Um, yes.

Could you just go through that again?

3.13- 'After Six

This episode has lots of little gimmicky plot-lines nailed together. The next episode has a big fat gimmick right slap bang in the middle of the plot, which was just a little off-puttinf. Both had Sloane being maniacally manipulative of the psychiatrist, which is a good. Both had Melissa George in skimpy underwear for no good plot reason, which was good from a 'FLESH!' point of view, but bad from the point of view that we now have Lauren as whore in the Sydney/Lauren Madonna/Whore analogy that the writers so weren't going for. The chaste superspy will eventually win back her lover, who has been tempted by Lauren's evil sex and black lingerie. Meanwhile, the devilicious Lauren and Sark evilly commit adultery. I've always wondered, in such situations, is it just Lauren commiting adultery, or is Sark too? If you're getting from my writing style that this episode made my thoughts wander slowly away from its narrative drive, you're being perceptive again.

-'I miss Emily' says Sloane to Jack, truthfully. It's a shame that he was never truly put in a position where he had to choose between Rambaldi and his wife. I suppose arguably, he never was because he's so in control that he made his wife and his visionary his only two aims from day one, and pirouetted around everything else as much as possible. By this stage, I truly believe he cares about Jack andc Sydney, but I'm not foolish enough to think that this means he would go out of his way to avoid causing them pain if the cost was right. There was nothing directly contradicting the idea of jumping in front of Jack, given that Sloane clearly knows darn well that Ron Rifkin is a regular character and won't be killed before the final arc of the Season. Here Sloane has yet another one of the great speeches of Alias. The devil gets the good parts, but Sloane seems to co-opt absolutely all of the good lines by this stage. Is this just my fevered imagination because I like the character so much, or is he really mouthing philosophical thoughts while everyone else has variations on 'Copy Mountaineer, retrieve the Kevlar'?

-We're into 'soul mate' territory with Vaughn and Sydney, and the horrible crunch is that it appears Abrams believes it. When you see a romance like theirs, it makes you appreciate both Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike that bit more. TCH; alienating all Buffy fans since 2001!

-Weiss, surely nobody ever fancied Sporty Spice. Sporty Spice isn't the one who married the footballer, in case you were confused. She was the one who could sing, but was therefore not basically a model with singing lessons and looked less attractive. Otherwise top marks for effort. I appreciate his desire to be Vaughn's confidant and Vaughn's constant reluctance. It's very true of male friendship that we either have entire conversations with no content whatsoever, or someone is the aggressor about the other person's life. Spilling the beans is really unusual. I like Vaughn and Weiss more than Vaughn with anyone else on the show. Except Will, but Bad Robot unsurprisingly stamped hard on my hope for a counter-intuitive friendship storyline with those two.

-Lauren is as femme fatale as Kim Basinger in LA Confidential now. It's like, since Abrams completed his big unexpected twist, he's been smiling self-indulgently to himself thinking; now she's evil, she can use her body and seduce lots of old men before killing him. Because she's Evil! Oh, the shades of grey in this show just keep leaving.

-Not only does Sloane claim to love Jack and Sydney, he tells the psychiatrist they are 'the two most important people in my life'. This has a quite different meaning, since their importance could be as mere value for the endgame ahead, (what did Lindsay have in that envelope?)

-Marshall suddenly gets married. I mean, really suddenly. I loved Weiss' disbelief that he was investing them in matrimony via the Church of Mammals, and this sudden idea that the baby couldn't be born a bastard, so Marshall does everything on the spur of the moment. It's a clever literalisation of the eternal personal/professional conflict on the show.

-Wine! Pretty cool!!!

-You can't help, if you're a Buffy fan thinking of Spike and the English watcher when the psychiatrist announces to Sloane that he was the subject of her post-doctoral dissertation. The scene suffers by comparison, though comparing almost any comedy to Whedonverse Jane Espenson is just ferocious.

-'I manipulate people' says Sloane mock-unproudly. The key to this statement is that it is not him opening up. It's him manipulating someone. Form matches intent. It's like poetry.

-Tarantino always seems to steal the coolest things for himself. The moment where he gives Sark one key, then three, (as we expect), and then five and six, (confirming Lauren's prior arrangement), is just a lovely piece of geekery. Granted, it doesn't mean anything, but it's cool. And Julian and Lauren's appointment as head of North American cell gives the Season a touch of stability and Sark a bit of a logical role in the series, which had been eluding him for better or worse up until here.

-Sloane's secret is the big artificial cliff-hanger and is resolved later, in

3.14- 'Blowback'

So the first half of the episode seems normal enough. Then the second half of the episode, we start seeing all the same things over again, with minor changes of perspective. There will be a strong voice in the fandom, I'm sure, who say this is pointless and troublesome. I always think it gives the reveal, (which otherwise has to be done in a series of jagged flashbacks), a certain grace and sincerity. We didn't want to let you see this bit yet, because this is part of the Lauren/Sark part. They create tension in the unknown, and then show us the structural reason for it. My criticism of it is that it can hide an episode with precious little actual content, and that's just about fair here. But on the flip-side, it tells everyone to watch Lauren and Sark carefully as a parallel couple to Syd and Vaughn. Overall, I thought it was fair enough, since the Season isn't motoring without the extra impetus this game gives.

-Jack shows his thinly veiled conceit as he has to be nice to Marshall about his child. I love the moments where Jack is confronted by society's tendency to lie to sand off rough corners of clashing perspectives. He seems to know this convention, but to not set any truck by following it, and to do it like the half-hearted teenage schoolboy reading Shakespeare. (Hang on, two years out and I'm down on teenagers already! How things change)

-The section on the watch was skilfully interweaved. We start remembering the watch from the second Season, (even if only because it's in the promo; though in my case it's in one of my favourite episodes), but unsure as to quite how it's linked into Lauren, given that it was used as romantic symbolism to the Syd/Vaughn 'ship back then. It's only a bit later that we learn that Vaughn was angling for Lauren's sympathy over his father's anniversary. And while Lauren might have a lot on her mind, (being evil, having presumably Evul sex with Sark, evil snappy dressing), Sydney has the time to remember, despite the fact that one of the underlying messages of the Season is that Syd remains disorientated when it comes to temporal reality- that, in many ways that are not her fault, she is living in the past. Vaughn can't be blamed for coming to the conclusion that Syd is simply the right woman for him. He can be blamed for his faithlessness, but I've already grumbled on this issue.

-Sloane's pouring water again, he's using his hands-free phone to wonder round the office again, (deliberate, the free agent, the trickster in the pack, but also the lion pacing the den), and he's telling his 'friend' with glee in the irony, 'in vino veritas'. If anyone believes a glass of Claret is going to get Sloane to spill the cards he's holding closest to his chest, they haven't realised said cards are in his inside breast pocket.

-I wish our psychiatrist wasn't taken in by Sloane's humanitarian turn. It's feasible, but since Sydney saw through it in the first episode of the Season, it's hardly interesting territory. I had the outside thought that maybe she thinks she's actually playing him for a second, confessing to an amazement in his redemption that she thinks is ridiculous- but the end of this episode, at least, does not play out like that.

-The phrase 'Show me the meaning of haste' is a direct lift from one of my favourite lines in 'The Two Towers', (though before movie smart-alecks chip in, it is indeed in 'The Return of the King' in Jackson's version), and is said by Gandalf to Shadowfax. Here in LA, between Lauren and Sark, it plays as out of place. Is one of them supposed to be a noble steed? (c) Eddie Murphy.

-Considering Quentin Tarantino popped up the episode before it's not surprising that the clearest parallel to this episode in recent film history is 'Jackie Brown', in the three times run mall scene.

-Blur 'Song 2' is one of those few songs that even I know needs to be played, insanely, insanely loud. Having it underneath dialogue doesn't work.

-I don't think Sloane claiming to be the father of Sydney claims anything one way or the other at this stage, so I'll skimp on idle speculation.

-The bomb stops on two seconds this time. To date, it has still never stopped on one second in Alias history. We've had '9', '2', and '0', where it turned out not to be connected to the explosive.

-The bit at the end where Lauren is balaclavaed works dramatically because of the line that Sark mischievously tosses in, 'If you love her, drop the gun'. That can't help but give Lauren even more fuel. What I spent most time thinking about though is that, unlike Buffy in 'A New Man', if Vaughn can't identify Lauren from her eyes, (and her figure, in this case, as a bonus), then he really shouldn't be married to her.

We end on even more Jack and Sydney bonding, which considering the theme of the day for me has been thoughts about antecedents, is appropriate, though there probably needs to be a schism in this partnership soon before Jack Bristow turns into Atticus Finch. Talking of, watched the film earlier this afternoon, and spent the second hour crying pretty much solidly. Through most of the courtroom scene, and from that point onwards I was just gone at anything. Amazing film.

Just eight episodes to go in the Alias marathon, and then it's on holiday until January. Next two or three episodes coming up tomorrow.

TCH