alias: 5x15
Hm. You know, I don't really like watching Alias with the BH -- he's too critical, although at least he's amusing about it. While I was catching him up he described the Bristow family dynamic as "the house of Atreus, but written by rhesus monkeys." (Totally not true, of course. The Mulders were the house of Atreus, as everyone knows.) Of course, he's still watching Lost, which I gave up on as a hopeless muddle sometime in season 1.
Things are starting to feel both slow and rushed to me; I would have liked another episode or so of Syd-as-Anna and Anna-as-Syd, but there isn't space for it. And I thought that the revelation about Tom's secret was a bit of an anticlimax, and took away from the heart of the episode, which was Sydney and Sloane.
And it was a little unfair of Rachel to describe finding the car as the closest thing she'd had to a night out since joining the CIA -- what about the one night stand with Sark? That ought to count for something. (Oh, and in a weird continuity question -- didn't we learn last season that Marshall's German is fluent?)
I did like the carbomb, though.
As for Sydney and Sloane, you might as well just go and read what selenak has to say. I liked the way each of them was so busy presenting what the other one expected that they couldn't recognize each other: Syd was focused on projecting Anna, and Sloane on hiding what he really felt from her. In retrospect, I wonder what they managed to communicate to each other, but the end. How much of what Sloane said actually made an impact on Sydney? How much of her protest that she's a person, not a symbol or a tool, could Sloane hear?
Sark was dreadfully funny in this episode as he carried out the most incompetent robbery in the world, and was quite good in the jail as well; loved the scene with him and his cellmate to death, as you'd expect. He gets the job done when it matters, you know, but tonight he seemed more reckless than usual. That worries me, somewhat; I want him to come out of this alive, and in the past that's been a good indicator of an upcoming character death. Why do I so often fixate on the expendable ones?
Like everyone, I loved the little scene with Vaughn and Dixon, and their comments about Jack. So true. But I think that Vaughn's presence just makes Sydney... I'm not sure. Less interesting. Suddenly she becomes all surfaces, and it's hard to take her seriously as a spy when she's projecting every emotion like that. Whereas in her scenes with Sloane, she's a totally different person, much more challenging, much more intelligent. Of course, that was alway's Vaughn's appeal to Sydney.
So, "the Rose" -- Rambaldi, or one of his immortal agents? And if the amulet (or whatever) contains the key to immortality, will he die now? And is it as simple as that, immortality, that's what all these people have been chasing for all these years? I don't think so. The language has been more apocalyptic than that.
As for what's coming... I didn't see the scenes from next week -- could someone describe them to me? So I don't have a firm sense of the direction the show is going, aside from the obvious, that everything will come to a head, that Syd (and Vaughn, and all her allies, whoever they may be) will have to settle this Rambaldi business once and for all. But I could have told you that back in Season 1. I fear that we'll have an unsatisfying conclusion -- either too many corpses or too few answers. Or maybe both.
I am ready to say goodbye to this show, but I'll miss it when it's over.
Things are starting to feel both slow and rushed to me; I would have liked another episode or so of Syd-as-Anna and Anna-as-Syd, but there isn't space for it. And I thought that the revelation about Tom's secret was a bit of an anticlimax, and took away from the heart of the episode, which was Sydney and Sloane.
And it was a little unfair of Rachel to describe finding the car as the closest thing she'd had to a night out since joining the CIA -- what about the one night stand with Sark? That ought to count for something. (Oh, and in a weird continuity question -- didn't we learn last season that Marshall's German is fluent?)
I did like the carbomb, though.
As for Sydney and Sloane, you might as well just go and read what selenak has to say. I liked the way each of them was so busy presenting what the other one expected that they couldn't recognize each other: Syd was focused on projecting Anna, and Sloane on hiding what he really felt from her. In retrospect, I wonder what they managed to communicate to each other, but the end. How much of what Sloane said actually made an impact on Sydney? How much of her protest that she's a person, not a symbol or a tool, could Sloane hear?
Sark was dreadfully funny in this episode as he carried out the most incompetent robbery in the world, and was quite good in the jail as well; loved the scene with him and his cellmate to death, as you'd expect. He gets the job done when it matters, you know, but tonight he seemed more reckless than usual. That worries me, somewhat; I want him to come out of this alive, and in the past that's been a good indicator of an upcoming character death. Why do I so often fixate on the expendable ones?
Like everyone, I loved the little scene with Vaughn and Dixon, and their comments about Jack. So true. But I think that Vaughn's presence just makes Sydney... I'm not sure. Less interesting. Suddenly she becomes all surfaces, and it's hard to take her seriously as a spy when she's projecting every emotion like that. Whereas in her scenes with Sloane, she's a totally different person, much more challenging, much more intelligent. Of course, that was alway's Vaughn's appeal to Sydney.
So, "the Rose" -- Rambaldi, or one of his immortal agents? And if the amulet (or whatever) contains the key to immortality, will he die now? And is it as simple as that, immortality, that's what all these people have been chasing for all these years? I don't think so. The language has been more apocalyptic than that.
As for what's coming... I didn't see the scenes from next week -- could someone describe them to me? So I don't have a firm sense of the direction the show is going, aside from the obvious, that everything will come to a head, that Syd (and Vaughn, and all her allies, whoever they may be) will have to settle this Rambaldi business once and for all. But I could have told you that back in Season 1. I fear that we'll have an unsatisfying conclusion -- either too many corpses or too few answers. Or maybe both.
I am ready to say goodbye to this show, but I'll miss it when it's over.