Alias 5.10 and 5.11

[selenak]

Thanks to monanotlisa, I was able to watch the latest Alias episodes. Ah, Alias, you know, I've missed you. You've never been my grand and doomed passion, but you're the guy to hang out with and never be bored. Plus you give me several characters I adore, and I find what rozk calls your Byzantine atmosphere endearing. When you're gone, I'll remember you fondly.



Firstly, I'm so glad about the way they handled Irina. The trick with characters like Irina or Sloane is to keep them ambiguous, and ambiguous means they don't just hurt the bad guys. Irina didn't get to be "The Man" after her KGB career by being a nice woman, a "good bad girl" who is only ruthless towards mean people; she wasn't above infecting the people who worked for her and presumably trusted her with a lethal virus, or ordering Sark to torture Will, lest we forget that bit of canon. Irina is also capable of coming through for Jack and Sydney on a grand scale when their lives are at stake. But you need both sides in play, not just one, and they certainly were in Maternal Instincts. More about Irina in a moment.

S.O.S. was a bit playing for time - the last episode shot before Jennifer Garner gave birth - and it shows, but it still had a lot of good things. Loved the Sydney-Peyton interaction. Loved Peyton in general, even more in the next episode. Amy Acker is clearly having a ball, and I'm trying to work out why I like Peyton so much more than poor retconned Evil!Lauren in later s3, or Sark in general, or Anna Espinosa (nothing against Anna, and I adore Gina Torres, but Anna never interested me in the sense of wanting to read or write fanfic about her, whereas Peyton does - both in the reading and in the writing sense). Jack going ballistic on what-was-his-name in front of the other top CIA guys brings up the ever recurring question as to why everyone keeps reinstating Jack to the CIA (come on, which secret service would keep a guy whose first loyalty will always be his daughter and who'd cheerfully off anyone he suspects of harming her?), but hey, they do this with Sloane as well, and it's Alias, so, handwave.

Handwaves are also necessary in the category of badly pronounced German - like monanotlisa said, there have to be hundreds of starving German actors in L.A. - actually, I've been there several times, and I know there are a lot of Germans - why not hire one of them for such a short cameo? - and Italian accents (why should an Italian family speak English with each other?). The SpyFam outing was all it should have been, as the three worked with each other and against each other, pulled guns at each other and helped a new member to life. Given how Irina parted from Sydney and Jack at the end of s4, I didn't find it far-fetched that Sydney wanted to believe her mother was just here to help her. Later, she says "I fell for you, and even Dad did", and that's just it. You keep falling for Irina Derevko, again and again. (The audience does as well.) Because like all really good liars (see also: Arvin Sloane), she tells a lot of truths in her lies. So, my current position on Irina: yes, she saved the baby because it was Sydney's child, but also, she's not working with Prophet Five for altruistic reasons, i.e. just to help Syd and Jack from within. Now the fact she put Sydney through that interrogation in Horizon might or might not have been to show to her allies how determined she was (a la shooting Sydney in The Enemy Walks In), but the fact of the matter remains, she did it. I don't want any accusations about Sydney being unfair if she doesn't trust Irina again or shows resentment the next time they meet.

(Irina Derevko and Arvin Sloane: torturing their daughters, then saving them in the last minute. They really ought to talk. Neither has any room to judge the other, and it frustrates me we never saw a conversation about Nadia, or any conversation since s2. This reminds me, given that Irina was the one to kill what's his name and judging by Horizon and these new episodes must be in a pretty high position in Prophet Five, she must know that whoever leads Prophet Five is blackmailing Sloane with the cure for Nadia. Note that she didn't mention this to either Jack or Sydney. I wonder, might Irina's Prophet Five involvement be connected to that Nadia cure as well?)

Peyton shooting down the helicopter was cool, as was Peyton in general. (See above.) I'm glad that hand twitched, signalling to us Peyton is still alive (as if we wouldn't guess, what with Amy Acker being in the credits now). Did I mention I feel the lure of Peyton fanfic?

Meanwhile, I also hope my guy Arvin gets to kill Ehrman and the other heads of Prophet Five (save Irina, of course!) in a creative and unpleasant manner. Well, he already could kill Dean, so I think chances are good JJ will fulfill my wish. Playing Rachel was an easy minor exercise for him, but alas I think that will be how Jack finds out, because Jack didn't tell him about Vancouver, and Sloane said to Rachel he had done. Anyway. (It's not like Jack has any room to judge, either, in the getting people hurt and killed for one's daughter department.)

Thomas Grace: was interesting to me for the first time when he didn't do the expected thing of killing badly-pronouncing-German guy and lied to Rachel later. Also, this contradicts what he claimed earlier this season - being unable to tell the difference between German and Czech - so again, set up for future discovery. Who is the Cardinal, I wonder? My guess re: Grace is that he's deeply undercover, though, as opposed to being a villain.

Oh, yes, and Vaughn is alive. I haven't missed him, but since s4, I don't actively dislike him anymore, either. Maybe my s4 sympathy will return. Till then, I hope he'll remain off screen as much as possible, as I'd rather explore the other characters more.

Best overall scene: that conversation between Sydney and Irina. Irina saying that Sydney was planned by the KGB blew a lot of fanon out of the water - and I don't think she was lying - and her statement that yes, she came to love Sydney, but that she felt she had a choice between being a good mother and a good agent, that she couldn't be both, and picked the profession was a great Irina moment, too. And now I'm sorry Yahtzee's poll was posted before this, because Sydney's "Watch me" in reply to Irina's statement that Syd won't be able to be an agent and a mother at the same time, either, was, to me, a great and classic Syd moment. And how much do I love that Jack's newest attempt to kill his wife was interrupted by the SpyBaby arriving which meant the grandparents had to help Sydney together? So very very much.

At its heart, Alias is a twisted great family romance. Which is why it's fitting Sydney will end it as a mother.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Scenes from next week weren't in my download. But I just made eirena apply for Irina at fandom_muses so I can play out Irina-Sloane encounters with her. So I'm full of Older Spies glow.

... you're mean. Really mean. See if I tell you kangeiko has just had a fabulous idea about Lilah's origins...