Alias 4.19 "In Deams" review
May. 16th, 2005 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI have a pounding headache and am exhausted from the Pentecost weekend (which here in Germany includes Monday) with my family (in a good way, though), but am in high spirits nonetheless. How could I not be after having watched In Dreams, aka Alias 4.19, being the Sloane fan I am?
I must applaud Jennifer Garner. She got some wonderful performances out of everybody in her directorial debut, was excellent in her few scenes as well, and never gave me the impression this was clumsy or static. Good script, too (well, except for Dixon and Vaughn being clueless when What's his Name from season 1 committed suicide, but hey, we never watch this show for outward plot plausibility anyway, we watch it for the relationships and the characters).
The gentle and quiet first scene between Sydney and Jack was the follow-up to Mirage I was hoping for. Yay for continuity! And in the midst of being touched, I was amused when Jack asked whose idea it had been and Sydney said it had been Sloane's. (Jack, who else would have the idea of saving your life via letting your daughter play her mother for you? Your pal Arvin is the expert for all twistedness.) When Jack asked Sloane for a moment alone after the briefing, I actually thought he was going to talk about that, but no, we got something more interesting, i.e. more information about their mysterious shared knowledge and pact and this season's big impending doom to be stopped. And here I just have to quote![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atpotch's description from his review, because I don't think it can be bettered:
The two Titans go head to head. In 72 hours I tell Langley, and you are finished. Pause. Lingering menace. Glimmer in eye. You too Jack. Almost smile. OTP gleam. Jack stone-faced. And cut. Closest Alias has come to a sex scene in ages. What's the betting Jennifer Garner said: 'With a touch more love, Victor'?
Well, I'm gladandrastewhite, kangeiko & self aren't alone in our madness anymore.*g* Anyway, excellent tension building, and great pay-off later of when we find out what they've been referring to, because I really don't care whether it's retcon or not, that ties beautifully to the word "Peace" having been the Rambaldi revelation from The Telling, and to interpret it in this way is just such an Arvin Sloane thing to do. It also explains why Sloane's OmniFam period was brought up in dialogue in Another Mr. Sloane, and gives that firm an additional reason for existing, beyond the Nadia search.
Incidentally, the debriefing scene with Sydney and Cloane was terrific. Jennifer Garner and Joel Grey don't quite have the same intensity and wrongness vibe as Jennifer Garner and Ron Rifkin, but they had just the right amount of tension, and Sydney's reaction to hearing what she did were perfect.
As with Mirage, the heart and soul were of course the memories and the father/daughter thing. If Mirage was When Jack Loved Laura/Irina, In Dreams was When Arvin Loved Emily, and oh, it was so good and painful to see Amy Irving as Emily again. I really don't cry easily about tv, but she and Ron Rifkin manage it every time. This is one reason why I stuck with Alias - the older characters are given such rich emotional lives. And yes, I noticed that Sloane goes from wearing his usual black to wearing the white suit he had on when reuniting with Emily on that beach in The Getaway - the one point at his life where he had the chance for a true happy end - to back in black when Nadia and harsh reality came a' calling.
I am very much afraid that Sloane will die in the season finale, though. Mind you, not that I expected him to survive the show anyway, and they didn't know when shooting it whether there would be a fifth season. But my favourite character in the Star Wars saga is Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and I recognize the signs of set-up when I see them. Nadia is Luke, the only one who believes there is goodness left in her father, and they'll have some variation of the "I wanted to save you"/ "You already did" dialogue after he dies saving her. (Philippa Boyens even wrote that in for the Theoden & Eowyn scene in the film version of RotK, because in the novel it is Theoden and Eomer and a quite different dialogue.)
(Or, alternatively, if they changed the finale after hearing there would be a season 5, he can't save her, Nadia dies and Sloane goes back to Evil Overlordism, i.e. Ron Rifkin stays on show. Either way, one of them won't survive the season, mark my words.)
yahtzee63 I think was the first one to suggest that Jacquelyn was the name of a child Emily and Sloane lost, when we heard the name in Another Mr. Sloane, and that was always my theory as well. Again, I don't care whether this was a new idea or had been backstory on JJ's mind before, but it fits perfectly with both Sloane's hunger for Sydney as his surrogate daugther and later, upon finding out she exists, Nadia as his real daughter. And with the way Sydney always connected to him with Rambaldi. (And yes, of course he named her after Jack. *g* Here I have to quote atpotch again: And as if in answer to our slashy prayers, (well, to be honest, I'm not sure that anyone had slashy prayers, but to cap the thread in this review anyhow), Sloane decides to name his first daughter after the true love of his life to date. No, not Franz Ferdinand. He of chiselled jaw and sheet iron countenance. )
Ron Rifkin always played grief like no one's business - just think of what he did when Emily had cancer in season 1, when he was otherwise the Big Bad of the show, or later when she actually died in season 2 - but this breakdown was just scorch the earth intense. And to honour Emily's request to never speak her name again is such a Sloane thing to do as well. See, that's one major reason why the other 'ships of the show - be it Syd/Vaughn or Syd/Sark if you include UCs - just pale in comparison for me. Sloane/Emily is more intense and tragic than the former, and Jack/Irina hotter than the later.
(And Mr. Bristow and Mr. Sloane are still in a tied race for the "Best And Most Devoted Husband Ever" award. One juror points out that Mr. Bristow did never cheat on his wife, but another pointed out that Mr. Sloane never tried to get his executed by the state.)
I'm glad that Emily wasn't resurrected, though. Her appearance via memories was beautiful, but the tragedy of her death would have been tarnished if they had used some Rambaldi juice or whatever to bring her back.
The idyll of the past, Sloane and Emily and their child which never lived, versus the reality of Nadia was an obvious showdown but no less effective for that. (And an interesting parallel/contrast to Mirage, because Sloane was doing this very deliberately, as opposed to Jack, recreating the lost past for himself and trying to change it.) I've said this about Nadia before, when reviewing The Index: one of the things she has in common with her father is that, unlike the two Bristows, she can allow herself to love someone who wronged her. Joel Grey's character (do we call him Bulger or Cloane now?) was so effectively creepy because he was Arvin Sloane without evidencing any of the humanity Sloane had left at his most ruthless, i.e. the ability to love a few people (and a very small circle that is, but he does love them) unconditionally. Which is why the device to bring up his old personality - subjecting him to some of the real Sloane's most painful memories - did not come across as cheesy at me, and why it's so chilling and fitting that he does evidence humanity (and evokes pity) afterwards, eternally broken and switching between his own self and the artificial Sloane personality. At the same time, the man in the chair at the end, watched by Jack and Sloane, is also still Sloane reduced to his Rambaldi obsession and stripped of everything else. The end of the road for him, if he chooses Rambaldi over his human ties.
While the genuine article appears to have chosen not just the human ties but the difficult road. When Sloane chose Emily over Rambaldi in Truth Takes Time in season 2, Emily died within a few hours, and thus he never was in a situation where he had to prove he could stick to that choice. Now, with Nadia, he is. And while J.J. Abrams could pull off a switch in the finale and tell us Sloane was faking it all along, I very much doubt it. As I said before, with all this set-up, it's far more likely that he's really heading towards a Return of the Jedi ending. Meaning that yes, he did try and does try to be a better man for Nadia, day by day. (Which of course begs for the question of whether he could do it without Nadia as an incentive, and again, if Ron Rifkin is in the fifth season I think we'll find out, and Nadia will be for the chops.) In this context, it's important that Nadia is not Emily's child, that she's not the result of Sloane's "light side" as it were but the result of an affair with a woman he didn't love and who didn't love him. Moreover, she's someone who had the introduction from hell to him, being exposed to his ruthlessness and dark side in a radical fashion when he tried to use her to channel Rambaldi and only stopped at the very last moment in order to save her life. Nadia doesn't stand for a lost ideal but for the messy present. And yet she also represents hope; again, the Luke Skywalker to his Darth Vader, able to see the Anakin within and considered naive or misguided by nearly all the other characters and the audience for it.
Jack's position here falls outside the SW paradigm: telling Sloane at the end that he would like to believe (but can't), which is about as close to a declaration of friendship Jack Bristow is able to give these days. And this episode certainly has an overplus of opportunities when he calls him "Arvin". (Can't wait till Andraste watches it and goes awwww over that with me.)
Most loved detail touch: Sydney coming in to the room at the end of the Sloane and Nadia encounter, looking shaken up and not saying a word. Because there was no reason for her to be there other than the compassion she can't admit feeling for him.
Now, despite my headache, I must watch it again.
Given that I'm now at liberty to read the fanfic, I am delighted to find the episode has already produced several gems. "The Third Sister" and "Reconciliation" being the most brilliant. Must fangirl Yahtzee. Tomorrow.
I must applaud Jennifer Garner. She got some wonderful performances out of everybody in her directorial debut, was excellent in her few scenes as well, and never gave me the impression this was clumsy or static. Good script, too (well, except for Dixon and Vaughn being clueless when What's his Name from season 1 committed suicide, but hey, we never watch this show for outward plot plausibility anyway, we watch it for the relationships and the characters).
The gentle and quiet first scene between Sydney and Jack was the follow-up to Mirage I was hoping for. Yay for continuity! And in the midst of being touched, I was amused when Jack asked whose idea it had been and Sydney said it had been Sloane's. (Jack, who else would have the idea of saving your life via letting your daughter play her mother for you? Your pal Arvin is the expert for all twistedness.) When Jack asked Sloane for a moment alone after the briefing, I actually thought he was going to talk about that, but no, we got something more interesting, i.e. more information about their mysterious shared knowledge and pact and this season's big impending doom to be stopped. And here I just have to quote
atpotch's description from his review, because I don't think it can be bettered:The two Titans go head to head. In 72 hours I tell Langley, and you are finished. Pause. Lingering menace. Glimmer in eye. You too Jack. Almost smile. OTP gleam. Jack stone-faced. And cut. Closest Alias has come to a sex scene in ages. What's the betting Jennifer Garner said: 'With a touch more love, Victor'?
Well, I'm glad
andrastewhite, kangeiko & self aren't alone in our madness anymore.*g* Anyway, excellent tension building, and great pay-off later of when we find out what they've been referring to, because I really don't care whether it's retcon or not, that ties beautifully to the word "Peace" having been the Rambaldi revelation from The Telling, and to interpret it in this way is just such an Arvin Sloane thing to do. It also explains why Sloane's OmniFam period was brought up in dialogue in Another Mr. Sloane, and gives that firm an additional reason for existing, beyond the Nadia search. Incidentally, the debriefing scene with Sydney and Cloane was terrific. Jennifer Garner and Joel Grey don't quite have the same intensity and wrongness vibe as Jennifer Garner and Ron Rifkin, but they had just the right amount of tension, and Sydney's reaction to hearing what she did were perfect.
As with Mirage, the heart and soul were of course the memories and the father/daughter thing. If Mirage was When Jack Loved Laura/Irina, In Dreams was When Arvin Loved Emily, and oh, it was so good and painful to see Amy Irving as Emily again. I really don't cry easily about tv, but she and Ron Rifkin manage it every time. This is one reason why I stuck with Alias - the older characters are given such rich emotional lives. And yes, I noticed that Sloane goes from wearing his usual black to wearing the white suit he had on when reuniting with Emily on that beach in The Getaway - the one point at his life where he had the chance for a true happy end - to back in black when Nadia and harsh reality came a' calling.
I am very much afraid that Sloane will die in the season finale, though. Mind you, not that I expected him to survive the show anyway, and they didn't know when shooting it whether there would be a fifth season. But my favourite character in the Star Wars saga is Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and I recognize the signs of set-up when I see them. Nadia is Luke, the only one who believes there is goodness left in her father, and they'll have some variation of the "I wanted to save you"/ "You already did" dialogue after he dies saving her. (Philippa Boyens even wrote that in for the Theoden & Eowyn scene in the film version of RotK, because in the novel it is Theoden and Eomer and a quite different dialogue.)
(Or, alternatively, if they changed the finale after hearing there would be a season 5, he can't save her, Nadia dies and Sloane goes back to Evil Overlordism, i.e. Ron Rifkin stays on show. Either way, one of them won't survive the season, mark my words.)
yahtzee63 I think was the first one to suggest that Jacquelyn was the name of a child Emily and Sloane lost, when we heard the name in Another Mr. Sloane, and that was always my theory as well. Again, I don't care whether this was a new idea or had been backstory on JJ's mind before, but it fits perfectly with both Sloane's hunger for Sydney as his surrogate daugther and later, upon finding out she exists, Nadia as his real daughter. And with the way Sydney always connected to him with Rambaldi. (And yes, of course he named her after Jack. *g* Here I have to quote atpotch again: And as if in answer to our slashy prayers, (well, to be honest, I'm not sure that anyone had slashy prayers, but to cap the thread in this review anyhow), Sloane decides to name his first daughter after the true love of his life to date. No, not Franz Ferdinand. He of chiselled jaw and sheet iron countenance. ) Ron Rifkin always played grief like no one's business - just think of what he did when Emily had cancer in season 1, when he was otherwise the Big Bad of the show, or later when she actually died in season 2 - but this breakdown was just scorch the earth intense. And to honour Emily's request to never speak her name again is such a Sloane thing to do as well. See, that's one major reason why the other 'ships of the show - be it Syd/Vaughn or Syd/Sark if you include UCs - just pale in comparison for me. Sloane/Emily is more intense and tragic than the former, and Jack/Irina hotter than the later.
(And Mr. Bristow and Mr. Sloane are still in a tied race for the "Best And Most Devoted Husband Ever" award. One juror points out that Mr. Bristow did never cheat on his wife, but another pointed out that Mr. Sloane never tried to get his executed by the state.)
I'm glad that Emily wasn't resurrected, though. Her appearance via memories was beautiful, but the tragedy of her death would have been tarnished if they had used some Rambaldi juice or whatever to bring her back.
The idyll of the past, Sloane and Emily and their child which never lived, versus the reality of Nadia was an obvious showdown but no less effective for that. (And an interesting parallel/contrast to Mirage, because Sloane was doing this very deliberately, as opposed to Jack, recreating the lost past for himself and trying to change it.) I've said this about Nadia before, when reviewing The Index: one of the things she has in common with her father is that, unlike the two Bristows, she can allow herself to love someone who wronged her. Joel Grey's character (do we call him Bulger or Cloane now?) was so effectively creepy because he was Arvin Sloane without evidencing any of the humanity Sloane had left at his most ruthless, i.e. the ability to love a few people (and a very small circle that is, but he does love them) unconditionally. Which is why the device to bring up his old personality - subjecting him to some of the real Sloane's most painful memories - did not come across as cheesy at me, and why it's so chilling and fitting that he does evidence humanity (and evokes pity) afterwards, eternally broken and switching between his own self and the artificial Sloane personality. At the same time, the man in the chair at the end, watched by Jack and Sloane, is also still Sloane reduced to his Rambaldi obsession and stripped of everything else. The end of the road for him, if he chooses Rambaldi over his human ties.
While the genuine article appears to have chosen not just the human ties but the difficult road. When Sloane chose Emily over Rambaldi in Truth Takes Time in season 2, Emily died within a few hours, and thus he never was in a situation where he had to prove he could stick to that choice. Now, with Nadia, he is. And while J.J. Abrams could pull off a switch in the finale and tell us Sloane was faking it all along, I very much doubt it. As I said before, with all this set-up, it's far more likely that he's really heading towards a Return of the Jedi ending. Meaning that yes, he did try and does try to be a better man for Nadia, day by day. (Which of course begs for the question of whether he could do it without Nadia as an incentive, and again, if Ron Rifkin is in the fifth season I think we'll find out, and Nadia will be for the chops.) In this context, it's important that Nadia is not Emily's child, that she's not the result of Sloane's "light side" as it were but the result of an affair with a woman he didn't love and who didn't love him. Moreover, she's someone who had the introduction from hell to him, being exposed to his ruthlessness and dark side in a radical fashion when he tried to use her to channel Rambaldi and only stopped at the very last moment in order to save her life. Nadia doesn't stand for a lost ideal but for the messy present. And yet she also represents hope; again, the Luke Skywalker to his Darth Vader, able to see the Anakin within and considered naive or misguided by nearly all the other characters and the audience for it.
Jack's position here falls outside the SW paradigm: telling Sloane at the end that he would like to believe (but can't), which is about as close to a declaration of friendship Jack Bristow is able to give these days. And this episode certainly has an overplus of opportunities when he calls him "Arvin". (Can't wait till Andraste watches it and goes awwww over that with me.)
Most loved detail touch: Sydney coming in to the room at the end of the Sloane and Nadia encounter, looking shaken up and not saying a word. Because there was no reason for her to be there other than the compassion she can't admit feeling for him.
Now, despite my headache, I must watch it again.
Given that I'm now at liberty to read the fanfic, I am delighted to find the episode has already produced several gems. "The Third Sister" and "Reconciliation" being the most brilliant. Must fangirl Yahtzee. Tomorrow.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
completely pointless comment after waaaaay too much coffee...
Date: 2005-05-16 08:40 pm (UTC)That is all.
*retreats to stupid french stupid oral stupid exam. bah, humbug. i bet jack&arvin know french. i bet they could have entire novels full of unsaid french conversation in a single Significant Look*
*poke*
*poke*
*poke*
*runs away*
Re: completely pointless comment after waaaaay too much coffee...
Date: 2005-05-17 07:02 am (UTC)Re: completely pointless comment after waaaaay too much coffee...
Date: 2005-05-17 08:42 am (UTC)*academia love*
Re: completely pointless comment after waaaaay too much coffee...
Date: 2005-05-17 09:35 am (UTC)Re: completely pointless comment after waaaaay too much coffee...
Date: 2005-05-17 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-17 12:39 am (UTC)Does the Eurail pass cover -all- trains in the EU? Like, if I wanted to take happy little trains around the Netherlands, would it cover me? Or would I have to pay seperately to take trains within the individual countries?
My friend points out to me that these passes are probably not sold in Europe anyway, being possibly only for tourists.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-17 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-17 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-18 06:31 pm (UTC)Gorgeous, moving, and multi-faceted review. Thanks.