And so the score now stands at Jeffrey Bell 1, Drew Goddard 1. Though I'm holding on to the unpopular belief that 'Ice' was a better episode than 'Welcome to Liberty Village', and think it's more or less indisputable the Goddard's second outing 'Tuesday' is better than Bell's

4.12- 'The Orphan'

In some ways the flashback scenes are quite well handled- as in 'Memento', the sections which are of a piece are shot in different polarities- so in the present, we get the average Alias shots, and in the past in grimy South America, the grey and gritty and harsh reality of Nadia's former existence. Unfortunately, when you're in a scene where Mia Maestro is absolutely smouldering like the one at the party in Minsk, it's a little difficult to suddenly go back in time and be confronted with her in that ludicrous wig and think worriedly about what it is to be an orphan and how much she suffered in her younger days. Or maybe that's just me. I was pleased with the extensive use of Spanish in the scenes instead of illogically English dialogue, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me by now that it's subtitled; despite my lack of knowledge of Spanish, I think the episode would have played rather well without subtitles, as well as reminding such ignoramuses as myself that there are other languages than Spanish and that real life doesn't come with a box translating haphazardly into English. [Sidebar: I am pretty familiar with German, and some of the subtitling on the generally good 'Downfall' film that KdS reviewed recently was lazy and occasionally misleading.]

Otherwise the episode never really raises itself out of a sort of slight disinterest with itself unfortunately. I don't think we're ever really made to care enough about Diego and Cesar and Roberto, (certainly not to distinguish their personalities for example), well enough to really engage with the South American story, but because of said scenes the present scenes are slimline and minimal, so we're in some sense left with the worst of both worlds. While Sloane's rebukes of Nadia are to be expected, they never encroach above passing-the-time level on my interest radar, with even Ron Rifkin seeming a bit bored.

-Marshall, about whom much more later, crows to Jack that he's doing lunch with Vaughn, presumably a reflex defence against the implied allegation of Jack's that no-one's interested in him as a person.

-It's getting to the stage where I wonder why Dixon or Vaughn or Sloane bother with the infamously ineffective phrase 'Phoenix abort!' since Syd invariably tells them that she can do it and that she's going in anyway. What Bell and Schuapker do here though, which is to have Syd get caught, is perhaps a soft pedal of the opinion that Sydney is sometimes reckless and willful in believing in her own ability regardless of others' opinions. It's an avenue which would be worth exploring.

-Similarly, it's interesting how strongly Sydney reacts when Nadia starts improvising in the second part of the mission. Is her reaction against Nadia's decision to break contact actually anger with herself for her earlier and habitual ad libbing, or does she not realise how hypocritical she's being?

-What the episode, lacklustre as a whole, does give in the end is a decent twist in both storylines. It may well have been possible to see it coming that Nadia killed Roberto, but I chalked her whole awkwardness with Syd up to a desire not to share her past, a suggestion that it would reveal her poverty and desperation and not wanting sympathy now that she's made a different life for herself. So I did think it was a brave twist. Not to mention the fact that Nadia, unlike the old twisted warhorses Jack and Arvin, has never shown any real sign of this moral ambiguity. Now, yes he was a criminal and yes she was lacerated by grief, but I still think it's a brave move to put a strong female character, in prime position for a role model, down as a murderer, and it will be interesting to see if and how this plays out as we reach the end of the Season.

-And then the twist where we find out that Vaughn's father was responsible for the placement of Nadia. This adds twisty Rambaldi layers to the story as well as taking out the worrying feeling in my head that Vaughn's voyage of discovery, while interesting for him, was really sloppily dislocated from the rest of the Seasonal arc. What relationship did Bill and Sloane have?

Not a patch on

4.13- 'Tuesday'

Presumably Goddard and Breen were going for the most mundane of days, not halfway through the week, missing the memories of the weekend encapsulated by Monday, the halfway house of Wednesday, the hope of Thursday or the delight of Friday. And then they flip it on its head by showing that Marshall does not have a normal job. I like the way that it's not immediately obvious this is going to be Marshall-centric, it just drops naturally into that pattern, and I think the general standard of writing, both structurally and closely, is the best this Season. There are some real emotional punches, (some of the credit for which must fall upon Jennifer Garner and Kevin Weisman), which Alias very rarely delivers, and some stupendously wonderful humour.

-But we start on a salsa, and in this tidiest of episodes, we'll end on a dance forty minutes later after it is a consistent theme waltzing through the plot-lines. I like when Vaughn touchingly tells Syd that they'll be dancing before she knows it and she asks, thinking of her conversation with the man at the start of the episode, 'Will my feet touch the ground?' It's a moment where audience know more than secondary characters, which often work well.

-Jack's line after Syd reveals that she's trapped in a coffin with a corpse, 'Stay calm', is played absolutely straight, which is the right choice- the series has to take the moment seriously, but viewers watching for the camp, me included, can't help but release a giggle to roam free in the world, since this is Jack at his most pokerface stoic.

-Giacchino's got some really good theme tunes working this Season- one, I think, for Syd and Vaughn, and one for Sloane and general evilness. I wish I'd noticed when they were first used, but like all good incidental music, this has obviously been used for a while and has only now reached my ears as something recognisable.

-Excellent subversive touch. The mobile phone saying 'Goodbye' as it gives up on Syd's hope of survival- I always enjoy it when fake superficial cheeriness, (especially in inanimate objects), is given a good seeing to by someone with time to skewer it satirically.

-Marshall's song about lanthanides and praesodynium to Mitchell down the phone is an instant classic moment, and is supported well by the writers since instead of this moment of humour being out of context, Weisman is then made to turn on a dime as Carrie hangs up in frustration about his long day at, (what she imagines is) an office job, and he feels guilty and sad and brave.

-The gouging out of the eye scene, which is a bravura piece of writing and directing, using Jack and Marshall absolutely note-perfectly, possibly owes a debt to the remarkably trashy, (maybe even trashier than his 'Da Vinci Code'), 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown. The way Victor Garber delivers 'Like a soft-boiled egg...' Shivers.

We get Syd Season One as a reflection in the present life of Marshall as he tells Sydney how little he wants to lie to Carrie. There's also very much the resonance of early Buffy here, like the end of 'Innocence' where Giles and Buffy are, like Marshall and Syd, sitting in a car in the rain, connecting with each other. But Marshall like Buffy knows that ultimately, he's going to have to leave the person who knows and understands the extraordinary and the personal, and go inside the house to a person they love more than anyone, (Joyce, Carrie), and calmly lie.

There's the train station again, as in 'Almost Thirty Years', and wonderfully done, finishing with the dance, which is just marvellously executed. Easily the best episode this Season and one of Alias' best.

Thanks for reading.

TCH