Alias and optimism
Apr. 21st, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiThis commentary builds off the excellent posts made earlier this week by Amy and Rez. What follows is in part for my own reference--I'm not sure I'm breaking new ground.
I have, I admit, been mean and snarky and bitchy about this season's Alias, and I'm not going to apologize about that. There's been a lot to mock, especially the poor continuity. But for all the people who would ask, "If you don't like the show, why keep watching it?" I would answer that I now believe that the season can be pulled out of the abyss. The things that went wrong have gone very wrong indeed, and S3 will never be counted as among Alias' better seasons, but things have started to fall into place.
When I first heard the spoiler about the introduction of Sydney's sister, I thought it was a dreadful idea. Dire and soap-opera-esque and if I saw it in a fanfic I'd hit the delete key pronto. And so I believed up until Sunday night's Alias (#x18: The Hourglass), which has made a convert out of me. Why? Because of what it does to Jack and Sydney.
Sunday night, I watched Jack become more and more like Arvin Sloane. Jack has maintained that he's nothing like Sloane, because everything he's done has been to protect his daughter (as he said back at the beginning of the season). Now that Sloane has a daughter too, the line between them is beginning to break down. Jack pouring the wine for Arvin (as Arvin poured for Emily, and earlier for Sark). Jack promising, in sum, to do everything Sloane had done and worse. He frightened me in that scene, and when he revived Sloane: I believed him to be capable of anything. I think we're going to see exactly how far Jack will go to protect his daughter.
I like watching Jack Bristow do bad things for good reasons, so I'm thrilled to the teeth. I also suspect that Sydney is not going to see her unknown sister as a threat--not until, or possibly even after, her sister tries to kill her. If Jack tries to act preemptively against the sister, she'll oppose him.
As for Sydney, the whole illogical mess of the memory-wipe finally falls into place. Working for the Covenant, she discovers the Passenger's identity, and probably something suggesting that she, Sydney, is fated to destroy her sister (or perhaps vice versa). She panics, and chooses to protect her sister the only way she knows: the Covenant can't force her to tell what she herself doesn't know. She erases her own memory to protect her sister from herself.
I don't think that it betrays a great deal of self-knowledge--wouldn't Sydney have realized that she'd move heaven and earth to recover her memories?--but it does buy her and her sister time. (She has just retraced her steps, but this time she's doing so within the CIA, not as an agent alone amidst the Covenant.) But it strikes me as very much in-character for Sydney: she would see it as a form of self-sacrifice to protect an innocent. Family is important to Sydney, and she'll do anything to protect hers (which, as I think Rez noted, makes her more than a little like her mother).
The existence of a sister also makes some of Irina's contradictory behavior make sense: with two daughters to focus on, and two daughters who may be fated to oppose each other, she has a difficult balance to maintain. Her relationships really are complicated. And if Olivia Reed is the third Derevko sister, then it's possible that she and Irina are at odds--as Olivia seems to be working wholeheartedly for the Covenant. I'd be interested in knowing Sark's position in this: he's been so incompetent so often recently, and in such strange ways, that I'm coming around to Amy's suggestion that he's Irina's mole within the Covenant.
At this stage, the only hopeless problem I see is the Syd/Vaughn relationship. Or lack thereof. I have to admit that by the end of S2 I was all in favor of S/V. I could have watched them play ice hockey and smile goofily at each other for an entire episode, and walked off with a smile on my own face. Now when I see them onscreen together I cringe in horror. It's the problem of their dishonesty, I'm afraid. I don't think that getting rid of Lauren and allowing them to be back together will help the situation, either. This relationship needs to be re-grown from scratch; it also needs, I think, to take second place to Sydney's familial problems, at least for the moment. If Sydney is focused on her sister, and not on Vaughn, I will be happier.
So I'm pleased. I feel that things are falling into place, and going somewhere interesting. And (with the exception of Dark!Jack) I don't feel that these are developments which the show will fail to follow up on. We will see Sydney trying to protect her sister, and I think that having a main character who makes sense will go a long way toward making the show work again.
So yes, go ahead and call me Pollyanna. I think that the last few episodes will make the whole season work.
I have, I admit, been mean and snarky and bitchy about this season's Alias, and I'm not going to apologize about that. There's been a lot to mock, especially the poor continuity. But for all the people who would ask, "If you don't like the show, why keep watching it?" I would answer that I now believe that the season can be pulled out of the abyss. The things that went wrong have gone very wrong indeed, and S3 will never be counted as among Alias' better seasons, but things have started to fall into place.
When I first heard the spoiler about the introduction of Sydney's sister, I thought it was a dreadful idea. Dire and soap-opera-esque and if I saw it in a fanfic I'd hit the delete key pronto. And so I believed up until Sunday night's Alias (#x18: The Hourglass), which has made a convert out of me. Why? Because of what it does to Jack and Sydney.
Sunday night, I watched Jack become more and more like Arvin Sloane. Jack has maintained that he's nothing like Sloane, because everything he's done has been to protect his daughter (as he said back at the beginning of the season). Now that Sloane has a daughter too, the line between them is beginning to break down. Jack pouring the wine for Arvin (as Arvin poured for Emily, and earlier for Sark). Jack promising, in sum, to do everything Sloane had done and worse. He frightened me in that scene, and when he revived Sloane: I believed him to be capable of anything. I think we're going to see exactly how far Jack will go to protect his daughter.
I like watching Jack Bristow do bad things for good reasons, so I'm thrilled to the teeth. I also suspect that Sydney is not going to see her unknown sister as a threat--not until, or possibly even after, her sister tries to kill her. If Jack tries to act preemptively against the sister, she'll oppose him.
As for Sydney, the whole illogical mess of the memory-wipe finally falls into place. Working for the Covenant, she discovers the Passenger's identity, and probably something suggesting that she, Sydney, is fated to destroy her sister (or perhaps vice versa). She panics, and chooses to protect her sister the only way she knows: the Covenant can't force her to tell what she herself doesn't know. She erases her own memory to protect her sister from herself.
I don't think that it betrays a great deal of self-knowledge--wouldn't Sydney have realized that she'd move heaven and earth to recover her memories?--but it does buy her and her sister time. (She has just retraced her steps, but this time she's doing so within the CIA, not as an agent alone amidst the Covenant.) But it strikes me as very much in-character for Sydney: she would see it as a form of self-sacrifice to protect an innocent. Family is important to Sydney, and she'll do anything to protect hers (which, as I think Rez noted, makes her more than a little like her mother).
The existence of a sister also makes some of Irina's contradictory behavior make sense: with two daughters to focus on, and two daughters who may be fated to oppose each other, she has a difficult balance to maintain. Her relationships really are complicated. And if Olivia Reed is the third Derevko sister, then it's possible that she and Irina are at odds--as Olivia seems to be working wholeheartedly for the Covenant. I'd be interested in knowing Sark's position in this: he's been so incompetent so often recently, and in such strange ways, that I'm coming around to Amy's suggestion that he's Irina's mole within the Covenant.
At this stage, the only hopeless problem I see is the Syd/Vaughn relationship. Or lack thereof. I have to admit that by the end of S2 I was all in favor of S/V. I could have watched them play ice hockey and smile goofily at each other for an entire episode, and walked off with a smile on my own face. Now when I see them onscreen together I cringe in horror. It's the problem of their dishonesty, I'm afraid. I don't think that getting rid of Lauren and allowing them to be back together will help the situation, either. This relationship needs to be re-grown from scratch; it also needs, I think, to take second place to Sydney's familial problems, at least for the moment. If Sydney is focused on her sister, and not on Vaughn, I will be happier.
So I'm pleased. I feel that things are falling into place, and going somewhere interesting. And (with the exception of Dark!Jack) I don't feel that these are developments which the show will fail to follow up on. We will see Sydney trying to protect her sister, and I think that having a main character who makes sense will go a long way toward making the show work again.
So yes, go ahead and call me Pollyanna. I think that the last few episodes will make the whole season work.
