Except absolutely not, because what Syd's doing here is not inhabiting another facet of herself for show with her skimpy disguise, but having to act as her mother. Why Vaughn tells her that it is just another Alias is a bit confusing; either he's trying to reassure her falsely, or eh genuinely believes it, in which case he's just a fool. Luckily, there's not too much of him to worry about in this instalment.

4.18- 'Mirage'

I thought it was interesting that in one of the key scenes of this episode, where Sloane is talking to Sydney, we see behind him a video screen with an image of the sea, or at least a large body of water. This seems to me to be a visual reference to mirage, as well as a reinforcement of Sloane's identification with water throughout the series. The question is: is it there as a suggestion that Arvin's concerned Uncle persona of the last few episodes is itself a mirage, or is it jsut fitted in as a prompt to the main mirages of the episode, those of Jack in his hallucination, and Nadia in his belief in Sophia's essential kind old motherliness? She continues to be marvellous here, carrying on from her performance last week where she failed to keep eye contact with Nadia at vital moments, and gave her the necklace which, like Laura's gift to Jack of a book, or Sydney's music box, is not merely the sentimental memento one might expect, but something functional. One might see Alias as thoroughly anti-materialistic in this way, though I'd expect that suggestion might run into problems elsewhere in the show's schematic.

-It's nice that Jack's hallucinations are sufficiently off that the revelation that he's been seeing things, whilst surprising, is not entirely unsignalled. This isn't like the infuriating Vanilla Sky where the splice between reality and fiction occurs at a random point and then is used for a formlessly grey resolution. Here, for example, we get the scene where Jack calls the monkeys 'cute'. When I sawe this, I inwardly marked points against newbie Brad Kane, since I didn't think Jack would be this polite or off the point. It turns out, of course, that this was all in his subconscious. Nicely done.

-Another clever point is that we see how much Jack cares fro Sydney, (and indeed Laura), in his subconscious before the main scene of the episode. Our perpetual worry throughout not only this episode but the whole series is that Sydney doesn't realise how much Jack loves her, or loved her when she needed loving in her childhood. It is a courageous decision to spill the heart-shaped spaghetti in such a final way, although it does raise the question of whether the essential tension between Jack and Sydney can ever be as strong in future seasons after she has, finally, complete assurance and belief in her centrality in his life. This is carefully done by reference to Jack's own father, (the first in the series), to add an extra layer of sadness to his constant absence.

-Are we to think of the doctor as somehow noble in the way that Atticus Finch is noble? I suppose we'll find out in episodes to come.

-And so to the finest scene of the episode, this Season, and possibly the whole run- which certainly includes the best Jack/Sydney scene of the series, interpreting the slash how you will. There's always pressure on a scene like this: which the episode has been building towards, and it could kill an entire arc if it isn't brought off well. Here it's done magnificently. It is even extended to a sufficient length that all sorts of nuances are highlighted. My favourite, the dreadfully, dreadfully sad one, was that this scene was not a pale reenactment of happier times. Just as Jack is being set up here in order to get Lidell's details, so was he being set up in the early 80's by his wife. When we finally see his humanity, we can not stop to applaud and delight in it simply, because we know that the fact he has revealed so much has allowed Irina Derevko to exploit him. In a sense, Sydney is playing him like her mother did, which is just grindingly sad.

I remember in the months before my grandfather died a couple of years ago, he used to have these delusions that he was in the middle of a contract negotiation. On one occasion, I asked him what he had been doing over the last few days and he said, with utter certainty: 'I've been busy. I had to drive up to Neath to secure a contract with Welsh Glass.' It was funny, and at the same time deeply sad because he, almost exactly like Jack, had been a man fiercely in control of his own life, regulated in everything that he did. He was in charge of a large company, and was absolutely regimental in his commitment to order in all aspects of his life. That such confusion should take him was doubly sad because of his character type. As a result, watching Sydney play her father here, just as Irina did, was almost unbearable towards the end- I cried despite myself. The consolation of the scene at the piano, the only thing of the early 80's that Jack still does have, his daughter for whom he has risked his life, one note of consolation breaks through the maelstrom of manipulation.

Not quite as good as 'Tuesday' for me as a whole episode, but the final ten minutes or so were just transporting.

Thanks for reading.

TCH