Not only am I back, but on a short walk I took this evening, I was sure, for a couple of unthinking seconds, that the trees had buds on. It turned out that, accidentally spotlit and virtually bare, the few remaining, rumbled leaves seemed to celebrate birth, rather than testifying to death. This is exactly the problem that Jack has in these two episodes. Sometimes, what we think are answers are in fact questions, what we think are questions are in fact answers. Beginnings ends, and ends beginnings. I've also admired order two elements in group theory; elements which are self-inverse, so that if you compose it with itself you're left with nothing but the identity.
So without further ado:
What's it called?
2.16- 'Firebomb'
What happens?
Well, I'm no good at plots, so you'll have to bear with me. As an approximation, Sloane makes progress with his Doomsday device, that he was getting Christian Slater to make. Once made, it has the ability to microwave areas, thereby frying organic objects while leaving non-organic things untouched. He gives it away though for another piece of the jigsaw in the eternal secrets of Rambaldi.
Have you just made the episode All About Sloane again?
Yes, but that's my perspective on the show. You'll have to excuse me; I'm an evil genius who has mor elayers than people think at heart, so I empathise with The Weasel.
So what else happens?
Umm, who cares? I mean, Francie's talking to Sark again, having apparently bugged Syd's apartment, though everyone's oblivious. (And no, I realise it's not the really, real Francie, unless the really, real Francie had a fake Francie killed, which would be a really real clever twist).
What news of Rambaldi?
A lot more than we have any right to expect at this point in the Season, where much of the Rambaldi motivation seemed to be sidelined. This Doomsday device has interesting undercurrents of Sloane as The Devil Himself. People are shown going up in flames in a Church, and the whole thing has a deliberate infernal/inferno pun going on somewhere. But even the neutron bomb type thing is not what Sloane really wants.
What does he really want?
The genius' ultimate message, which he gets by extorting some random Afghan sheikh. I like the way that Sloane is portrayed as the perfect gentleman here, giving lavish gifts and doing polite deals. The malevolence inside is wonderful to behold.
Enough of The Weasel, what about Funny Marshall?
Funny Marshall manages to meet a few interesting people here. Maybe the most fun scene of all though is with his old associate Jack, to whom he says 'A please would be nice'. He obviously hasn't been paying attention for the last few years. Marshall has no taste in cars- he wants to do up a Ford Focus. I wish that just because he was a geek, he didn't have to have such condescendingly bad taste in everything according to the writers. People who are geeky can like expensive red wine too, you know.
OK, you're boring on other characters. Spout some more irrelevances about Sloane
Sloane this episode gets the priceless line; "I am a man with no country". It's odd that an assertion I would usually find strangely uplifting is made to seem so unpleasant here. Sloane's lack of belonging is chosen, not inflicted as an outcast, and comes about due to his inability to tell the truth to anything- not the American flag, not his best friends, not his wife. I'm a long way from Jack's delcaration of himself in the next episode as an 'unsentimental patriot', and Sloane also seems to have slipped from Jack's characterisation of him in the late 70's.
Stop babbling
That's what I'm here for.
Oh. So what questions does this episode raise?
Lots. For example, when exactly did Bad Francie replace Good Francie? Need we assume the simple suggestion that an entirely innocent girl died at the end of 'Phase One', and the new model is merely an intruder? Francie exploits Syd's guilt nicely in this episode, with the key in the lock phrase 'We used to be really good friends.' Some day, she might spill. In the mean time, it looks like Will's the one having stuff extracted from him.
How? And was that a sexual metaphor?
See the next episode. And no. And one question at a time.
More importantly, Dixon?
He remains stoic here that he's not going to join Sydney back in the fold no matter how many informal approaches she makes. He won't do it to catch Sloane or to save innocent lives. All he will do it for, it seems, is Sydney herself. This we should already know- Dixon is the faithful character in Sydney's externalised make up, and wouldn't just leave her to be tortured and die.
So apart from what you're withholding for your later review, what of Will?
In this episode, Will gets to brief the big bosses in the CIA, and does a better job than the snide people from Harvard. Go non-Ivy-leaguers. It doesn't seem very likely they'd have no-one better than their new research gatherer, or that Will would check online and CIA intelligence wouldn't, but TCH loves wish-fulfilment, so enjoyed this section.
How about the cool, blond, British guy?
I wouldn't exactly call him cool, and he still has a shaky command of English pronunciation, (it's day-ta, not da/-ta). He backchats a little to Sloane here, apparently not greatly liking being the lackey. Frankly, Sark continues to bore me. I'm yet to really find an angle on him that makes me enthused.
What's good?
The way the Rambaldi stuff is a metaphor for apocalyptic worries and hell unleashed on earth, and the very literal incarnation of that that an early 16th century Catholic seer may have envisioned. Sloane; Marshall.
What's not so good?
This is another episode that demonstrates the show's lack of extra special genius. I think it's a really fun programme and all, but it's not one of the best television shows ever made; its episodes range from slightly dull to very interesting. For example, here, the pervasive image of people being turned to soot is never hooked up with a character journey. Imagine how resonant it would have been if we'd had one of those scenes adjacentg to Dixon, whole life incinerated, talking about his career going up in smoke. But that would be a little too poetic for 'Alias'.
So you're thinkin' along the lines of 'Flames wouldn't be eternal if they actually consumed anything'?
For once, Anonymous Questioner, you and I see eye to eye.
Thanks. TCH's rating for Alias 2.16?
***
Acknowledgements?
Inspired by Herc, who does the job cityofangel did with the Odyssey with a lot of pizazz. I rarely agree with his taste in episodes, but I like his reviews as a way of straightening my thoughts.
Ratings system:
*****- Whedonesque
**** - Tarantinoesque
*** - Spielbergesque
** - Minghellaesque
* - Sommersesque
2.17- 'A Dark Turn'
This episode really stands and falls on two connected issues: each of which contains four words
-Would Sydney trust Vaughn? And
-Would Jack trust Irina?
Now in my world, Syd would trust Vaughn a little more than she does. But my really big issue is I just find it very, very hard to buy that Jack would suddenly take out Irina's tracking device. Hey, I know multiple epiphanies and stuff cover it, but would Jack explicitly recommit the single biggest mistake of his life with the same person? Lena Olin does her bestest, bestest job of convincing the audience Irina is that alluring, and she's eminently wonderful, but I still don't quite buy it.
Having said all that, when all's said and done, at the end of the day, on a level playing field, what's not to love about the final shot of Jack, alone and betrayed again, standing on the edge of that jetty and looking utterly miserable, as the camera goes wider and wider, and then into an amazing airborne shot, with the wide expanses of sea and seafront spread around him like despair? A beautiful moment.
Before it, this is a good episode on the nature of trust.
-The lift is going to Floor 47, not for any particular reason.
-I like Kendall. He has that slight look of aging, confused cowboy in his eyes. He used to be gung-ho and know the black and whites of the situation. Years have made him hardier, and know less cynical or trustless. But he's less trigger-happy, having learnt a kind of world-weary caution. And he has a totally unfriendly respect for his inferiors; never generous, but always fair. He's the kind of person I don't think I'd particularly like in real life, but I like here because of the consistent way in which he's been drawn.
-The human heart, its hungry gorge. So what exactly does Rambaldi's study think of it? Here, the answer is not so important as the Cliffhanger Rhetorical Question I mentioned earlier in this series of posts. While we don't know exactly how the heart works, trust and love become guessing games in the mazes of motivation that the CIA constructs.
-The fourness of this episode is appreciated. We have Vaughn quite insistently as Irina, the person who might be betraying us all to the Russians- the person whose frank admission that he's hiding stuff from Sydney might signal the kind of ingenious bluff and counter bluff that helped Derevko play Bristow snr. It's notable that Sydney always, until virtually the end, believes in Vaughn, believes in the decency of humanity, and is rewarded by finding out what he was doing, and that it, depsite being personal, is not against the CIA. Jack, who does the exact same thing in trusting Irina, is left with a kick in the face. This is really neat, since the two stories are parallel, only to have opposite morals, making the viewer think.
-While I expected Marshall to start doing this, he never did. So it's left to Weiss to be the person in the show who realises his place in the show and starts jokily jostling against it. This is a hallmark of all post-modern TV drama; characters who are marginalised becoming people who are marginalised in reall life, who feel like Rosencrantzes and Guildenstern. Occasionally, an episode comes along where the major characters are made to feel the minor characters' insecurities ('The Girl in Question'). But meanwhile, here, I loved Weiss' little comment that he is merely a conduit, ('conduit' itself is priceless, very sci-fi) to Vaughn.
-Irina plays Syd in Bangkok, but shoots more people than Sydney would have. It's nice to have the older woman do the fun stuff though, and she looks just as cool as Garner doing it, if not more so.
-The nature of Sloane's faith, the spirituality of his belief in Rambaldi, is mentioned here almost a Season after I mentioned it. It's being simmering implicitly for a while. What I really liked was that Jack never got caught up because he had Sydney, thereby by implication showing Sloane's apparent love for her to be a facade. With the end of the episode, we're made to wonder whether Irina's love is also fatuous, since she's traded contact with her daughter for another stab at finding out about Rambaldi.
-I think that the scene between Irina and Syd, hand to hand, shows that the show considers otherwise. Although it accepts the truth of Jack's comment, that as a good man, Sydney allowed him to not be obsessive about Rambaldi, (although as such a tepid father for so long, even that's questionable). But it seems like Irina has real feelings. There is no need to mislead Sydney for the sake of her operation here. She only needs to manipulate Jack.
-When Vaughn goes to the shower and Syd might go to her computer, it calls back 'Double Agent'. Now I hated the thing, but this idea of Syd breaking up her unilateral stance with Vaughn adds nuance here, and allows the revelation that Syd has not taken his files more weight.
-The Will dream scene: I was all set for that being a hokey add-on that led nowhere, so imagine my relief when it turned out instead to be a shameless rip off of the 'First Impressions'/'Untouched' bit of Angel Season Two. I like the references of Francie as Darla, even if I'm still having difficulties finding the emotional resonance of this doppelganger. I suppose the fact that Sydney barely even suspects anything, (leave aside the odd 'I thought you were acting strange lately'), has a certain power to it, if you squint slightly and the wind's in the right direction...
-One irresistable joke, considering Arnie's then-recent election to California mayorship. "Like Schwarzenegger. The old Schwarzenegger."
-Irina and Sloane! Yay! And many thanks for not spoiling me Rah, now I'm gagging to see them try to act each other off the screen.
-So Vaughn's about to give Syd the symbol of ultimate personal trust, the key to his home. And then Syd goes off on one about distrust. Bad Timing 101, aced. However, I imagine much of these will heal considering the final revelations, though it's not made utterly clear whether Syd totally approves of Vaughn's need for double-checking Irina's honesty. And given the twist of the end, how good was his research, and was he looking for the right betrayal?
This would be closer to a three-and-a-half star episode, though I heartily disaprove of half-points. But that's what Hercules does, and who am I to argue? Last five episodes coming up tomorrow and Tuesday. Until then, I leave you with Jack, thinking that his relationship with Irina was being reborn, only to realise just how dead it had always been. Those fake blossoms on the trees turned out to be the last decaying leaves after all, no?
TCH