristics, that sense of normalcy having been excised from the show with the departure of Will and Francie, and The Road Home gets a lot of mileage out of dropping Jason Segel's clueless everyman into an environment of guns and hitmen and robotic helicopter weapons. It ought to work in theory, but the execution isn't great.
On the heels of the Sark/Anna return, here's another episode influenced by the Alias of old. As a series, Alias has always been heavily reliant on the same bag of tricks over and over again, be it familial complexity, double-crosses, secret agendas or prolonged scenes of characters breaking in and out of various international locations, but only recently has it felt like the writers have been looking more to the past to recreate the success stories of vintage Alias, instead of merely replicating old ideas because it feels at all authentic.
Running just thirty-eight minutes, and featuring a nearly three minute long "Previously on..." sequence, you'd be correct in thinking there was something a little long-winded about A Man of His Word. Where Echoes built over time, A Man of His Word feels like a slow stumble downhill, at least when it comes to events of great consequence. As it is, this is an episode that feels like greater fan-service than its predecessor, single-handedly built around a brief partnership between Sark and Anna, but lacking in the character-centric drama that last week's episode seemed to be building toward.
In some ways, Alias' recent detour to standalone city has only made episodes like this one a lot punchier. With Nadia in particular, the last seven episodes have slowly formed the groundwork of her relationship with Sydney, both as agents as well as sisters. Through Weiss, too, Nadia has become a more integral member of the Alias cast, somebody important enough to have her own love interest, along with all the screwy familial intrigue that truly makes you a legit part of the ensemble. Echoes is a neat reminder of the Alias of yesteryear, not only because it marks the return of two major antagonists from seasons past, but also because it seems to grant validation to much of this season's storytelling, things finally coming to a head just when everybody seems sort of happy.
Something that Alias has always bounced back to is that feeling of wanting something in spite of the complications it could bring. Think back to Sydney in early season one, desperate to reconcile with her absent father despite being outwardly hostile towards him. Then there was her relationship with Irina in the second season, mending fences and forging a bond regardless of the fact that it could potentially destroy her long-term. Even Vaughn last year, in love with his wife and sure of her innocence despite the growing evidence mounting against her. In Detente, it is Nadia who similarly experiences that want, growing close with her dad even in the face of a sister who tells her what a monster he is.
This is probably the right time to ask why Alias isn't sucking right now. Because there's something inherently funny about how standalone the show has become, each episode resolving with Sloane announcing that their latest mini-crisis has been steadily averted and that APO should never hear from these pesky villains again. Especially this week, with everybody looking on in glassy-eyed glee at the off-screen dismantling of the Nocturne project, the whole thing strains credibility to the highest degree. And yet Alias remains absorbing as a series, in spite of the plotholes and recent lightweight quality to everything on offer.
It's always interesting to spot when a freshman writer comes to a long-running series with merely a cool idea, regardless of it actually fitting into the show's sensibilities. This marks the Alias debut of Drew Goddard, a Buffy/Angel vet who has since gone on to a host of acclaimed genre features, from Cloverfield to The Cabin in the Woods, and he lands on this show with impressive ingenuity. True to form, this guy. He's clearly arrived with a bag of intriguing concepts, this one meshing together Cold War paranoia with picture-perfect suburbia intrigue, and while there's little in Welcome to Liberty Village that rises above 'cool' territory, it's a fun standalone episode nonetheless.
I'm a sucker for a tender moment played over a Mazzy Star track. It's only natural, right? Ice is pretty much built entirely around that wonderful scene towards the tail-end of the episode, Vaughn meeting in a bar with the enchanting Kelly MacDonald and comparing notes on guilt and retribution and how far they've both gone when inspired by other, more dangerous people. Both arrive with a ton of emotional baggage this week, Lauren on Vaughn's mind and his memory unsurprisingly tainted by all those feelings of bloody rage he experienced at the end of last season. MacDonald's Kiera MacLaine is in a similar boat, reduced to clandestine evilness by her shady mad scientist brother.
The Awful Truth represents the 'new' Alias: episodes driven by standalone missions, with some subtle character work as a backdrop to it all. It's disappointing in some ways, but feels somewhat more palatable considering this is the show's fourth season. If Alias premiered with episodes like this one, involving Sydney going undercover inside the home of a wife-killing arms dealer, then it would probably struggle to define itself as anything special or particularly innovative. But what saves the season's initial reliance on this format are the characters we know and love.
