Today was one of those solitary days when you don't talk to anyone and you don't care all that much. Because of all the little bits of beauty that were thrown into relief by the fact I actually did my maths work on the first day of the weekend rather than the second.

Isn't is great how mushrooms tan over a hob. Going from that slightly anaemic colour to brown and ready for eating. And the smell of them with bacon. I'm also a big fan of watching old movie stars interviewed. Watching those old Parkinson shows is fun, and today on the new show they had Lauren Bacall on, (along with Nigella Lawson and Lily Savage!). It's amazing how film stars seemed to know how to talk in the olden says. At 80, Bacall is still way more magnetic than a Zellweger or a Kidman being interviewed, (the person I'd really like to see interviewed is Naomi Watts, but I suppose I'll have to wait the couple of years til she becomes a superstar. Then there was my weekly swim, churning out those sixty lengths, getting deep into a thought that I find impossible anywhere else, because I'm doing something demanding, just not intellectually demanding.

And then there's Alias, and the delight both of a two-part episode, so I can watch it all fit tidily together, and Quentin Tarantino clearly improvising his sections of dialogue. Ladies and gentleman, I give you...

1.12 and 1.13- 'The Box'

I'm starting to develop an affection for the characters now; pretty much all of them, though particularly Sydney, (obviously), Sloane and Marshall, (also with degrees of obviousness). All of which effortlessly elevates the quality of the drama, for once you empathise with someone, torturing them with needles and making them cut off their fingers means that much more, even if it is inescapably campy as a plot-line.

-I like the conceit of Sydney having a collage of her mother, little sections pieced together, the whole forming the woman who she believed died in a car crash. The reason why this is elegant as an analogy is that the analogy holds on through to its logical conclusion. Now Sydney knows that her mother was a KGB agent, (knows? seems to know?!) she has to rearrange her memories like rearranging photographs, and see if she can get the pieces to fit together all other again.

-Will acts as Sydney's parallel in this episode, somewhat obviously, but neatly nonetheless. They both go through the process of finding something about their job that they can't cope with- in Sydney's case the idea that she might turn into her mother, in Wil's the simple scariness, the fear in David McNeill's eyes. Then, however, they are confronted by a situation where their help is required, and they do their professional (and extra-professional) duties to such effect that they decide to continue. Here we are made to think about whether either of the vocations, the journalist or the double agent, actually have a duty of philanthropy contained within them. Clearly a great journalist and a great double agent can save hundreds of lives. But is it the duty of someone as a journalist or a double agent to do just that? Or something that hopefully happens along the way?

-We have the annoying colleague of Vaughn, who is perfectly set up as the character a watcher wants to hate all the way through. He is deceitful but also believes he is better than our favourite CIA agent, and he's jostling for position with Devlin the boss. I always have a very strong temptation to make the sign of the cross every time I see him. But is he himself working for more than just the CIA?

-I enjoyed the fact that Emily McNeill, written as a genuine teenager, is played by someone who looks as if they could be in their teens, and hence has the accompanying insecurity. This storyline, like a branch of a tree shooting off downwards, is not directly connected with the heart of the show, and thus has licence to do a lot more than an average storyline. For that reason, I find it fascinating.

-It's also nice to see Dixon and Marshall doing something a bit different. Here, although they don't get the action hero role, they do at least emerge from the sobriquets of Faithful Sidekick and Lovable Geek, to do several jobs to distract Tarantino, [Cole, I mean Cole!] and his team.

-I also liked the little scene at the end where it becomes clear that Sydney had decided what to say to Sloane, (that she was going to stay on), before the chaos overcame SD-6. Her instincts run in front of the need to be taught a lesson by fate, which is always a good sign in a hero.

It appears we'll never find out, (although maybe I jump the gun), about the British SAS person, who apparently was SAS considering her happiness to go along with the idea of claiming she had only intercepted one of Vaughn and Sydney. It added an extra dimension to the necesarily, (since it's a two-parter) more complicated story, but then is not capitalised upon, which disappointed me.

And so to Tarantino. He's an interesting actor, I thought a little under-rated in 'Reservoir Dogs', and here he gets to inhabit himself really. I wonder whether, in hiring him, Abrams was in a sense pitting the extreme violence of Tarantino's movies themselves against the more thoughtful Network Television capped emotional drama of 'Alias'. Tarantino is clever enough to be in on the joke, and plays his character with the brilliantly entertaining and nastily distasteful glee appropriate to a man basically playing the centre of 'Die Hard'. Some of his lines are very much his: phrases like 'Sloane's tastefully minimalistic office' and 'showing her a mediocre romantic comedy' have a zing not usually evident in the rather earnest stylings of the Alias writers. Tarantino revels in his psychosis, though even he is a lackey for the mysterious The Man. Tarantino, like many men we see in such positions is both confused by the idea of a woman, and easily provoked into dangerously out of control anger. That he would shoot his own first officer because Sloane had got so under his skin is an odd and not entirely logical happening, useful for the show, but begging the question whether he wouldn't be more likely to shoot the cause of discomfort, Sloane himself. As it happens, Sloane, a hard, hard man, gets away with nineteen of his fingers and toes intact.

I enjoyed this one. Not ingenious, but good nonetheless.

TCH