ALIAS starts tonight!

Cafe Society
21

Not only was Syndey missing during that time, but she was assumed to be dead (a body was found in the burned apartment, and was identified as Sydney). So Vaughn was just moving on with his life.

It does look like they are reverting to Season 1 format: Weiss is the New Will, and it looks like Nadia might be the New Francie. And now we have a dual father-daughter team with all sorts of secrets and hidden truths between them, all working together…for now.

For bad guys, isn’t Sark still running around (assuming he hasn’t been written out)? And then there’s Tarantino’s character and the rest of the Covenant (such as it is).

22

Marshall mentioned that Sark was still in custody, although we all know how long that usually lasts.

Speaking of Tarantino, I liked the little Kill Bill shout out when Syd had the sword in the parking garage (she was wearing an outfit very similar to the one the Bride has on when she shows up at Vernita Green’s house).

This is bugging me more the more I think about it. Mostly because both of them are already spies. The fun thing about season 1 was just how incongruous all of this espionage stuff was to Will the reporter and Francie the… well, I don’t remember what she was up to in season 1 aside from her boyfriend stuff. But there was boyfriend stuff! Totally non-spy related!

I know that it’d be hard for Syd to have some kind of normal life again (although in-between seasons would have been the perfect way to do it), but the show isn’t nearly as strong without it. More and more I’m starting to think that Alias should have ended with season 2 and just have Sydney have died in the fight with Evil Francie.

23

I had such high hopes for this new bad guy! And thenfirst they make him out to be this ultra-secretive super villain, then demote him to basic bad guy ticked off because he lost a contract for a basic hit (budgetary woes, apparently) and then they kill him off…I had hopes of him being the next Sark!

24

I liked the first season, thought it went downhill some in the second, a lot in the third. This season opener was total crap. Let’s analyze, shall we?

[spoiler]First of all, they changed the credit sequence. The music is slightly different, and it has all these damn clips of Sydney in all her damn outfits. Look kids, it’s Espionage Barbie!

Next we open with the traditional scene of Sydney appearing to seduce some schmuck, but stealing the gizmo and getting into a fight instead, with a cliffhanger before an extended flashback. Only this time, the cliffhanger is rather more literal than usual, and the bad guy is a moron who screws around with cutting the net instead of kicking Sydney in the face or something. So not only did they fail to do anything interesting, they even managed to make the formula stupider.

Moving along, we go back 72 hours to see Sydney get “kicked out” of the CIA, only to reappear at… a new covert ops branch of the CIA! One that doesn’t officialy exist! Oh, and Jack, Dixon, and Vaughn all work there too! Marshall isn’t there yet, but he shows up later. Whee! When Angela Basset’s character (and I must say I like her, but was disappointed to see her involved in this suckfest) says it’s time to meet the boss, I said the most ridiculous thing I could think of: “Arvin Sloan.” The next thing I said, half a second later, was, “Oh my god, I was right! You gotta be fucking kidding me!” Gee, it’s just like SD-6. Near the end of the episode, Sydney tells Weiss her job is a banker, and that she travels around the world. Weiss, in all earnestness, remarks that it’s just like her cover job at SD-6. Because, you know, his brain was stolen by aliens offscreen and replaced with that of a chimp, and therefore he is suddenly too stupid to realize that, gee, all his friends left at around the same time, and isn’t it odd that Sydney has her old cover job, except for real? Nevermind, this is too confusing, I need to rest.

When we see the new team discussing missions, there should be such high tension the screen is in danger of violently rupturing, given all the history. But no, instead we just have Sydney acting like a surly teenager, Jack rebuking her like a dad at some mundane social gathering, and everyone else acting basically like everything is perfectly normal. Dixon at least should have been visibly trying to restrain himself from strangling Sloan on the spot, since we know he took a turn for the psychotic after Sloan killed his wife. Instead he just tells Sydney privately that he wouldn’t have taken the job if he knew Sloan was the boss, as if Dixon merely disliked the man. Um, right. The man who killed his wife. Yeah, working for Sloan might be mildly distasteful.

There’s lots more crap to shovel through, but for now I would like to skip ahead to the fight scene between Sydney and Whatshisface. Too much time was spent establishing a new big bad crimelord to let him die like that. If he’s not gonna stick around, why do we care that he pretended to be both the boss and the henchman, that he wanted to steal an old katana from a museum, and this and that? Even ignoring all that, the manner of his death was just plain stupid. Sydney somehow gets him to impale himself on his own sword by parrying with a meathook? What the fuck is that? I can buy her parry by itself, I can buy her jamming the hook in his neck or something, I can buy her maneuvering him fatally into a conveniently placed meat processing implement, I can even buy her getting him to filet his leg open so he bleeds to death. But this? There’s no way in hell. The angle and momentum of the sword are all wrong for that, and he’s holding the sword as if he meant to run himself through to begin with. Maybe the actor wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be back, else he find it necessary to actually commit seppuku to prevent this steaming pile from tainting his family honor.
[/spoiler]
In short, I can no longer take this show seriously in the least, and will only watch further episodes to make fun of it. If I don’t have anything better to do. Like, say, paint my house a villianous shade of yellow and watch it dry.

25

Ditto to all the criticisms posted above.

(I’m going to skip spoiler tags as the show aired a few days ago)

The only thing I liked about this episode was the in-show winks to how much last season bit - like Vaughn saying fervently “Last year sucked” and Marshall commenting on “Robo-Dixon”. Those made me laugh.

Other than that, the episode sucked crap. It’s like they decided that since all the fans hated last season, they’d just go back to the tried-and-true formula for the first season. So they recreated it, almost exactly. Only instead of doing any new twists, or anything original, or creating any real tension, they just threw together Alias cliches #1-130, and voila! New episode.

I’m really sick of seeing Sid in a skimpy negligee seduce someone to complete a mission. Now granted, I’m a straight woman, and I’m sure the guys never tire of seeing her in a skimpy negligee, but please. The woman’s a super-spy, and the only way she can think of to complete any given mission is to flash her assets? It’s annoying and degrading. And her horrible accents are starting to grate on my nerves. Plus you’d think that someone planning to rendezvous to sell some stolen isotope (or whatever the item du jour is) would be a tad bit more suspicious of a random woman suddenly finding him irresistible and asking to see his work. Anyway, I was really disappointed that they started the episode with this tired old Alias Cliche #1. Then after a ridiculous fight scene, went to another Alias Cliche, the 72-hour flashback. I’m really sick of that one too.

Then, the setup for the first season formula - new covert ops mission, with all the same people in their old roles (but with Vaughn as part of the mission, instead of being her handler). It was lame. It didn’t work. Sturmhauke is right, Dixon should have been frothing at the mouth, and when Sloane made his lame speech about “giving him a chance” Dixon should have just lost it and jumped him. I would have at least enjoyed that.

I also agree that Weiss was stupid beyond belief. He somehow doesn’t find it suspicious that all of his buddies quit or leave under suspicious circumstances like in the same week? And Sid now has her old cover job? Is he going to just somehow miss the fact that she’s going to have to do all kinds of last-minute late-night “business trips” and “office meetings”? It strained credibility that Will and Francie bought it for so long, but Weiss?? Please.

And I don’t like Nadia. Not that I hate her or anything, she’s just bland. Sid Jr. We don’t need another agent who always completes missions by putting on something skimpy and pouting. And she has no chemistry with anyone on the show, and no interesting personality traits.

My last, biggest pet peeve is Alias Cliche #21, Sid’s “I-hate-you-Dad-I’m-never-ever-EVER-going-to-forgive-you-until-oops-I-find-out-that-you-did-it-to-protect-me.” How many times are we going to go through this? She acts like such a disgustingly self-righteous twit whenever she finds out something seemingly awful he’s done, and it has always turned out that he did it for Sydney. I’m really sick of this cliche, and it’s starting to make me hate Sydney. I don’t want to hate Sydney, but she acts like such an idiot & spoiled brat with her dad. When is she going to get the clue? Or at least give him the benefit of the doubt and say “Dad, please explain why you did x” instead of just assuming the worst and refusing to speak to him except to tell him that he’s an awful, evil man and she’ll never speak to him again?

Oh, and yeah, it was lame that they changed the cliffhanger from Project Christmas to killing her mom.

And they close with another stupid, stupid cliche. Sid stupidly chooses to lie about what happened to her mother, setting up a lame, lame “Nadia v. Jack, you killed my mommy!” plot thread. If she just told Nadia the truth, she would have been upset, but I think she would have accepted it. Lying about it was just dumb.

In short, it was the worst of what Alias was in season 1 instead of the best. Although I loved the show season 1, and loyally stuck with it through the downward slide that was season 2 and the suckfest that was season 3, this is it. I’m through. Farewell, Jennifer, J.J., Michael, et al.

26

That bugged me, too. Naturally, Sydney is going to be pissed about working with Sloane again, but why does she approach the situation with the maturity of a twelve-year old? I expected her to start pulling her hair and screaming or something (“Get out, get out, GET OUT!!!”). Ditto the stuff with her dad. Hasn’t she learned by now that she should really talk to her father before judging him?

I also agree with available light that it’s getting degrading seeing Syd accomplish everything by throwing her boobs in some guy’s face (convenient that every single secret whatsis in the entire world is in the hands of a hetero male, btw). Plus, the train thing was almost the exact same setup as the lingerie show on the plane in the season 2 Superbowl episode.

27

The only redeeming factor I can think of for Dixon’s actions is:

he’s accepted the job to get close to Sloane and will play nice until that one perfect moment when he has a chance to kill Sloane to avenge his wife’s death. That’s the only plotline that would make any kind of sense for the way Dixon is acting.

If that’s not the case then I’ve given up on the show. Really. There’s leaps in logic and then there’s jumping off the logic cliff and falling 10,000 feet with no parachute.

And Sydney’s childish behavior? I kept expecting her to log onto her home computer and post to her LiveJournal about how badly she thinks SpyDaddy is treating her.

I was glad to see Marshall back though. Give that man his own show. Please!