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ALIAS Files: s02e10 - The Abduction

SYD, WHO ARE YOU WEARING? Special What-Is-It-About-This-Show-And-Red-Wigs Edition!

SARK, WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

Is Sydney a good person?

Okay, first off, this episode gives us a lot of time with Sydney's personal life, a lot more than recent episodes, so we actually have some interesting things to look at, including some of the old spy life/friend life conflict as well as some new, troubling personality developments.

So like, if we're going to judge this on the old Season 1 metric, which is to say, "Can Sydney fulfill the ordinary obligations of friendship while still maintaining her cover as a spy," then she nails it this ep. She recognizes right away that Francie's suspicion is a problem, so she deals with it quickly and in a really sweet way. It's perfect, actually! It strengthens her social relationships while simultaneously covering her ass. I can't possibly believe it's an accident that this goes so much more smoothly than it did before, given that she has an ally in Will now. Will's actually the one who helps her realize she needs to take action on the Francie thing. Folding Will into the spy game continues to be one of the smartest things this show has done.

Here's what's more intriguing to me. A lot of the first season seems to hinge on the idea that Sydney has these intrinsic values, a desire to protect her basic beliefs about friendship, family, kindness, etc., from being corrupted by her life in espionage. While it's true that she's definitely on the more selfless and considerate side of things tonight, this episode really focuses on the ways in which those intrinsic values of hers are becoming more complicated. She tells Will that her with mission her parents was "comforting," at which point the camera instantly cuts to a flashback of the Bristows emptying automatic weapons into enemy combatants. She and her mother have a tender hug in the CIA yard, perhaps the most intimately human moment shared between them so far; instantly, a squad of guards pull their guns out and begin advancing and shouting. In the restaurant with Will, she tells him that she's come to accept that "it's a gesture of love to deceive the people I care about."

To return to an old refrain of mine, it's this kind of thing that makes me believe this show was smarter than a lot of its bing-zam-zoom, laser-conspiracy-action stuff makes it seem. At the same time as Sydney seems to be learning how to care for the people she loves in a responsible way, the show is leading us to conclude that the core of her personality is being reshaped in more subtle ways. The onslaught of violence and deception, the constant danger, the ever-growing number of predatory overseers dictating her every move, they all combine to create these associations in her mind between love and lies, between comfort and murder. Along with the back-burnered Project: Christmas plot, with little Sydney assembling a handgun for her proud father, this show is becoming really invested in where our intrinsic values come from and how they can be redefined by outside forces.

Is Sydney a good spy?

This is considerably easier, so hooray! You won't have to sit through another page-long essay like the one above (haha, see how I assume anyone besides my wife is still reading HOW FUNNY AM I SO FUNNY IS THE ANSWER). Syd kicks ass tonight! She kills it on the Paris mission, and she totally handles Marshall through the London mission (a plotline, by the way, which I remember from my adolescence with a clarity uncharacteristic of my vague recollections of my first viewings). She even shows off a new superpower! Apparently, she can kiss someone and purge their bloodstream of sedatives. I know I just praised this show's nuance for like a thousand words, but this shit can get so fucking Looney Tunes sometimes.

Can we just take a quick second to appreciate how fucking slick this show's action sequences are? I've said it a million times: people don't give this show the credit it deserves for helping to usher in a new era of high-octane, high production value action television. That Paris chase scene? SHE SKY KICKS SOMEONE IN THE FACE FROM THE TOP OF A CAR I'm just saying, this show changed the game.

9 Bonds (of 10)

MVP of the Episode

I don't know, Sydney I guess? There aren't really any standouts tonight, but Syd kicks ass for the aforementioned reasons. Kind of an even-handed episode.

Honorable mention: Faye Dunaway. Guys! Faye Dunaway! Her plotline is a little paint-by-numbers, but like, shit. Faye Dunaway.

Villain of the Episode

The encroaching oppression of the American/global surveillance state. There's going to be more of this in the next episode, but this Echelon storyline kicks off some more fascinating commentary on turn-of-the-century beliefs about surveillance, both analog and digital. There are little references to it all over this episode. Jack's offer to Irina of a life outside her prison, albeit one that comes with permanent supervision, telling her that "the illusion of freedom is better than none at all." Vaughan and Sydney's immediate attention to the security camera when they run into each other at the restaurant. I mean, with the sheer existence of the Echelon program, the show just straight up commits to the idea that the government is watching everything you do, regardless of who you are or where you live. I wish I had been older in 2002, so I could have a better sense of how this was received. I mean, look, the idea that Big Brother is watching is obviously not new, but did people in 2002 see this as science fiction? I mean to say, an exaggerated and slightly fantastical commentary on perennial fears and dangers? Or did they see it as basically fact, which we now know it basically is, in this post-Snowden/PRISM era?

This episode also touches on the weird borderline consciousness surrounding digital information in 2002 America. This is a world where they understand that you can't just confiscate software code, for example, like you would physical documents. BUT! It's pre-cloud, pre-Google Everything; ultimate control of information is still possible, just difficult. But then it gets even more complicated when the human factor is involved! Once Marshall sees the Echelon data, he becomes a living copy of it. As long as he lives, the information cannot be eliminated or even fully controlled. It's an interesting nod to the future of data leaks and the impossibility of scrubbing anything out of the internet. Unfortunately, we don't all have photographic memories (actually, as far as we can tell, no one does), so using humans as data storage and security remains a pretty weak answer to the overwhelming power of The All-Seeing Eye of Government.

Honorable mention: Vaughan. Man, shut up, Vaughun! Wah wah, my girlfriend, my work crush, wah wah wah. YOU'RE JUST MAKING EVERYONE UNCOMFORTABLE. In the restaurant with Alice, Will, and Sydney, at one point there is an EIGHT SECOND AWKWARD SILENCE. That is fucking bonk-bonk crazy! Next time you're having a conversation, try and pause for eight seconds. It's a fucking eternity. Give us a fucking break, Vaughan.

Does Sydney cry?

Yup! So does her mom! It's a Bristow family sobfest.

Does Sydney listen to sad music in her mood-lit apartment?

Nah man!

Vaughn Line of the Night

Sydney: "Sloan will think Cuvee installed a failsafe, to prevent un-

Vaughan: "-authorized access"

YEAH VAUGHAN, WE ALL KNOW THAT'S THE END OF HER SENTENCE, YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHIME IN, IT'S NOT COOL OR CHARMING, SHUT UP

International titles

German: Außendienst (In the Field)

Italian: Il rapimento (The Abduction)

French: Désigné coupable (Found guilty)

#ALIAS #ALIAS Files #real old-fashioned blog writin'#television #Sydney Bristow #Jennifer Garner

100 Movies (give or take) #4: Miscellaneous!

So! I watched 100 (103, actually) movies last year! Here’s the last entry about that, with some miscellaneous stats! I was probably not as rigorous or diverse enough in what I was tracking last year, to be honest; writing these posts has helped me think of what I’d like to track in 2016!

Here's how many movies I saw from each decade!

30's: 1

40's : 2

50's : 4

60's : 2

70's : 1

80's : 8

90's : 8

00's : 8

10's : 70

By country!

USA (sole production): 75

USA (co-production with another country): 13

UK: 11

France: 4

Australia: 3

Germany: 2

Italy: 2

Japan: 2

Mexico: 2

New Zealand: 2

Spain: 2

Sweden: 2

Canada: 1

Hong Kong: 1

Ireland: 1

South Korea: 1

Switzerland: 1

Films directed by women: 8.5 (the half being the Lana half of the Wachowski's co-directed Jupiter Ascending)

Fun facts: 4 of those 8.5 are that director's theatrical feature debut. They also account for 2 of the 7 documentaries, and 2 of them were directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

Thanks for reading! If, in fact, you did read. If you didn’t, you probably aren’t reading this, so no thanks required! RECURSIVE THANKING, TIME TO END THE POST

#100 Movies #real old-fashioned blog-writin'

100 Movies (give or take) #3: Gender, Age, and Love Interests

I watched 100 (actually, 103) movies last year! Here is the third entry about that, this one focusing on casting love interests, in regards to age and gender.

I wanted to look at the relative ages of actors playing opposite each other as love interests. I will admit right up top that I entered this with a pre-existing bias. Obviously, I picked this as a metric to look at for a reason, which is that I am one of many perceives an imbalance in the casting of men and women when it comes to age. Other, better things have been written and compiled on this subject. As with all of these numbers, my goal is not to make a scientific or sociological point; if it were, I would've tried to assemble an objective, even body of data. I did not. These are just the movies I watched last year. I look at this variable for the same reason as all the others detailed here: to help me examine what I, specifically and individually, consume through the movies.

For my purposes, I had some guidelines:

-I recorded age of actor, rather than character. For this reason primarily, I did not look at animated features. It might have been interesting to do so! But I didn't. Whoops!

-I recorded data only for pairings that concerned major characters or plotlines

-Movies without a central heterosexual pairing were not included, since this particular data point is specifically looking at how men and women are cast opposite each other

-"Love interest" is a somewhat liberally applied term. Basically, any time the audience is asked to invest themselves in romantic or sexual tension between main characters of opposite gender, that counts for me.

Enough preamble (let's be honest: too much preamble)! Some numbers!

-Of the 103 films I watched, 58 of them had at least one pairing that qualified for this analysis

-Accounting for films with multiple pairings (love triangles, for example, are counted as two distinct pairings), I counted 76 eligible pairings in all

-Avg. age of man: 37.9

-Avg. age of woman: 31.7

-Movies with at least one pairing with an older man: 48 (of 58)

-Movies with at least one pairing with an older woman: 14 (of 58)

-Percentage of movies with an older man: 83%

-Pairings with an older man: 54 (of 76)

-Pairings with an older woman: 14 (of 76)

-Percentage of pairings with an older man: 71%

For pairings in which the woman is older, the average age difference was 5.8 years

For pairings in which the man is older, the average age difference was 10.2 years

# of pairings in which the man is at least 10 years older: 27

# of pairings in which the woman is at least 10 years older: 2

Biggest age differences:

Bernie (2011) Jack Black, 42; Shirley MacLaine, 77 (age difference, 35 years)

Birdman (2014) Michael Keaton, 63; Andrea Riseborough, 32 (age difference, 31 years)

Movies with less than a year of age difference:

UHF (1989)

Speed (1994)

Brick (2004)

Trance (2013) [sp. MacAvoy/Dawson]

The Conjuring (2013)

Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (2014) [sp. Lawrence/Hemsworth]

#100 Movies #real old-fashioned blog writin'

100 Movies (give or take) #2: The Bechdel Test

I watched 100 (actually, 103) movies last year! Here is the second post about those movies. This one focuses of The Bechdel Test.

So, you're on tumblr, you probably know what the Bechdel Test is. If you don't! That is okay. Here is the Wikipedia article about it. Here is Alison Bechdel's original comic that inspired it! Basically, the gist is that in order to pass the test:

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it, 2. who talk to each other, 3. about something besides a man

Bechdel published her comic strip in 1985. In the 30 years since, and especially in the last ten, the Bechdel Test has often been applied as a sort of quick-litmus test to see if a movie is "woman-friendly," itself a fairly nebulous phrase/concept. I will be the first to admit that this idea has its flaws; even Bechdel originally wrote it into her strip as a gag rather than an attempt at sociological realignment. A movie can definitely pass this test and still come under criticism for its portrayal of women and gender (e.g., Gone Girl; Avengers: Age of Ultron, to choose a couple from my past year), and the reverse is just as true (e.g., Ex Machina; Under the Skin).

It can also be tricky even figuring out if a movie passes or not in the first place! Was that exchange long enough to be a "conversation"? It wasn't about a man, but wasn't it really about a man if you think about it? Did that woman get a name? In the end, a lot of these test "results" tend to depend a lot on the individual viewer. And obviously, a movie is not "bad" or "anti-woman" if it doesn't pass. A movie about two men trapped in a submarine in the last days of WWII where the camera never leaves the sub (I just made that up, but I would watch that movie) shouldn't be punished for not having women. But! When looked at as a larger, endemic issue, if those are the only kinds of stories we're telling onscreen, then something's gone wrong.

That being said! I do like the Bechdel Test as a general thing, a rule not to be applied dogmatically, but still a very good thing to look for. For one thing, it tends to weed out movies that appear to portray strong women while actually subjecting them to tokenism, confining their narratives to romance and the pursuit of men, or any other number of subversively limits.

Anyway, look, I'm not smart or qualified enough to get into the test's merits and flaws in any sophisticated way. I'm just here to look at some numbers! As always, these are not meant to be scientific, objective, or in any way a description of filmmaking, Hollywood, or gender theory at large. This is me, examining what I consumed through movies last year.

Of the 103 movies I watched: 42 passed 54 did not (7 were documentaries, which I'm not counting either way)

That's a 43.8% pass rate.

Here's a breakdown by decade (bold indicates a pass rate of >50%):

What does this tell us? I have not a clue. But there it is, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to use this to justify sitting on my ass for over a hundred movies last year as some sort of academic exploration of gender in the media! If that's not the American goddamn dream, I just don't know what is.

#100 Movies #real old-fashioned blog writin'#bechdel test

100 Movies (give or take) #1: The List

So! Last year, I set a goal for myself. What goal, you ask? Get in shape? Volunteer and give back to the community? HAHAHAHAHA no it was to sit on my ass and watch more movies, duh

So I did! I set an arbitrary round-number goal of 100 movies, and ultimately ended up watching 103. Then, because I’m a huge loser, I decided to do some minor data analysis of what I watched. And! Because I’m a narcissistic loser who will only follow through with things if I force myself to put it out there for the public eye, I’m going to post it all here! Who cares.

A couple notes!

1. This list includes films that were released theatrically, so no TV movies or the like

2. No rewatches. I definitely rewatched things in 2015, but they didn’t count for this

3. Any following analysis of this list is very consciously unscientific. I’m not trying to use this as a way to understand “movies” or “Hollywood,” and if I were, I would’ve picked my movies in a much more purposeful way. But I didn’t! I literally just watched whatever I wanted. Instead, this is meant to be an analysis of what I watched last year, a way for me to be aware and mindful of what I’m absorbing. Honestly, if I do this for 2016 (which I think I will), I’ll probably track even more data points, because I think it’s worthwhile to know what I’m putting into my brain via film.

So okay! Entry #1: The list (roughly in viewing order):

Obvious Child Boyhood Birdman Whiplash Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 Interstellar Foxcatcher Here Comes the Devil The Possession The Last Unicorn Coherence Police Story Drinking Buddies Snowpiercer Bad Words Tabloid Jodorowsky's Dune Trouble in Paradise Housebound The Guest Honeymoon Pootie Tang It's Such a Beautiful Day To Be or Not To Be The Apartment Invasion of the Body Snatchers The One I Love Some Like It Hot Under the Skin G.I. Joe: Retaliation Avengers: Age of Ultron Ex Machina Trance Big Hero 6 The Babadook Escape From Tomorrow Con Air Upstream Color Cheap Thrills Despicable Me 2 Room 237 Searching for Sugar Man Spring Breakers Bernie Labyrinth Mad Max: Fury Road Grabbers Brick Fast Five Viaggio in Italia Panic Room UHF Muppets Most Wanted How to Train Your Dragon 2 VHS Trainwreck Ant-Man Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Martha Marcy May Marlene 17 Again Big Joe vs. the Volcano John Wick Jupiter Ascending Never Let Me Go The Rock Zero Dark Thirty The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Neighbors Gone Girl Point Break Speed Risky Business Unfriended Results Planet of the Vampires Inside Out The Conjuring Little Nemo in Slumberland House of the Devil Brooklyn Castle Citizenfour Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Dazed and Confused The Devil's Backbone Ginger Snaps The Martian Jurassic World The Good Dinosaur Spotlight The Transformers: The Movie The Strangers The Cable Guy The Duke of Burgundy Mimic This Island Earth What We Do In The Shadows Fruitvale Station Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Kill List Creed We Could Be King Star Wars: The Force Awakens

#100 Movies #real old-fashioned blog writin'

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the next president of the world

ALIAS Files: s02e08-09 - Passage

BRISTOWS, WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

Special "How-Does-No-One-Ever-Notice-That-She's-A-FUCKING-WHITE-LADY" Edition!

(sorry, Syd, your name is not Amenah, no Pakistani is ever going to look at you from two feet away and believe that your name is Amenah)

Is Sydney a good person?

Okay, first of all, I have to say up top that I have kind of been intimidated by writing about this two-parter! You could make a pretty strong argument (and I might, later on, I haven't decided yet!) that Passage is what the entire first season and a third of Alias has been leading up to, and oh my god a lot happens in these episodes! I am going to try and free myself from any self-imposed obligation to write about everything (of course it's self-imposed, who in their right mind would make me compose these inane things if it were not in my own obsessive nature to do them myself), and instead try and stick to the big questions of my own increasingly-arbitrary format.

So! This episode actually features the return of some of the personal life/spy life balance stuff from Season 1! Although, tellingly, the tension of that narrative is pretty much gone. Sydney has to reschedule a spa day with Francie because of the mission! Oh no! Except not really oh no, because Francie is fine with it, aside from a loving eye roll. Besides, she's getting the massage today with or without Syd! Francie is doing great, guys. Ugh, I have vague memories of what happens with Francie later, ugh, ugh, I just remembered that. Not now! Weep for Francie later. Tonight, she is happy! The friendship is good! Will and Syd are getting along! And ooh that mini golf trip at the end looks fun. She's a good friend. It's interesting that the show is basically like, "Look man, it was a hard year for Syd and her friends, but now Francie has her restaurant, Will has… um, okay, Will is having a hard time, but they're happy now! See? Mini golf is what happy people do. I swear guys we didn't forget about this part of the show!" Except eh, they kind of have for the past six episodes, but whatever.

EXCEPT OKAY, NO SYDNEY, YOU ARE NOT WRITING YOUR FUCKING DISSERTATION, remember how she's supposed to be in grad school, you guys? Remember that subplot from the first season that has been completely abandoned and which the writers have the unmitigated GALL to bring up in part two? Irina's like, "So Sydney, how's school?" and I get it, okay, I get that they're going for this whole "domestic family small talk/espionage action" juxtaposition, but okay, no, Sydney has failed out of all her classes months ago and we all know it.

Academic implosion aside, we like Syd tonight. There are some other things, but they're basically all positive, and we'll get to those in the other sections.

Is Sydney a good spy?

Damn, you guys, yes. Before we even get into the meat of this two-parter, she more or less nails the little Mission Of The Week (Dixon, guys! Dixon! A mission with Dixon! Guys, Dixon.) Even when the plan goes awry, it's actually because of the incompetence of Uzbek military personnel, and not because Sydney decided to get sad about feelings in the middle of a nuclear sub or something. Good work, Syd! Clean it up, Uzbekistan!

More importantly, she does great in the big Kashmir excursion. The more intense personal stuff is relevant here, but we'll get into that later. Just the basics here. She kicks ass, keeps cool under pressure, you know the drill guys, kick kick shoot shoot, little bit of fast talk, little bit of badass parachuting. Spy stuff! The fact that she holds her own alongside Jack and Irina is amazing on its own, and these episodes really succeed in their goal of actually SHOWING those two being master spies rather than just talking about it. Rockstar, Syd. You earned this:

10 Bonds (of 10)

Is Will Tippen a good spy?

I mean YES but WHO CARES ABOUT WILL TONIGHT I can't believe I'm saying this BUT THIS IS BRISTOW TIME sorry Will I have a feeling we'll be dealing with you pretty soon anyway, I dunno man, you get:

Some Bonds (of 10)

MVP of the Episode

Sydney Bristow! This is the first time I have picked Sydney for MVP in over a dozen episodes, but goddamn motherfucker shit damn butts damn, she deserves it for this one. So look, obviously this ep is all about The Big Bristow Family Road Trip, Sydney, Jack, and Irina all going on a mission together. Ugh! So exciting! I am a little embarrassed to admit how exciting this was to me. But let's be real! It only works because of Sydney. Although they are dynamite together, Jack and Irina's relationship is so toxic and fraught that, if not for Sydney's amazing handling of them both, this would have been a fiasco!

(Although, sidenote: when Jack goes to prep Irina and strap her into her C4 blow-your-head-off necklace, doesn't it become so, so easy to imagine an alternate universe where this show was exclusively about Irina and Jack, with Sydney as a supporting character at most? And all this other shit was just prologue for their story? I mean I know TV is for young sexy people, but there is so much damn electricity in that room I literally almost forgot they weren't the protagonists.)

Tonight, Sydney is tough when she has to be, tender when it best serves her, diplomatic, decisive, and dauntless. She is the reason these two masters can actually do their damn jobs. For that badass parachute jump alone, she wins this episode. When your parents are bickering like children and you have to push them out of the way so you can jump off a moving train into a ravine? Today, you are a woman.

Honorable mention: The Bristow family! Seriously, I can't over-emphasize how much fun it is to watch these three go to work. They have all done irreparable damage to each other, but they cannot help but feel the irrepressible bond they all share, and that tension makes for grade-A television. Sure, it was fun to see Syd and Jack in character as lovey-dove father-and-daughter while they were secretly feuding the other week, but seeing these three knuckleheads as Clueless American Vacation Family? Forget about it, this is a goddamn joy. I can't even list all the highlights here! Irina kissing Jack at the border! That fucking Slow Walk out of Irina's cell! WHEN SYDNEY LITERALLY SKINS HER KNEE AND BOTH HER PARENTS FALL OVER THEMSELVES TO TAKE CARE OF HER LIKE SHE’S A KID BECAUSE PARENTS WILL NEVER STOP SEEING THEIR CHILDREN AS KIDS EVEN IF THEY’RE SEXY SUPERSPIES UGHHHHHH. Guys. This show. In all seriousness, this show. Let's just… man. This show.

Villain of the Episode

Arvin Sloane, and not for the usual sexy reasons. This Emily plot, while interesting, has kind of sucked the life's blood out of him. I assume this is setting us up for the hot-blooded reversal, but for now he basically just mopes behind his desk, limply chiding Sark for sassing his people, issuing weak-willed demands to his blackmailers, and just kind of being a lump. And guess what, Arvin! Your people do kind of suck right now! "We scanned this package for biological contaminants, it's clean." It's clean? IT HAS A FUCKING FINGER IN IT, WHAT SCANS ARE YOU DOING. In the second part of this ep, Sark calls Sloane "a money man" to his face, and for god's sake these days he's not wrong. You and Uzbekistan, Sloane. Step up your motherfucking game.

Honorable mention: Vaughan. Let's be honest! He does fucking NOTHING in these episodes. Nothing he does makes any difference. He basically stands on the sidelines of conversations, fails to affect the mission either way, and watches shit on screens. He can't even call off the air strikes (hey, Abed's dad!), although I guess we're supposed to get some kind of charge out of that whole "hey I knew your dad you've got moxie kid" exchange. He's basically their ride home and that's it, and even THAT could've been accomplished by a random helicopter. It's all just pretty impotent WHICH SPEAKING OF WHICH

DUDE

EITHER DUMP YOUR GIRLFRIEND

OR GIVE SYDNEY A FUCKING BREAK

WITH THIS "OH BOO HOO, MY FATHER'S WATCH, YOU STOPPED MY HEART WHEN I MET YOU, BUT ALSO I CAN'T EVEN REALLY SAY THAT OUT LOUD, WAH WAH WAH"

ugh dude

ALSO YOU ARE A CREEP, WATCHING PEOPLE PLAY MINI-GOLF FROM A DISTANCE WITH A FAINT SMILE IS A CREEPY THING TO DO, YOU CREEP, YOU'RE A CREEP

Sorry Vaughan. It's just, I don't know… I don’t wanna be rude, it’s just that, I guess it's just that you're a creep? Boooooo.

Does Sydney cry?

I think Verge of Tears might be her new thing! Although Irina cries at the end, and that's good enough for me!

Does Sydney listen to sad music in her mood-lit apartment?

THE APARTMENT IS BACK, BABY and okay it's pretty well lit and the music is like maybe maudlin at most I wouldn't call it sad BUT APARTMENT BABY, WE LIKE JACK LEMMON UP INS

Sydney(!) Line of the Night:

“Not really a vacation when you’re forced to go. No offense, cute country.”

International titles

German: Hafturlaub, Teil (On Parole)

Italian: Passagio

French: Double jeu (Double Dealing)

#ALIAS #ALIAS Files #television #real old-fashioned blog writin'

ALIAS Files: s02e07 - The Counteragent

SYD, WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

Special “I-Am-Extremely-Uncomfortable-With-Multiple-Parts-Of-This-Edition” Edition!

(okay so like, I debated with myself for a long time over whether or not to include the "naked decontamination chamber" shot, because okay, on one hand, this is about Syd's costumes and this is literally the opposite of that? and I am not eager to objectify her by putting that shot in here? But then I am also like, a HUGE part of this show is ABSOLUTELY about objectifying Syd/Jennifer Garner, so much of it is about COME WATCH OUR SEXY LADY SPY TV SHOW, and technically, "nothing" is a valid answer to "what are you wearing." But like, it's also a deliberately stark, unglamorous shot, and portrays her nudity as uncomfortable and vaguely humiliating? Which? Maybe? Is subverting something? But I don't know what? Fuck it, teach the controversy, here's the shot.)

OH GOD SYDNEY NO

Is Sydney a good person?

I'm honestly not sure whether to get into this here or in the next section, but fuck it, let's start here and see where it takes us. Let's talk about the ethics of killing. Obviously, Alias is Alias, so the explicit, textual discussion of this question is necessarily brief and somewhat cursory, but if you start thinking about it in any kind of thorough way (which, boy oh boy, how many thousands of words have I written about this show, GEE I WONDER I'M GONNA OBSESSIVELY OVEANALYZE THIS), this show has navigated itself into some really choppy waters. Which is kind of exciting! To me, anyway. Obviously.

So Sark (guys! Sark! SARK SARK SARK okay sorry; Sark) offers Sydney a deal: give me Sloane so I can kill him, and you can have the antidote for Vaughan's super-ebola. And she's like, YUP SOUNDS GOOD. Okay, benefit of the doubt, she's about to get dissolved in acid when she agrees, but she seems real eager to do this. Sure, it's for Vaughan, she'll do anything for him, but let's not pretend she doesn't have her own, barely-concealed desire to see Sloane's head on a proverbial pike. The key here is the conversation between Jack and Syd before she heads to Japan (which, again, is only 50 seconds long! they have a lot of moody Joni Mitchell slo-mo shots to fit in to this show, guys), in which Sydney says that "we have no choice" but to kill Sloane. Jack, ever the realist, replies, "Of course we have a choice." Now, he's not saying don't do it! But he's saying that murder, assassination, justifiable homicide, whatever you call it, it's a choice. You always have a choice. You can blame circumstances, you can give your reasons, whatever you want to do to distance yourself from what you're about to do, go ahead, but it's a choice.

And fuck, what choice should she make? Season 1 Vaughan made it very clear, the mission is not to "cut off the head of the beast," but rather to kill the beast. Killing Sloane is not how we win. But he is a monster! And trading his life for Vaughan's doesn't seem like the worst exchange rate. Locke (Terry O’Quinn, I can't remember his Alias name, he's just Locke to me now) tries to pull some moral high ground with her, claiming, I guess, that the CIA doesn't kill people? Which, I don't know, I don't want to get all conspiracy theory here, seems kind of laughable? I'm sure they don't, Locke, just like I'm sure the US in 2015 doesn't torture people OH SHIT I'M SORRY DID I JUST DROP SOME PARTISAN OPINIONS UP IN THIS STUPID TUMBLR POST?

Ok sorry, sorry. But it does kind of matter! This show, as I keep hammering on about, is engaging with post-9/11 American policy while the ink is still fucking drying on the damn PATRIOT Act. These are the questions the show wants us to ask, even if it is cramming them in between geisha fights and love triangles.

So. Jack claims this is different from self-defense later on, but let's be real! How many people has Sydney killed? It may have been self-defense, heat-of-the-moment, but when she loads her gun in the drop plane, she does it knowing she might have to kill someone with it. The real issue at hand here isn't whether or not the US Government, aka The Good Guys, kill The Bad Guys to save lives. It's whether or not Sydney would be sacrificing part of her soul by agreeing to facilitate Sloane's murder in cold blood, as it were. And I just don't know! I always want Syd to toughen up. But! I am also a fan of the old-fashioned hero narrative. I was raised on Batman and Superman, we do not kill, etc. Which, I realize as I type this, is a fucking absurd touchstone to use here. Obviously, Alias is, kind of, a comic book show, what with the go-go-gadgets and the good guy/bad guy shit, but they are also killing people all the time.

I don't know, man. She does it! She goes with the plan! It's all a ruse, duh, obviously, this show is not killing Sloane right now, come on, but she doesn't know that! She does it to save Vaughan, and she does it because she hates this man, and I honestly don't know if either of those reasons are good enough or not.

Oh, uh, also she's real nice to Vaughan when he's dying, and then later doesn't try and break him up with his girlfriend. Jesus guys! This section was invented because Season 1 was SO MUCH about Syd balancing Spy Life and Friend Life, and I'm just not sure the show cares about that as much anymore? I don't know. This format, man, it is useful to have the structure, but this show is slippery as fuck and it can be hard to square-peg it sometimes. Anyway. She's doing okay. She's not a brat or a crazy person. Good on you, Syd.

Is Sydney a good spy?

I mean, yeah! Horrifying orientalist yellowface (whiteface?) aside, she more or less rocks the missions. The only thing I could maybe criticize her for is her rash decision to just go ahead and synthesize the antidote, knowing it'll trigger the security system. But you know what? She's under insane time constraints, and her comeback to Locke's warning ("They'll know you're there" / "Then I'll run fast.") is… kind of badass, actually!

Her Japanese accent could use some work. Or, you know, don't pretend to be Japanese. Either one. Actually, not either one. The second one. Jesus Christmas, you guys.

8 Bonds (of 10)

Is Will Tippen a good spy?

Deus ex Francie's aside, he is tenacious and incisive. I like Will plotlines. I like them so much, guys.

5 Bonds (of 10)

MVP of the Episode

Sark. Come on! What, you thought there was a chance I might pick anyone else? I mean, yes, maybe Lena Olin, because GOD I missed her, she's back and she's better than ever, FUCK she's good, but I'm actually saving the honorable mention for something else this week (see below). No, man, it's Sark. He's so good! He's always in control, he's one step ahead (at least) of just about everybody, you guys he is inside SD-6 now! He can talk his way into anywhere! And when Sydney tries to wrangle a better deal in the Sloane-antidote exchange, he's just like, "Um, no, I literally hold all the cards, I got the whole deck, you don't even have the Rules To Five-Card Stud card, fuck you, we do it my way." I don't know, I'm not going to pretend to be objective about this, I just love him, here is a verbatim quote from my notes:

"omg Sark, you sly, handsome fucking devil UGH HE'S SO GOOD"

I feel like I’ve made my case.

Honorable mention: Random tortured guy in the SD-6 basement. I remembered the "Smila is my wife" twist about a second before he said it, and damn that's good. In an era when people are finally starting to question shows like 24 and their implicit argument that torture does, in fact, work, it's great to watch this 2002 episode and see the opposite depiction, which is likely a much more accurate reflection of real life. Plus, it's vaguely reminiscent of Will's "ONE IN FIVE" triumph from last season. Whether it's the heroes or the villains, seeing someone who is unbreakable in the face of death reminds us that, maybe, we shouldn't be trying to break people in order to save lives.

Villain of the Episode

Locke, or whatever his actual character name is. I mean, he sucks, he's in this episode to suck, he exists purely for us to resist and dislike and so Syd and Jack have something to rebel against. Although, also! If I may just say? He's also still giving Jack operational control over Sydney's missions! I know Syd got Jack off the hook last ep, legally speaking, but like! The dude confessed to sabotaging a mission with potentially fatal results! Who puts that dude back in charge? Locke! Buddy! I know, I know, it's a TV show and he's Victor Garber, but jesus, that just hit me tonight for the first time. How the fuck does he keep his job.

Honorable mention: Dixon, buddy, where have you been! Come back to this show! We miss you Carl Lumbly, please come back pleeeeeease

Does Sydney cry?

God, again, I wouldn't blame her if she did, but despite a lot of eye wrinkling, no tears did I see.

Does Sydney listen to sad music in her mood-lit apartment?

GUYS I THINK SYDNEY MIGHT BE HOMELESS seriously if the apartment doesn't make an appearance next episode I'm officially putting this category on hiatus

Sark Line of the Night

(just before pouring corrosive acid down onto Sydney)

"You and I… we're destined to work together, I truly believe that."

International titles

German: Kollaboration (Collaboration)

Italian: L'antidoto (The Antidote)

French: Dangereuse alliance (Dangerous alliance)

WAIT GUYS YOU GUYS, SYDNEY'S THE COUNTERAGENT AND THE ANTIDOTE IS THE COUNTERAGENT, LIKE I LITERALLY JUST GOT THAT I am not a smart man

#ALIAS #ALIAS Files #television #good old-fashioned blog writin'

ALIAS Files: s02e06 - Salvation

SYD, WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

Is Sydney a good person?

I would like to give Syd shit for her back-and-forth on ratting out her dad tonight, but upon re-watching a lot of those scenes, I mean, fuck, as smart and capable as Sydney is (on her BEST day), she is trapped in a decades-old power struggle/vendetta between two veteran spies, arguably each other's equals in manipulation, inscrutable facades, emotional withholding, and long-game master planning. Who am I to blame her for being indecisive? How can I, in good conscience, berate her for agonizing over a literal life-or-death decision that will dictate the destiny of both her parents? Yes! Jack did a terrible thing, lying to his daughter and risking her life, and maybe Syd is right that he did it, in part, to hide his involvement in Project Christmas. But! Even if that is true, it does not invalidate his other suspicions about Irina and the threat she poses! Yes! It is reprehensible to indoctrinate a child in spycraft and usher them into a life of violence. But! With her parentage, was a normal life ever really an option for Sydney?

The only thing pure and undivided about Syd tonight is her pain. That speech she gives Jack, about how she has to assume he sees her as a reminder of his weakness and failure, that is fucking legit. She is not mean or cruel, she is just clearly stating her wholly logical conclusions, unavoidable given the circumstances of her batshit life. "I think you loved mom so much that when she left you, you lost your soul." OOF, YOU GUYS

Jesus fuck man, shit, I don't know, she is really nice with Will today, she is a good listener and a good friend, and she is a solid are-we-infected-with-super-ebola buddy with Vaughan. Dang man, isn't that enough FOR YOU VULTURES

Is Sydney a good spy?

haha NOPE

SYDNEY YOU CAN'T JUST KIDNAP A SENATOR

YOU'RE A RECOGNIZED INTELLIGENCE AGENT, JUST GO TO HIS FUCKING OFFICE

also, oh boy, what a great idea to tell a fucking senator AN OBVIOUS LIE about an Alliance mole inside Congress THAT YOU HAVE NO WAY OF SUBSTATIATING AND FOR WHICH YOU HAVE NO ENDGAME

I WONDER IF THAT'S GONNA COME BACK TO BITE YOU

Plus she like totally spazzes when a sick dude grabs her arm through a sealed hospital room. He just has super-ebola, Sydney, he's not the walking goddamn dead.

I guess she does fine on the hospital mission, but jeez, Syd, KIDNAPPING A SENATOR like I literally don't even know what to do with you

2 Bonds (of 10)

MVP of the Episode

Emily's Ghost (or whatever). Guys! I don't remember where this plotline goes! And like, I haven't been talking about it because it doesn't usually fit into the (completely fucking arbitrary) categories of these reports, but like, whoever is fucking with Sloane is KILLING IT. I'm actually giddy about a plotline I saw resolved 13 years ago, because that wine glass in the bathroom, the empty coffin, UGH SO GOOD sorry guys I like a good haunting/fucking-with-you.

Honorable mention: The Bristows' Southern accents. A crowd pleaser if ever I heard one, ah do decla-uh.

Villain of the Episode

Family. I am not going to get into this, I wrote like a thousand words about it last time.

Okay, I can't resist, I'm going to get into it a little. I won't go too much into detail, but my wife has a lousy relationship with her parents, and for years I was just like FUCK 'EM, YOU'RE FREE NOW. And I admit! I had a hard time seeing why she didn't just cut ties. But let's be real. I get along with my parents. I like my family. It's pretty goddamn easy for me to be all WHO NEEDS FAMILY because I've never really had to experience the real-life fear of not having one, even if the one you have is awful. It has taken me years, but god, I am almost oppressively aware of how hard it is to quit family. Almost impossible. Maybe Syd could try, but I honestly don't know if breaking out of these family ties is even an option for her in her (or our) wildest dreams. It's honestly the biggest danger to her in this entire show.

Honorable mention: Sydney Bristow. YOU CAN'T JUST KIDNAP A SENATOR, SYDNEY

Does Sydney cry?

You know, she doesn't! I almost wouldn't blame her if she did, tonight, but she holds it together.

Does Sydney listen to sad music in her mood-lit apartment?

Does Sydney even have an apartment anymore? Does she just have like two cots at each of her spy camps?

International titles

German: Virus

Italian: Salvezza (Salvation)

French: Haute trahison (High treason)

#ALIAS #ALIAS Files #Television #real old-fashioned blog writin'

ALIAS Files: s02e05 - The Indicator

SYD, WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

Special "Holy-Shit-It's-Been-Almost-Three-Years" Edition!

Is Sydney a good person?

Guys, woof, it has been just shy of three years since my last ALIAS File. I re-read some of the immediately previous reports, but damn, it is jarring to drop back in like this. Let's see if I can get a handle on it!

Surprising no one (who has read my other posts), I am conflicted on this question tonight! Okay, first off, she hangs with Francie at her restaurant, she has a really nice, charming talk with Will in the park, her friend game is on fleek. Guys! "On fleek" was not even a popular phrase last time I did one of these! Let's stay on track. Syd is a good friend tonight.

But who cares about that! Let's talk about this hyper-fucked up father-daughter shit! She starts the ep literally walking arm-in-arm with her father, which, damn, that is an impressive show of affection, given where this relationship began last season. And, you know, at that point she believes her father has saved her life and that his judgment has been accurate all along. So why shouldn't she be sweet to him! This even kind of justifies, for me at least, her snapping at Vaughan when he (100% accurately) speculates about Jack's possible involvement in Madagascar. She's on Team Jack! But, I mean, oof, there is just no getting around this whole "my father brainwashed me into being a spy when I was a child" thing. Her reaction? It's… I mean, it's kind of justified! Like, she keeps it pretty cool, and doesn't lash out unduly. Not that I have a frame of reference for this thing, but

actually, you know what? Let's get into it! No, I didn't get spy-washed as a kid. But like, Syd tells Jack that he "took away my choices in life. You programmed me." Not to get too heavy here, but like, this is an interesting question: what does it mean, exactly, for a parent to take away a child's choices in this way? Obviously, all parents program their kids, one way or another. Sometimes it's unintentional, just basic upbringing shit, but other times it is… maybe not that different from what we're seeing here? Kids soak up what they're told to a startling degree. This episode calls out linguistics and problem solving skills, but I mean, why not add to that list career goals? Moral priorities? Attitudes about money, friends, happiness? Look, I'm not going to go all the way down this rabbit hole, because this is a show where a sexy lady wears wigs and hunts down magic Renaissance sci-fi boxes, but let's just be honest here: this is a pretty good metaphor about growing up for a sexy-lady-wig-and-sci-fi-box show.

Is Sydney a good spy?

Man I am not gonna write another 500 words after that fucking inexcusable digression about parenting and childhood. Syd's pretty on her game here: she doesn't get busted on her wig mission, her Hungarian is good enough to convince a civil servant that he might get some action from Sydney after she's done looking up her grandparents' wedding records, she's stealthy, she has some weird go-go-gadget launchpad in Buenos Aires? She does good. She does get tased by an old man at one point? That's not the best. But man, she does real good tonight.

Perhaps most strikingly, in front of a congressional committee, she refers to her mother as "Derevko" and her father as "an agent." PROFESSIONAL DISTANCE AND COMPOSURE FUCK YEAH

8 Bonds (of 10)

MVP of the Episode

Michael Vaughan. I mean obviously! Like, he has got this all pieced together from moment fucking one. He's the first to smell a rat on the Madagascar incident, even thought it exonerates Irina, for whom he has no love. He is not cowed by Sydney's tantrum, and thanks to a just plain wonderful coincidence ex machina (from a dude who, unless I'm having a stroke, calls Vaughan "Daddy"? Barf.) gets at Jack's demo man and gets the truth out of him in fucking no time at all. And he is there for Syd in the end! This is not a nuanced decision. Vaughan is the truth-telling, perp-crushing, shoulder-to-cry-on hero of this episode.

Villain of the Episode

I mean, Jack Bristow. He is just shady AF (another expression that was not around in 2013! I am timestamping the FUCK out of this report!) all over tonight. I'm sure this is gonna get complicated later (or maybe not? I can never tell whether this show is gonna be smart or dumb, to be honest, it zigs and it fucking zags), but for tonight, seeing a man tenderly commend his six-year old daughter on mindlessly assembling a handgun, I mean, that's villain material.

(Addendum: I just re-read my 2013 report on the episode RIGHT BEFORE THIS ONE, and holy shit, tonight I have somehow arrived at the polar opposite opinions I had about Syd and Jack in that one. Huge emotional arc between episodes? Psychological change in the author over three years? Plain old emotional inconsistency about a dumb TV show? U-DECIDE, TRUE BELIEVERS)

Honorable mention: Marshall, SHUT UP FOR FUCK'S SAKE SHUT UP

Does Sydney cry?

IT'S A DOUBLE CRIER TONIGHT FOLKS

Does Sydney listen to sad music in her mood-lit apartment?

No apartment tonight, but hella sad music for sure.

Vaughn Line of the Night

"This is not a good time to be a terrorist. Now, a couple years ago and you would've had some civil rights. Now we just throw you in a cell, no due process, no attorney."

THIS WAS IN 200FUCKING2 GUYS

International titles

German: Projekt Weihnachten (Project Christmas)

Italian: Il puzzle (The Puzzle)

French: Nouvelle génération (New generation)

#ALIAS #ALIAS Files #Television #real old-fashioned blog writin'