I wound up re-watching and re-starting my love affair with Alias by accident, but what a lovely accident it has become (once again). I’ve seen season one several times, but season two holds a special place as being the best overall best season that the show put together. And during this second viewing, the second season delivered once again and held up to my enjoyment from my first viewing. This season had so many redeeming qualities, not to say that season one was bad in any major way, but for me a show really proves itself in their second season. Alias gave a masterful second season, with many good story plots, introduction of Sydney’s mother Irina, as a major player in the show, and using characters that have fallen flat (Francie). This season well deserved a Saturn award for this amazing show and for a great season.
As mentioned, Sydney’s mother Irina was a great member to add to the cast, especially since this allowed the show to expand on Sydney’s family’s situation. Irina also allowed forced Sydney to ‘remember’ that she was part of Project Christmas, a project done by her father, Jack, to test for future spies and prepare them to be activated later in life. Since I’m on a Project Christmas line of thought, this works into bringing up Will’s role in the season. After he admitted he has a drug problem, forced to do so my SD-6, he ended up working for the CIA as a researcher, who ended up working for Vaughn, investigating what tests where given to kids in the 80s regarding Project Christmas. Project Christmas comes up again in the season, but I’ll get to that when I talk about Francie’s role.
Back to Irina. She provides a major driving force behind the season, which Irina explains in the season finale to Sydney. She also remains in the morally ambiguous gray zone through most of the season. She wants to have a relationship with Sydney, and does so by giving the CIA important information to help stop Slone. But Irina’s intellect breaks through, shown by planning this elaborate partnership with both Slone and the CIA and double crossing both in the end. Irina’s relationship with Sydney is reflected in the confined space of Irina’s cell at the start of the season, will Sydney not willing to talk to her mother and ends opened ended, seen by their last conversation atop a building in Mexico City. Irina really helped to break up the big villain role that Slone had to endure alone up until this point in the show.
Then there is Slone, who help destroy SD- half way through season two. This was a game changer because the show was destroying its major episode format. Sydney would normally get her mission from SD-6, then a counter mission from the CIA then execute both at the same time. But once SD-6 and the Alliance was destroyed, the format changed to the CIA side only. This aloud the show to focus more on Sydney’s relationships gets together with Vaughn finally and more with her parents as a unit rather than just her father. But the show lost some of the tension of whether or not she would succeed with her mission for the CIA and not be discovered. The show fixed this problem with clever problem solving, but still lost some of that fun, exciting tension. Anyway, Slone played (once more) a major role in the show, being one of the driving forces of the plot by destroying SD-6 and assembling the Rambaldi device. His only major fault this season was the story with his wife and the black mailer. It was too drawn out, it needed to be a shorter arch since we obviously knew she was alive, which made some of the scenes with Slone pointless (opening the coffin in the heavy downpour for example), but it was nice to see a humanizing side to Slone.
Then there is Francie, who was Sydney’s best friend, had been doubled and the double is working for Slone. This gave the character something more diverse to her, more than being the one person in Sydney’s life that did not know Sydney was a spy. She was creepy; cold hearted and killed off a lot of third and fourth rank characters this season. She also made the episode about Project Helix be very important, since there was a second, mystery character, who was doubled and the CIA had to find out who it was, but the audience was aware of the identity of this mystery figure. It was nice that the show played with the hierarchy of knowledge, since the audience is normally in the dark. She also started the theme of characters being doubled, even if it only happens two more times in the series, it starts the trend never the less. Allison, who was the doubled agent who turned into Francie, happened to be one of the kids who were apart of Project Christmas, bringing up Will’s research and Sydney's at the same time.
Then there is the season finale, which has to be one of the best episodes of the series, let alone TV. I’m going to focus on the last 15 minutes of the episode, since that is where so much amazing aspects of Alias take place. Will realizes that Francie is a double and tries to fight back against Allison, but loses in a big way, almost dead in a bathtub. Then Sydney gets the message that Will left about Francie being the double, by the way her phone is extremely loud, then an amazing fight starts between the two spies. This fight reminded me of the opening fight from Kill Bill, strange since this came out almost a year before Kill Bill did, but still an amazing fight. This was brutal. Both were thrown around the house, cut, beaten, and shot at. The brutality was enhanced by the choice to just have the sounds of the fight being the only noise in the scenes rather than have non diegetic music in the scenes. Sydney wins the fight, but passes out and wakes up in Hong Kong. She is then taken to a safe house and Vaughn fills her in that Sydney has been presumed dead for 2 years. In the last few minutes of this episode, so much for season three is set up. She has been missing for two years; a strange new scar on her abdomen, Vaughn got married. So much in those few minutes. Amazing way to end the season.
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