It?s Season end time again. The finale was once again good fun, but lacked the writing mastery that went into Abrams? brilliant ?Almost Thirty Years? at the end of the first Season. Which is not to say it isn?t a good ride, and ends on an utterly untelegraphed twist that everyone can enjoy from a ?What If?? perspective. But I?m leaping ahead.

2.20- ?Countdown?

This was the episode I watched the first time round before I?d seen any other episode of the show, and though I enjoyed it, in retrospect its no surprise that I enjoyed it only for the rather natty stylistic directorial twitches of the episode. This episode as its predecessor and successor are extremely arcy, and having a dozen characters thrown at you with no warning at this point must have been disconcerting even in one of my more patient moods.

-Things I probably did enjoy, and certainly did this time, included the luchador moments in Mexico City- maybe an underuse of the idea when compared to Numero Cinco, but still good fun.

-Also, the mention of Joni Mitchell. Though it?s obviously an eccentric idea to bring the woman to work, people who haven?t spent some slightly drizzly evening crying at ?Blue? are cold and heartless. Unfortunately, this is a point made in ?Love Actually?, so I may have to disown the genius.

-Bowman and her relationship with Marshall is lovely. He?s deserved a little bit of recognition and understanding for his persistent good-nature, rather than just being given the arched eyebrow treatment by the Better, More Credible characters.

-David Carradine! He seems to have a lock on all sorts of morally ambiguous but very still characters at the moment. I can just listen to his calming voice and forget the complete sadism and disregard of human life that his characters seem to possess. It needed someone slightly other-worldly to play someone who could inspire Sloane. Called Conrad, there?s more than a hint of Martin Sheen going to see Marlon Brando here. (That?s not the President going to see Don Vito, in case you were wondering).

So to the more continuity based things:

=We start with yet another flashback scene, which is then played out and beyond during the episode. While I enjoyed it in ?Truth Takes Time?, here it seemed a little superficial. What it does do is make us think Dixon is going to go mad, which is spooky. But it?s not there as anything more than a trick, so I don?t think the episode really earns it.

=It?s a nice touch that Rambaldi has predicted moments of catastrophe in the world?s future, and we?re given Napoleon?s conquests, Franz Ferdinand?s assassination and Hiroshima, but that here, on the contrary, it is an entirely personal moment, (and not the massive explosion which could have been going on with Sydney and Vaughn elsewhere). While the melodramatic bomb never goes off, Sloane looks at the last Rambaldi artefact with growing glee.

=Dixon?s determination borders on out of control violence at times in this episode. I?m a bit disturbed by the implication at the end, when we see that the timer was just a ruse, that he was right all along. He got a lead when he assaulted the man earlier, but it was hardly necessary force. The real narrative drama in this episode is ?Are we going to lose Dixon??.

=If we were to believe that Sloane wanted to give up on everything and retreat out of Rambaldi?s false promises, as he postulates to Sark, we would be very na�ve indeed. It?s no surprise when he pops up in Nepal, though the totally nonvertiginous slope he?s climbing with difficulty is a bit more puzzling.

=I can?t quite cope with the idea of crying children. I quite like the idea that it was just the wind through the trees all along, but unfortunately the scene had lost me by that stage with its lack of reserve. I never believed Dixon, a strong man, would commit suicide, and the final resolution doesn?t ring quite true to me.

A reasonable episode.

2.21- ?Second Double?

Here we?re really coming in to close up on the Francie plot-line, and although I thought the twist that Will should be suspected while Francie shouldn?t merit even a twinge of recognition was clever, I find the whole doppelganger thing never quite overcomes its initial silly clunkiness.

-One of the thing that often bugs me with people who aren?t who they should be, though, is that no-one ever asks them a question that only they would know the answer to, thereby solving the mystery. So when Francie rescinds Will?s access to details of his personal memory, I thought it was a good stroke on the part of Allison Doren. However, to be able to hypnotise someone so accurately seems a rather pagan gift to me, rather than scientific.

-Kendall tells Sydney ?I?m getting bored with your hunches?. Of course, Sydney?s hunches wouldn?t be showing so much prominence in the series if every other plot-line didn?t revolve around Sydney?s friends and relations. But Kendall?s going to have to get used to the fact that she?s the lead character, or he won?t survive as long as he thinks he will.

-I thought Dixon refusing to forgive Will was emotionally truthful and well observed. He shows Will the pictures of Diane in the vain hope of showing his killer the wrongness of his ways. Sadly for Marcus, the man he?s actually showing it all to is the person in the show who least deserves more destruction of his life. It?s getting to the point with Will that you can only feel almost defeatedly despairing for him. In the first Season, the job he?s very good at gets ruined for him. In the second Season, his work life is rehabilitated only for his personal life to start to go to hell as Allison starts betraying both him and Sydney. One can only hope that the assurance of Vaughn that Will survived his stabbing by someone looking like his girlfriend was that rarest thing in Alias, an actual truth. In the meanwhile, we really feel it when he says to Sydney ?Meeting you destroyed my life?. Because it?s true, and because Will has been thoroughly decent about it for 43 episodes. But in the moment of his trial, he just can?t sustain his equanimity, and who can blame him.

-Jack apparently sacrifices his job security so that Vaughn and Sydney can finally complete the mission of capturing Sloane and Irina. He?s getting less and less artful in hiding his generosity towards Sydney. Or maybe now in the belly of the CIA we can just see everything through a glass lightly, and his stoic fatherhood takes on its full dimension.

-It?s a delight when Sloane just turns up suddenly towards the end of this episode. He?s persuasive enough that if I was Jack, fearing for my CIA job, and lured by Rambaldi only, I might have considered going along with Arvin. But then, I?d be much more morally flimsy in these situations than any of the good guys on this show. Meanwhile, we see Sloane evangelise his position on the threshold of revelation.

-And so we?re left in disaster as Will, unable to trust Sydney, rings up Allison as Francie to give him a lift home, and it all starts to look gloomy.

2.22- ?The Telling?

Lots of wish-fulfilment in the episode without an over-riding form, until the final energising, cliffhanging twist.

-Marshall gets to speak to Weiss for once, which should be the start of a beautiful friendship. Unfortunately, Weiss/Renault will have to wait a little longer as Marshall/Rick is already running off in search of the higher powers rather than employing his usual idle backchat.

-Clearing Will is a relief after the pain of the last episode, and I think Sydney is very magnanimous to welcome Will back, regardless of the fact that he?d said nothing untrue. In the constant death storm of the last few episodes, emotions could have been much more trampled on.

-Irina tricks everyone yet again. This is probably the final nail in the coffin of their trust in her intelligence, though she is quick to disown the trick as Sloane?s work and offer them another lead. I wonder where Irina will have (dis)appeared after Syd?s two year lay-off. (Though this question is as interesting with most of the characters.)

-Weiss as the magician. He wants to be the trickster of the Aliasverse, but that?s just not how it works. To break out from your role in this show, you have to treat the challenges of espionage with sufficient earnestness to master the skills. Sloane here is a much more masterful trickster than the jokey Spike of Season Four Buffy.

-We don?t find out any more about Jack after we see him with terror-filling eyes as the Rambaldi device apparently starts to operate next door. This is the major cliffhanger, perhaps even more so than the two years space.

-The Telling has 47 pieces. 47 is a prime number, and the biggest number which is less than equal half its value, 23, is too. So is 23?s, 11. So is 11?s, 5. So is 5?s, 2, and the first prime number. Just something I noticed while writing the number down for the umpteenth time.

-What on earth are we to make of Sloane?s comment to Jack ?Because we?re friends?. Does he still deceive himself that he has perfectly normal family and friends? Or is it just one more threat?

-Sark: ?My loyalties are flexible?. Are they now? He has seemed to follow the course of a feather on a whirlwind for much of this season, but does he covet anything other than power gained by shameless opportunism? There is plenty of room for his character to develop next season.

-Sloane, Irina posits, actually believes that he has been chosen by Rambaldi. That he is, in one sense, an actual Messiah. As ego-trips go, that?s the capper. Also in Irina?s scenes with Sydney, we get the lovely throwaway ?That?s what free will?s all about?. Freedom is the freedom to say that your mother is a liar.

And so we end with the big Francie/Sydney fight, like ?Grave? but with less resonance. Still, it occupies the eyes while the brain wonders what can sum up this scattershot episode. When we find out, the answer is a refutation of the question. Nothing summarises the year; we start on a whole new plot-line. The plot-line of Sydney?s amnesia. And this is neatly connected back into the first Season?s finale when Vaughn tells Syd, with similar revelation to the first scene with Irina, that she has been out ?almost two years?- a deliberate echo of ?Almost thirty years?. Now Sydney must again start to live in a world where someone, (Vaughn this time) has had expectation but no realisation of her presence for a long period of time.

Not the greatest season ender ever, signing off on a roller coaster quality season. Here?s the ratings:

The Enemy Walks In: 8
Trust Me: 7
Cipher: 7
Dead Drop: 9
The Indicator: 7
Salvation: 6
The Counteragent: 5
Passage, Part One: 4
Passage, Part Two: 2
The Abduction: 6
A Higher Echelon: 6
The Getaway: 10
Phase One: 8
Double Agent: 1
A Free Agent: 6
Firebomb: 6
A Dark Turn: 7
Truth Takes Time: 9
Endgame: 6
Countdown: 6
Second Double: 5
The Telling: 7

Yeah, that?s it more or less. Strong out of the gate, tapers off towards the middle of the Season, has a mini renaissance in the build up to the Big Twist, has one of the worst hours I?ve ever watched on anything, then recovers itself without hitting the heights it could have done by the end of its run.

Back with Season Three, in the next few days.

TCH