Alias 5.06, Solo
Nov. 16th, 2005 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakToday, my copy arrived - thank you, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kskitten! - and at once I got to watch my fix of Arvin Sloane and the two Bristows. Kidding. Mostly. I do like other people on the show as well. Including Rachel the newbie. On to spoilery reactions!
I continue to admire the way JG's pregnancy works for Sydney the character. Both with Sydney using it to improvise on a spy mission, as with the general, and scenes like Sydney sitting and observing the child in the department store. I'm even okay with the Vaughn longing in a way I wasn't in season 3, where it made Sydney look like a lovesick teen. (No offense to lovesick teens.) Here, Sydney playing the tape recording for her child in the end was a woman who had lost her child's father but was going on with her life, not by either surpressing or drowning in her grief.
Sydney's developing bond with Rachel comes across as very credible, and Sydney talking Rachel through one of Alias' infamous "female character gets to play the hooker" scenes made me feel said scene was about character, not giving the viewers their weekly bit of eye candy and "good girl NEARLY, but not really" tilitilation. I don't think this would have worked if, say, Rachel had been talked through this by Grace or Jack or any of the male characters, but by making it about her relationship with Sydney and Sydney's own past aliases, showing us how she felt about doing this - that made all the difference.
Amy Acker as Peyton continues to do a neat job and reminds all of us who admired her as Illyria that she looks great in a tight suit.*g* Though actually if anything, that confrontation had overtures of Buffy and Faith, with Rachel covering Peyton the moment the bullets started to flly despite earlier serious attempts to do each other in.
Thomas Grace: still have no opinion on same. If they're going for UST between him and Rachel here, don't see it, but maybe it needs time.
Great continuity shout-out when Marshall asks Rachel whether she knows what a spork is. Thanks, Jeff Bell.
And now to the stuff that any reader of these ramblings knows was the predictable highlight of the episode for me: all those scenes featuring a certain Arvin Sloane.
For starters, Gordon Dean is going down. Definitely. If he bothered to do research on Sloane beyond the obvious, he should have checked out the fate of the Alliance, Robert Lindsey, and other worthies who thought they had the upper hand with Sloane and could force him to do their every bidding. (Also, Dean obviously overlooked the fact that while Sloane is prepared to do all to help Nadia, he did shoot her when it was Nadia versus Sydney and the world.) Mind you, this won't happen any time soon, since the Sloane-as-double-or-triple-agent is obviously a season-long arc (or at least half a season, if the time between the Alliance asking for Emily's death and the time we find out how Sloane really handled this is any indication), but it will happen. Considering Sloane has quite the cruel imagination, it will happen in a spectacularly unpleasant way. Can't say I'm in the least bit sorry for Mr. Dean.
Secondly, love, love, love the scene with Sloane and Sydney. Which isn't a surprise, since their relationship is as dear to me as the one between Sloane and Jack, though in a different way, but this was an especially good one. Because he confesses to her, an emotional truth that is wrapped up in a truth which is also a lie, and this is such a Sloane thing to do, especially with one of his Bristows. Does she know what she's hearing? Only time will tell.
And lastly: NADIA! I was waiting for her the entire episode, of course, due to MM being in the credits, but I still got misty-eyed during her thirty seconds or so. And nobody does grief and stillness like Ron Rifkin. (Okay, Victor Garber, too, but only almost.) And how much do I love that Sloane still does the widower thing of wearing both his and his wife's wedding ring? So much.
kskitten! - and at once I got to watch my fix of Arvin Sloane and the two Bristows. Kidding. Mostly. I do like other people on the show as well. Including Rachel the newbie. On to spoilery reactions! I continue to admire the way JG's pregnancy works for Sydney the character. Both with Sydney using it to improvise on a spy mission, as with the general, and scenes like Sydney sitting and observing the child in the department store. I'm even okay with the Vaughn longing in a way I wasn't in season 3, where it made Sydney look like a lovesick teen. (No offense to lovesick teens.) Here, Sydney playing the tape recording for her child in the end was a woman who had lost her child's father but was going on with her life, not by either surpressing or drowning in her grief.
Sydney's developing bond with Rachel comes across as very credible, and Sydney talking Rachel through one of Alias' infamous "female character gets to play the hooker" scenes made me feel said scene was about character, not giving the viewers their weekly bit of eye candy and "good girl NEARLY, but not really" tilitilation. I don't think this would have worked if, say, Rachel had been talked through this by Grace or Jack or any of the male characters, but by making it about her relationship with Sydney and Sydney's own past aliases, showing us how she felt about doing this - that made all the difference.
Amy Acker as Peyton continues to do a neat job and reminds all of us who admired her as Illyria that she looks great in a tight suit.*g* Though actually if anything, that confrontation had overtures of Buffy and Faith, with Rachel covering Peyton the moment the bullets started to flly despite earlier serious attempts to do each other in.
Thomas Grace: still have no opinion on same. If they're going for UST between him and Rachel here, don't see it, but maybe it needs time.
Great continuity shout-out when Marshall asks Rachel whether she knows what a spork is. Thanks, Jeff Bell.
And now to the stuff that any reader of these ramblings knows was the predictable highlight of the episode for me: all those scenes featuring a certain Arvin Sloane.
For starters, Gordon Dean is going down. Definitely. If he bothered to do research on Sloane beyond the obvious, he should have checked out the fate of the Alliance, Robert Lindsey, and other worthies who thought they had the upper hand with Sloane and could force him to do their every bidding. (Also, Dean obviously overlooked the fact that while Sloane is prepared to do all to help Nadia, he did shoot her when it was Nadia versus Sydney and the world.) Mind you, this won't happen any time soon, since the Sloane-as-double-or-triple-agent is obviously a season-long arc (or at least half a season, if the time between the Alliance asking for Emily's death and the time we find out how Sloane really handled this is any indication), but it will happen. Considering Sloane has quite the cruel imagination, it will happen in a spectacularly unpleasant way. Can't say I'm in the least bit sorry for Mr. Dean.
Secondly, love, love, love the scene with Sloane and Sydney. Which isn't a surprise, since their relationship is as dear to me as the one between Sloane and Jack, though in a different way, but this was an especially good one. Because he confesses to her, an emotional truth that is wrapped up in a truth which is also a lie, and this is such a Sloane thing to do, especially with one of his Bristows. Does she know what she's hearing? Only time will tell.
And lastly: NADIA! I was waiting for her the entire episode, of course, due to MM being in the credits, but I still got misty-eyed during her thirty seconds or so. And nobody does grief and stillness like Ron Rifkin. (Okay, Victor Garber, too, but only almost.) And how much do I love that Sloane still does the widower thing of wearing both his and his wife's wedding ring? So much.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-16 02:51 pm (UTC)I love Sloane's confession-and-warning to Sydney. I can't wait to see how Sloane destroys Dean, because it's going to be good.
I very much like the use of Rachel in this episode -- I'm a little hesitant to say hat Alias is really questioning its basic assumptions about prostitution and spying, but it was wonderful to see one of those scenes from the inside -- from inside Sydney, rather than looking at her body from the outside, which is what those scenes have always seemed to be about. Very cool.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-16 05:16 pm (UTC)Bring on the Dean comeuppance!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-16 03:03 pm (UTC)What a spot-on description of what was going on there. There are just so many layers at which Sloane operates in everything he does. Dean totally doesn't know what he's getting himself in for.
And yes, I noticed in this episode too that Sloane is still wearing the wedding rings. What a perfect character touch that is.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-16 05:15 pm (UTC)Another sign Dean is in trouble: he uses the term "Arvin" unasked for. Only Jack and Emily get to do that. Villains of the show who do generally end up uncomfortably (McKennas Cole) or dead.*g*
no subject
Date: 2005-11-18 05:14 am (UTC)The Alias costumers like her.
And, um, that's all I have to say about this episode.
*is shallow*
no subject
Date: 2005-11-18 06:29 am (UTC)