After a couple of weeks of meandering around, Alias kicks back into high gear with A Dark Turn, a richly-drawn episode all about the complexities of trust, and how it can be bent and manipulated at will. Irina's been fun locked in a cage for so long, but pulling her out and placing her in the field was an inspired decision. Like early season two, this episode hinges on Irina's ambiguity, pulling Jack deeper and deeper into her way of thinking, before a last minute bait-and-switch leaves everybody stranded and left to ponder what the hell just happened.
One of the unexpected side effects of Phase One has been Sloane's reinvention as something of a James Bond villain, somebody so driven by his obsession with Rambaldi and at total ease with mass carnage that he now more or less resembles a complete monster. But I'm finding it all a little difficult to enjoy. In the early days of Alias, Sloane was given a surprisingly small amount to do. He launched the missions, and we were told by other characters how duplicitous and scheming he was. Then he began to grow as an antagonist, humanized by the arrival of his dying wife, and later given additional shading with the revelations about Emily's survival and Sloane's elaborate plot to keep her safe. But with Emily gone for weeks, a lot of that shading has been diminished, leaving Sloane this arch criminal mastermind, and it's hard to swallow.
After last week's false start, this is Alias pushing forward with its new identity. A Free Agent instantly re-positions the ensemble cast, Sydney and Vaughn now partners both out in the field and between the sheets, Sloane the globe-trotting villain bouncing from scheme to scheme, Sark his lackey and Francie a clone. I can't help but feel the show has lost a little something in this restructuring, notably how Syd's strength has been diminished slightly by having a dude tag along with her on missions, but it's neat seeing Alias move forward, regardless of the sometimes awkward returns. One major distinction involves Sydney and Sloane being outwardly hostile towards each other for a change, both now so removed from their false identities that they can be as volatile as they'd like. It's something new.
Double Agent is an episode built entirely around Ethan Hawke. As a result, it feels strangely detached from what we know of Alias as a show, and isn't the most auspicious beginning to the post-SD-6 landscape. Barely any of the regulars appear, and there's an uneasy balancing act between real-world espionage horror and the goofier aspects of the cloning thing that popped up at the end of last week's episode. Here the fun gravitates from not knowing which Ethan Hawke is which; both Ethan's claiming to be the 'real' Ethan and one Ethan being a mad scientist (*gah*), but there's a sort of generic quality to most of this, lacking in normal Alias intensity. Which is unfortunate.
We've come to expect certain things from television. A series' basic premise will remain intact for several seasons. An endgame couple will experience numerous false starts before they finally get together. Token black friends will stay on the periphery of things, never doing anything of consequence. A heroic victory usually means the end for key villains. All of that is more or less true... and then there's Phase One. This is an episode that rapidly undoes everything we thought we knew about Alias, tearing down the series' narrative conventions with an unexpected explosion of surprises. Alias was always a show that seemed to have a handle on where it was going, but Phase One is that rare episode that switches things up to such an extent that you're left breathless and completely unsure of where they're going to go from here, more so than ever before.
"Goodness exists, all around. It's just sleeping." That's all well in theory, and probably correct if you really think about it, but Enlightened's season finale should throw an addendum onto the end of that line. Since goodness isn't so much 'sleeping', but more in a 'decade-long coma', at least within the walls of Abaddonn. Burn It Down follows a similar trajectory to much of this magical first year, with Amy bouncing through life with keen enthusiasm, only for a last-minute plot twist to expose how bad everything really is. What it lacks in narrative surprise it makes up for in thematic resonance: the importance of fighting for something, since real change can never occur just from being nice to people.
It's a strange complaint to suggest that there's almost too much story here, particularly when new series usually take a while to figure out the right ways to pace an arc. But Hunted is the kind of show desperately crying out for a moment of peace. Granted, you can understand why Frank Spotnitz would feel the need to burn through so much of his plot considering the season only consists of eight episodes, but there comes a point where things really ought to slow down a little. If we've learned anything from the past four episodes, it's that this show is at its best when things are a little quieter -- like the silent moments of relentless training in Mort, or that scene in Hourglass with Sam resting her head against the wall that I (appropriately?) went gaga over. While Hunted has slipped into a direction that is never exactly dull, it's so locked on full-speed drama right now that it's easy to get lost in the wilderness.
So much of senior year is about those goodbyes. Every time you do something fun, or if you had an especially great day, you get that nagging feeling of "hey, that could have been the last time I'll ever do that". It hits you like a freight train, that sense that everything you hold closest to you at that moment in time is soon going to be ruptured. That you can't just go to school the next day and see everybody again, that the sense of community you'd always had with your friends and family is all about to be thrown apart, and that you'll soon wind up pushed into a whole different environment where everybody's a stranger. Coda is all about that last night, and those awkward goodbyes that you try and stretch out for as long as possible, trying so hard to delay the inevitable.
