So a few lines of this poem came to me while watching the Vaughn/Sydney tension build towards the end of the second episode, where Lauren Reid strolls in and amps up the drama. When I looked at the full version, I realised I'd forgotten how beautiful it was aside from the sobering conclusion. MacNeice spent most of his creative life in the shadow of Auden, but is a lovely poet in his own right:

Les Sylphides

Life in a day: he took his girl to the ballet
Being short-sighted himself could hardly see it-
The white skirts in the grey
Glade and the swell of the music
Lifting the white sails.

Calyx upon calyx, canterbury bells in the breeze
The flowers on the left mirrors to the flowers on the right
And the naked arms above
The powdered faces moving
Like seaweed in a pool.

Now, he thought, we are floating- ageless, oarless-
Now there is no separation, from now on
You will be wearing white
Satin and a red sash
Under the waltzing trees.

But the music stopped, the dancers took their curtain,
The river had come to a lock- a shuffle of programmes-
And we cannot continue down
Stream unless we are ready
To enter the lock and drop.

So they were married- to be the more together-
And found they were never again so much together,
Divided by the morning tea,
By the evening paper,
By children and tradesmen's bills.

Waking at times in the night she found assurance
Due to his regular breathing but wondered whether
It was really worth it and where
The river had flowed away
And where were the white flowers.

Maybe should just mention as the most cursory of notes, since I don't intend to go into full-blown discussion of the poem itself, that 'Les sylphides' an opera by Chopin, is one with no discernible plot. Hence its use as an exploration of the eternal moment that can never, in fact come true, moving forward as we always are through the rustle of our programmes, and our tradesmen's bills.

3.1- 'The Two'

I can't vouch for the rest of the Season, but the first two episodes certainly have enough about them to keep me interested. Of course, when you move the game on two years, you have licence to jiggle with people's situations more or less as far as you want to, keeping in mind that their essential characters are unlikely to have changed, unless something truly massive has happened to them. Here, though, just to give even more licence to the writers, all the people Sydney is familiar with have necessarily had to grieve from her and recover from the probability of her death. So as well as two years having passed, Vaughn for example has had to go through losing his lover, Jack has refused to go throught he process of losing his daughter, it turns out, quite correctly. When Sydney gets back, he forces her through most of the same old hoops from the first two seasons, sending her out on a mission (and claiming it was her decision, the right of the writer). But there's this underlying dizziness, well captured by the director, about it all. Syd seems a little more brutal than usual; she's finding a channel for her residual anger in her job.

The episode reminded me a lot of 'Bargaining'. It's not until 'Afterlife' that we're told about Buffy's return from heaven, so our perspective on the first episode is merely that she's having difficulty comprehending coming back from the dead. The metaphysical aspect is added on once we find out that her firends were mistaken as to her destination after her martyrdom. So in a sense, 'Bargaining' is a skilfully conceived mood piece, showing elements of a place our lead character, and the audience by extension, haven't seen for a few months. In this episode, a befuddled Syd remonstrates 'I wish I only had a million questions', rattling her chains like the audience to know what's happened to the major characters in her life. When the lead and the audience work so directly in tandem, the episode is more or less a certain success.

-'You were dead', says Vaughn, and Sydney, overcome by the impossibility of it all, but still making a perfectly rational deduction, (considering she lives in a world with two Ethan Hawkes and two Francies), decides that this Michael Vartan is not the real Vaughn but an impostor. It is interesting after all the bluffing and counter-bluffing that Vaughn and Syd did to each other last season, than she will simply not accept it from him, (perhaps because it is too painful), but when Dixon tells her, she takes it without doubt. He is the character who encapsulates trust on the show. It's nice to see Dixon get the more senior position he thoroughly deserves, although it again heightens our impression that Sydney has lost a lot of her life; there's no reason otherwise that she shouldn't be where Dixon is.

-There are some people who just don't understand that someone is a lead character in a show. To be fair, it's hard- we all assume we're actually the central role in our lives, and we don't understand quickly that sometimes we'd be better to play supporting actor to someone else's lead. It tends to take formal distinctions, like our brother's wedding or our friend's birthday, to really understand that we're just a cog in someone else's universe. So here, the manipulative, unfriendly Robert Lindsay, (as in 'My Family'?!) doesn't understand that for the moment, Sydney has the story, Sydney is the lead character, and Sydney is the centre of attention. As a result, he survives less than two episodes.

-Marshall has a poem, about losing keys. We hear no more, but at least it doesn't appear to be running into bouncy rhyming couplets any time soon. Though we don't find out how Flinkmann was going to link in the keys to Sydney, it's clear from our perspective how well the keys link to her access to her memory. In the mean-time, it appears we may have accelerated right on past Marshall and Bowman's best part of their relationship, and landed on recrimination time. The baby seems a little way away from being born into a perfectly harmonious family.

-Jack worked with Irina, which must have taken much thought, even for this most pragmatic man, after her second betrayal. That he would be willing to work with her even after it is totally clear that she is not turning over a new leaf, though, should surely have convinced the NSC that Jack was not part of Russian intelligence. The plot twist doesn't make total sense, but has the bonus of Jack in a vast, Marxist fake beard and a couple of nice moments between father and daughter.

-Sydney is very, though understandably, harsh to Vaughn here. Just because everyone keeps repeating the phrase 'two years' like a mantra, doesn't necessarily mean that Sydney can feel how much it weighs, the texture of age against the skin, the chillier wind through the shortening hair. Next episode, she will be told exactly what two years feels like. Today, she wins our emotional side back if not our rational side, bludgeoning Vaughn into verbal submission by explaining how she would never have lost faith in his life in the same situation, how she would have waited until the last ship sailed. Faced with that hypothetical, said but not enacted betrayal, Vaughn can say nothing but look blank. To claim he came for closure was not fair or true, but he didn't make the ordeal easier on his ex byhis presence.

-If Sloane's gone Woodstock on us, I'm the late King Hussein of Jordan.

The Two is an interesting if lazy title, cos their are so many pairs we can identify. Vaughn and Syd. Marshall and Bowman. Dixon and Lindsay. Kingsley and Volkov. Sydney and Sydney. Jack and Sydney.

3.2- 'Succession'

A busy old teaser for this episode clarifies a few bits and bobs that we didn't know before. Will is on the Witness Protection Scheme mentioned both for him and Dixon last Season, and for Sydney in the pilot. Vaughn was out of the country for six months after Sydney's death, we later learn almost drinking himself to death. Dixon has not been demoted by Jack's return, although it will be interesting to see whether jack has now to take orders explicitly from Marcus, or whether they'll have the same uneasy relationship that the two alpha males Jack and Kendall had for much of last Season. The Covenant continues to spout blase nonsense which has the spot on deep hypocrisy of many terrorist networks. 'What we represent is unimportant. All we wish is to be heard'. If you want to be heard, speak, rather than killing as some kind of enigmatic murder mystery. But of course, that wouldn't help the show's narrative drive. Sydney has a new flat next door to Weiss. And though she has her own flat, Syd is not in a lone rowing boat when it comes to losing part of her life, as Dixon tells her about Amnesiacs Anonymous.

So beyond the main credits, the facts stop rolling in as fast, and instead we get a more involved than involving plot-line about Sark and his connection to Volkov. Eventually we find out that he is heir to $800 million, but not before a lot of running about and finding disembodied heads. Which is nice.

During the scavenger hunts:

-It's nice to have some confirmation that Dixon doesn't actually trust Sloane, and is merely going to him because he has given valid information to date. Even with the two years clause sprouting from every conversation, there has not been sufficient time for Marcus to develop trust for the man who coldbloodedly has his wife killed as vengeance.

-The Syd/Vaughn conversation in the French class brings a nice depth to Vaughn's character whcih I'm not sure we've really seen before. He's developed from the Boy Scoutish love interes into someone who has gone through pain and catharsis, and gone on living and moving on with his life. Though, as is the essence of good drama, there is sure to be conflict between Lauren and Sydney, I admire his steely certainty about not regretting his life having proceeded, as it being a necessary step in his own road to recovery.

-He's also got an authentically good French accent, which makes a change from no-one batting an eyelid when Dixon or Sydney go on a mission and speak in correct but accented foreign languages. Ironic that in the one arena where such accuracy is not necessary, not life or death, Michael Vartan exhibits it.

-Jack and Sloane's conversation is good and crackling, since Sloane claims he has no knowledge of the kidnapping of his surrogate daughter, and Jack claims he will bury him. The only puzzle is, since we left Jack in the next room as Arvin put the final pieces of The telling together, how did he get free and back to the CIA without partaking in Sloane's celebratory smile of pride or getting caught? This may be skated over, since it was two years ago, but I think it's a cheat if we don't find out.

-What isn't to love about Sloane's self-diagnostic, (though probably still misleading), 'I expect you to trust the consistency of my obsessions'. Cos, hey, to date, it's completely true. Emily and Rambaldi, and nothing else except as a means to those ends.

-Sydney gets a rather cleverer speech than she usually does when talking to Lindsay here. Sometimes she seems a little inarticulate for a genius, but here her almost casual delivery, the derision in her voice, as she implores 'Give me an object lesson in the abuse of power' is delightful. And Lindsay scuttles off back to Washington with his tail between his legs.

-I thought Jack writing in featureless block capitals when chatting with Irina was a little jab about his flat voice and immobile face as a character. What to think of him saying 'Miss you, too' to Derevko, however, is anyone's guess.

-Vaughn makes a difference, noticing where funny Marshall is about to go wrong in decrypting the code. This is necessary to the drama as evidence of his indispensibility to Syd's life, if done a little too superficially to come across as an organic part of the plot.

And we end on the Wedge of Conflict character for the Season, upbraiding Sloane, Vaughn's wife. How is it that all these positions run in the family nowadays...?

TCH