Hello.

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not so unvisual a person that I never notice icons at all, ever. This misconception arises because I am a) too lazy to do my own and b) too disinterested to ask for them from other people and c) I never comment on anyone else's because I'm nasty and inconsiderate. However, it has to be said that I have noticed Rah's way cool Alias icon, and I have been interested about it from day one, (Jack Agamemnon? They barely even talk!) But there were a couple of cool bits in this episode which set up the parallel, even if they don't go as far in explaining it as perhaps the show does later on, (here I'm mindful of my jumping on the Connor as Oedipus bandwagon as early as 'A New World').

1.10- 'Spirit'

Also, both these episodes have that intangible creator's spirit. Abrams cuts loose with a few character moments in this episode in particular which you almost feel he didn't trust to the other writers. The other angle of it is that, in letting your characters free to your group of writers, it is only a marginal, conditional release in network television. You can take them back and develop your core ideas about them a few times a Season, and the licence you take with extending their backstory is liable to be bigger than someone else, crayoning all over your Raphael, is liable to get away with.

Hence witness, for example:

-The Santa Claus speech. Here the creator melds out of the character's deep past a recollection that just chimed with her at the moment that much further down the line. It's reminiscent of the much-discussed, still dichotomising Yellow Crayon speech in 'Grave'. When we stretch back into a character's past, does the child we meet there greet us with an unwarranted sentimentality for a later, less pleasant person? In bad writing this is the case. However in neither of these cases do I think the show's creator mine merely for cheap sentiment. Whedon, (infilling for David Fury), arcs out, in as simple terms as possible, (this is Xander talking), the change that his best friend has undergone. Meanwhile in Abram's series, he uses a sub-conscious flash of a moment- a trigger like the madeleine in the herbal tea for Combray- to explain to Sydney quite why she was instinctively sure that her father was lying. It's a sad Connorian moment, (since Oedipus and Electra are so carelessly inter-twined), that her first significant memory of her childhood in the series is her father repeatedly lying to her with such assurance. That the reason he's doing it is part of society's own culture of lying to its children is sobering; what are we supposed to think about how Western culture cushions its progeny into unrealistic expectations of how life is to proceed? Or are these lies, these stories with shards of truth, part of the essential human need to narrativise, and do they continue profitably into adulthood? If one thing is for sure, it's that Sydney and Jack's work would be impossible without a need to construct stories. And that's what makes the life of the spy so perenially delightful for writers.

[You know how you sometimes write a paragraph with a stated aim in mind, and you end up in a place you never envisioned? The above was one of those times. Cool though.]

-To parallel with Sydney's childhood disillusion waiting to happen, we have a very well-acted scene between Sloane and Bristow, J, where Sloane recounts his feeling of walking down the White House steps as a CIA agent, feeling that life was good, and then suddenly sensing a darkness to come. When anything goes wrong, he tells himself, he contents himself with the fact that he knew it was going to all along. This is a more complicated, philosophical thought than it may initially seem? Is it fatalism, (in the original, not negatively-connotated sense)? Is it a fear of his own limitations, his own failure to live up to some Ideal version of himself, an admission of spirituality? Or something else; a genuine prophecy received in a world where Rambaldi apparently knows what is to come, (cf Donnati)? All interesting thoughts. To claim you saw the bad time in your past is to instil the traumas you go through with a feeling of self-control, that they were pre-destined and hence, in the scary logic that fascists sometimes use, that you pre-destined them. It's interesting the resonances that come from Sloane walking up to the Jefferson memorial. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence: the important man behind Washington, who gets the iconic founder badge. Jefferson who withdrew to an elevated house to 'contemplate the world'. Does Sloane believe in himself idly meditating on what his minions are fated to do, himself free from harm in his own elevated plane, writing rules of his department that stand in stone? Much remains to be revealed.

-The death of Russock brings interest both to Jack's character initially, and later, drifting into the next episode, to Sydney's where she admits that in the same situation, she too would have done anything she could to save her Father. Everything else just drops away, she claims. The idea that the morality of killing people does not impede humanity at all from seeking protection of its loved ones worries me a little. Not that protection of family isn't a primal human instinct, but I think this idea that it runs deeper than the desire not to kill other humanity is actually counter-intuitive and false. Of course, in this whole scene I may be looking into a well I expect to be deep, only to find it has been crafted to look bottomless, but a dip of the hand will reveal dull, featureless stone inches below the surface of the water.

Also ne pas ultra cool:

-The spinny, spinny camera moves at the beginning. I would say resembling Altman on drugs, but I have an inkling that would be a naive formulation considering Altman's habits on many of his films. We're quickly set up with the idea of a daze- that the mole has upset people's constant view of life, the stars by which they, Javert-like, hold their belief in order. The fact that Sydney, our main character, has done such a thing is a good sign for Abrams, since it means that the central character is the source of the conflict of the drama, which is as it should be.

-Will reaches the name of SD-6, (which everyone was too polite to stop me from calling SP6 earlier this week. Apologies!) What's in a name? Enough, it appears, to strike fear and desertion into the hearts of criminals and false leads. Wil knows he's on to something, but will his so far lonely plot-furrow yield him a harvest where his problems tie into Sydney's professional duties? If so, there could be quite a deliciously complex climax at some point in the future.

-Father and daughter keep being brought together in this episode, despite suggestions to the contrary as Vaughn reveals his hidden motives. We see them on a mission together for the first time, but it's ironic that an episode where they keep being obsessively thought of in the same breath should leave them in such an oppositional position, with Jack toting the gun at his daughter.

-The Vaughn strand's use in this episode is really interesting. First, we see him give Syd the picture frame. Then it slowly becomes clear that he's to be a catalyst for Syd finding more out about her father, for ultimately, it appears on the surface, turning hium in as a KGB agent. Then we get the scene where Vaughn's picture frame urges Syd to find her photographs of her mother and father. The frame is metaphorically doing the same job as its buyer. Then, for a second we see Electra surface, as she pushes her picture with her mother into the dark, forbidding foreground, while she concentrates on one with her father. But this in turn nudges the Santa Claus recollection I started with out of her. Vaughn has played his part in, not in the strictest sense of the word, admittedly, framing Jack.

Good stuff. Next one's not quite so great, but has the big reveal at the CIA closing out the fourth act.

1.11- 'The Confession'

By this stage, titles themselves are becoming misleads. Deep in the fibre of this show, in the marrow of its bones, is the idea of deception; deceiving others and self confusion. Because of this, the titles of the episodes sometimes reflect the show's bluff and double-bluff tendencies. The confessions we expect to here are not the ones we get, almost to a fault. It's the only television show I remember where the title of the episode itself is a beginning point for bartering. This isn't a meditation on confession, it's a free association starting from the simplistic idea and building up and out.

-The spire, the peak of this mountain climb is reached at the end of the episode. Jack does make a confession, and it is in front of senior CIA members as well as Vaughn and Syd. But it is not a confession of his own guilt, but his wife's. This calls into question the very nature of self-hood, and how much a lover, a spouse disappeared, died, departed, can leave you with a responsibility for their past actions. Does Sydney suspect in some way, that her own of Vaughn's condemnation of the actions of the agent who killed the CIA agent was dealt poetic justice by their discovery that the culprit is already dead? In that case, can we see Vaughn as Orestes to Syd's Electra, wishing death on the never-even-personified Clytemnestra, and shocked once their wish, mistakenly aimed at the innocent Agamemnon, is rewarded by the fates? This is Greek tragedy. Whether the themes deepen and don't need such long-winded hypothesis in future is a matter for the writers.

Before that, we have some entertainment along the way, pausing for the Kitkats of nourishment contained herein:

-The interesting scene where Jack and Sydney argue, about why Sydney wasn't told by Jack of the nature of SD-6 earlier, foreshadows the eventual pay-off. As it has always occurred so far, Jack has a good reason for his relationship with Sydney and the information he wishes to leave out or keep in. Here again, Jack could not expose SD-6 as in opposition to the CIA without explaining his own position to her, or making her think that he was wilfully doing evil against the state.

-Loved the use of 'Someone to watch over me' in the Wil/Sydney scene here. There is so much Guardian Angel type stuff going in throughout the missions, with radio lines to powers who will sort information out for you, (note Vaughn in particular doing a wonderful job as Syd gets covered in gasoline), that this choice, particularly used at a non-obvious moment, is particularly appropriate.

-The very gentle revelation that Jack was in fact unhappy that Sydney became an agent: 'It turned my stomach that you were in this business'. I loved this moment; a parallel to the Baptism into blood scene in 'The Godfather', (my, if that film doesn't stay with ya), and also the little character in the anime in the first part of 'Kill Bill', similarly brought into the business of brutality. In this case, it's more deceit and deception that Jack doesn't want for Sydney.

-There's also a thankfully subtle, not over-wrought comparison to Vaughn as the dutiful boyfriend outing the corrupt father-in-law, the Good Boyfriend Bad Father idea that is the opposite of Angel and Giles in their second Season. This was left simmering under the surface, where it belonged.

-The monkey thing from Marshall? Just aimless fun, or are we supposed to think of how much we really have developed from simian creatures fighting over bananas?

-Fleeting use of pi; like giving candy to a baby, always going to end well in my world. Particularly when the Natural Ratio turns out to be false!

-Sydney is starting to pursue things that have angered her, and this is a disconcerting trend. Just because she's aware of something someone has annoyed her by doing, doesn't mean that she need make a particular cause her Moby Dick. I watch this development with anxiety.

Two really good episodes. Amazing what some fairy dust from your Series Creator can do to your enthusiasm, even past 2am...

TCH- following the instruction that 'Tiredness Kills, Take A Break'.