Half of what I say is meaningless
But I say it just to reach you
Julia,

Julia, Julia
ocean child calls me
So I sing a song of love
Julia

Julia
Seashell eyes, windy smile calls me
So I sing a song of love
Julia

-John Lennon. Perhaps not really relevant. But then again?

3.3- 'Reunion'

It would be unfair to compare this episode to 'Reunion' on Angel, which is right in the middle of a Season with the show firing on all cylinders. However, much of this episode seems to be marking time, like the man with the IQ of 170 in his shop with the vast number of clocks. Episode four pings off a vast number of questions about Syd's amnesia and what happened before it kicked in, but here we're skirting round the edges of the plot, while this week's feature is Lauren and Sydney. This hamstrings the episode a bit; such complications are supposed to be B-plot rather than A-plot material, and there's a bit too much weight invested in the friction between the two of them.

-On the plus side, the friendship between Sydney and Weiss is well consolidated here. If there was a little bit of a disconnect between Weiss and Syd's virtual mutual exclusivity in scenes in late Season Two, and their sudden friendship here, it is alloyed by some nice scenes like the first one where spirits seem like the only way of alleviating ailing spirits of a different nature. Later we see him suffering for Syd in the icy briefing scene, and the moment at the end where Weiss finds a third edition 'Alice in Wonderland' for his friend is touching. Sydney, the girl who, somewhat to her surprise, had to go down the rabbit hole, and is now confused about her own identity. Can she be queen, or do all the duplicitous happenings make her likely never to recapture her innocence? Can we see Syd's induction into SD-6 as a ritual for the beginning of adulthood, in the same way that Alice's rabbit hole signals the onset of puberty? I don't know who I am, said Sydney. I think I knew who I was when I woke up this morning, but now I feel, different, some how.

-Sloane's proud boast to Sark that they should now move onto Phase Two appears not to have gone anywhere, so whether the Stage Two of the covenant is the same is a bit of a mystery. In the meanwhile, Sloane seems delighted by the opportunity to drive as much of a wedge as he can between Lauren, Vaughn and Sydney.

-There's a Faith/Buffy resonance in the scene where Weiss talks about Vaughn and Lauren's wedding, and the implication is that everyone was there- Dixon, Marshall, Weiss himself. Lauren, she feels, has supplanted her in her life, taken her boyfriend and started on his friends. It is noted by Weiss that he would be lying if he didn't claim Lauren was a good person. For the sake of narrative tension, Weiss' hypothesis is bound to be tested to its limits.

-The Medusa aspect was a natty technical way of going from the professional discussion to Sydney's feelings about her rejection by Vaughn. It's not a reality, but it feels that bad anyway.

-It should go without saying that Jack is not interested in personal gossip, but it's delightful that he says it anyway. I think he's verging on even less gruff than I'd want now, even though I routinely savaged his standoffishness in the first Season. I love watching his disfunction, the inability to connect foisted upon him by the sadness of Irina's treachery.

-It had to be done, and it was, tidily. The triangle shot, where Sydney is in the foreground with Lauren and Vaughn, the other two points of the triangle, in the background, is the mission statement for the Season.

-The two plots of the episode, Vaughn and Sydney escpaing through the pipes, and Jack aborting Marshall's rendering of Sydney's photograph, work together tidily enough, comparing personal and physical drama and showing some kind of admission to the dichotomy of Alias' charm.

-And when Vaughn and Syd start going on every mission together, it's inevitable that the feelings, obviously never resolved since Sydney never broke up and Vaughn did so under false pretences, will start to resurface. And there's the soul of the drama.

3.4- 'A Missing Link'

One of those twisisisty episodes of which Alias is the master.

-Isn't it interesting how Lauren always calls Vaughn 'Michael', whereas Sydney always called him Vaughn, (as was joked at in one episode in the second Season). It's almost a rebranding. It suggests on a surface level that Lauren has separated the personal and professional better than Syd and Vaughn ever did, but since I was always pleased by the show's shirking of the tedious tradition of Professional Duty Prohibits Romance pitfall, it may well not be that simple.

-What we're reminded of again and again in this episode is Sydney's extraordinary ability to wangle people for her own personal advantage. Given everything that she does here, we're made to think about Lauren's perspective; what she must think of this woman who elegantly deceives people as is necessary, and how that reflects on her relationship with her husband. Simultaneously, Vaughn is made, (though by Jack and not Sydney herself) to keep a secret from his wife who is characterised as an outsider, as NSC and not a member of the us of Jack, Vaughn, Syd and Dixon.

-In one example, Sydney speaks a lot of truth to the dying man, about salvation being about doing what is right, about being at peace with oneself, and about being ready to face the God of the Afterlife, be they merely a construction in abstract of closure in one's life, or physically, metaphysically real. It is her ability to connect with people that then allows her to deceive them. You have to be credulous before you're deceived, and Bristow is the master of putting people at a false ease.

-Meanwhile, Lauren drives an unnecessary extra wedge into her wedlock by complaining that Vaughn is not putting details of weapons into his debriefing reports. This is a bit of a curveball to me- are we to suspect Reid has some ulterior motive for details of the weapon? Or is the programme merely making a point about the difficulty of asymmetrical romantic relationships; that if someone has the power, is superior, then they are coerced into the situation of running the relationship as well?

-Sloane and Lauren meet alone this week, and Sloane starts talking about Lauren's father, the senator, and his influence in getting her her exalted position. It's interesting to speculate upon just what Sloane is attempting to achieve by his unsettling sneakiness with Melissa George's character, but suffice it to say that it is not merely idle play- Sloane always seems to have a masterplan, regardless of whether it is obvious or not. In this scene, played out in front of an audience who don't quite trust either character, we get a lot of uncharateristic mid-length shots when you'd expect a close-up on the face of the speaker. We're being asked to be standoffish about these people's motivations; in the absence of people we trust, like the Bristows or Dixon, we're less active participant, more staged obsrerver.

-Justin Theroux does better work than either Christian Slater or Ethan Hawke managed last Season. I must also put in a word of praise for his accent- we've had David Anders diamond rich English accent that I've disliked since day one, but here Theroux fashions a really interesting plausible voice. There's an element of James Marsters' Spike, an element of gentle London rumble, and it's worth noticing he's the cousin of Louis Therouz, so he knows a bit more about how we speak. It's a comfortable voice that can lure you in, and a combination of that and his acting makes the scenes between him and Garner work better than they're written.

-There's a completely bizarre moment in the middle of the episode when Jack is stubborn about not telling the department about Sydney's killing of Lazarey, and then suddenly he has told Dixon. Though it's explained later that he was talking only about keeping it from the NSC, it had me baffled, and the technicality opt-out doesn't quite cover it for me.

-Dive into the swimming pool: ludicrous, but fun enough to be got away with, just once.

-Though I dislike his Sarkastic accent, David Anders as he appears in the meeting where Sydney is colluding with the enemy has a moment of real dread, though I find it hard to believe that someone so meticulous would completely disregard the identities of the supposed free agents.

-Then we get into the mazy confusions of Sydney trying to confuse Theroux and Theroux trying to confuse Julia, and Michael Vaughn the security guard getting stabbed and thrown down a hill. The end of the episode, as nicely directed as it is with the camera circling threateningly outward in its widening gyre, is just silly. Everyone knows we're way too early in the Season to lose Vaughn, and Sydney wouldn't stab him to death in a month of Mondays.

But the season is still bubbling along nicely, all in all.

TCH