As Sloane says of Sydney in this episode, perhaps I shouldn't expect so much, but I do. And so when the majority of this Season so far was a grind, it seemed a shame with so many complicated family dynamics that they were largely being overlooked in favour of some episodic and non-operatic tales.

Trust JR Orci, perhaps my favourite Alias writer, to show how complicatedly twisty and satisfying this Season can be.

4.10- 'The Index'

Three fathers, two alike in dignity, the other one a true mystery. Parents are rarely dead in this universe- and those figures who we thought were for symbolic use, (see Vaughn's father in'Almost Thirty Years', maybe the show's best episode ever), are always liable to turn up. The B-plot in this story is excellent, because it slowly promises Rambaldi, but also another kink in the stangulated family tree of Alias. And it is that tree, regardless of the sky-high-spy-hi-jinks, the fast cars and guns and hangings from helicopters, in terror, above Sarajevo, (an apposite place for the beginning of new internal conflict within APO, given the countless insurrections of the 90's, and further back, think Princip), it's always the people who should drive the show emotionally. This is what we get here.

-Not so much in itself, but as symbol for how carefully this episode is constructed, it's nice to see the number 4096 in the vaguely technological bit, (bit of a pun intended), as it is the twelfth power of two. Twelve disciples of the Alliance- Sloane as a kind of latter day Messiah to Rambaldi's godhead.

-Given that Sloane, (strictly no relation to Sydney, but round about a stepfather), often acts like an uncle, (for what are Jack and Arvin if not brothers in arms, frequently with arms?) it's interesting that we get the hinted, submerged tableau of another brotherly mystery in Vaughn's father and his uncle. Is Bill dead? Who is the mysteriously evanescent nurse, (that sounded 'Everything is illuminated'-ish), faintly reminiscent of the Council mole in 'This Year's Girl'? Are Weiss and Vaughn in fact brothers?

-We see Dixon as a renegade here, though whether he is one, we are yet to see. This is a multi-perspective show- we're not lumbered in Sydney's rather two-tracked suspicions all the time- we get reveals she doesn't always get, and thus the show pays out more dramatic irony than your average. Originally, we are maybe supposed to wonder whether Dixon is irrationally pursuing Diane's murderer. Then there's the point where he appears justified. Then we get the euphonious back-tracking to the original position, where it appears Sloane and Jack were double bluffing the old Alliance. And then finally the final scene, meaning, what exactly? That the game's still on? That you haven't finished a book until you've reached the index?

-Angela Bassett is super here- taking Terry O'Quinn's vacated work and balancing it tersely against the drama underneath.

-One angle we haven't seen before is Sloane as father-in-law to Weiss, and it's extremely amusing; Sloane ever so smoothly playing with Weiss, letting him squirm for a second or two and then retracting his claws- like a lion king batting away his son's worried, meaningful advances.

-Dixon as the new Season One Vaughn- in a situation that re-enacts SD6 precisely as it was- Sloane working against Syd and Syd against Sloane- an agent on the outside looking in and an agent on the inside looking out.

-Jennifer Garner seems particularly elegant this week: it may be because she's well written, I don't know.

-Following that river to its inevitable delta, it's particularly nuanced that Sydney no longer simply wants Sloane to be the bad guy because of what that would incur for her sister's relationship with her father. Things are a little different now-; since Nadia. I mean, yes, we should have got there half a dozen episodes ago, but at least we're there now.

-Dixon as a studious attorney, 3 euros. Sydney as an insouciant student rebel, 50 centimes. Weiss as a comedy Frenchman, priceless.

-One more moment, (this situation at Sloane's house was almost on a par with the still-superior five-hander in 'Page 47'), which was particularly awkward for them and thus laudable by us was the way that Weiss small-talks away and Jack, a social butterfly with two damaged wings, clicks into analyst mode about conflict and the energy crisis. Meanwhile, the head of the table shall not answer to Arvin. Half-informal, Eric? We'd prefer not.

-'One joy scatters a thousand griefs', says Sloane mouthing someone Confuciusesque. And confusing, for this is the eternal handle by which we may take hold of the bundle of Sloane's dissembly and masterplans. The infernal imponderable: Does the bloke care for Nadia, (read humanity) more than Rambaldi (read, spirituality through self-aggrandisement)? It's the same set-up as himself and Emily in the first two seasons, and is similarly enthralling.

-Sydney 'is trying to prove [Sloane] is innocent' to Nadia, and that he is guilty to Dixon. Does this say something about what it is to be a journalist, a truth-finder, a good person, a better angel? That if one is truly even-handed, (Sloane's jug in one hand and his gun in the other), trying to prove someone innocent and trying to prove them guilty is one and the same thing? And can Sydney really imagine herself as a person in an objective enough slot to carry this off, or is she just fobbing at her sister?

-For a moment, not quite processing at the twist-turn prestissimo of the writing, I thought Jack was actually Alliance, and that Sloane was surveilling, (there it is again, I dislike this word), his renegade brother. But nothing is that simple. When Nadia hopes that Sydney 'will one day do the same for her', we are made to wonder precisely what that is. Nadia has saved Syd's innocent father from probable death. Is there ever a situation in which Bristow jnr might do the same?

-Likewise in double meaningsville, are we to take Jack's denouncement of Sloane as a double-dealer to be, (as one would read it straight, by implying he's lying, (this episode is as twisty as they come)), that he's merely acting angry with Sloane to buy time, or does he genuinely believe Sloane has betrayed him? Or more deliciously still, does he play the game theory field and suppose that, since he's in a no-hope situation, he may as well bide time by playing, but play what he's really thinking as suspense, in which case, he's really angry with Sloane but using it as a tool, much as Vaughn does in 'Ice' when explaining his betrayal by Lauren.

Excellent work.