Alias 4.1/4.2: "Authorized Personnel Only"
Written by JJ Abrams and Jeff Malvoin
Directed by Ken Olin
In which Sydney joins a top secret black ops division and finds herself in an all-too-familiar work environment, just in time to learn something very disturbing about her mother…
Status Report
After the third season, it was obvious that “Alias” was at a crossroads. The series had always been driven by a balance of plot and character arcs, and the third season lost sight of that dynamic. When character comes out of focus, the quality of the plot must necessarily compensate for that loss. The writers found it nearly impossible to keep the plot under control, and by the end of the season, the Rambaldi mystery had spiraled into a quagmire.
It’s no surprise, then, that JJ Abrams found himself facing cancellation. Since the very beginning, the network had been bemoaning the serialized nature of the series, seeking a more episodic format that favors new viewers and higher syndication revenues. With the series in serious need of an overhaul and the network holding too many of the cards, the inevitable compromise was made: a return to something like the first season dynamic with a more self-contained approach.
Abrams made several statements in support of this strategy, but the fans were not entirely convinced. The series was already playing up Jennifer Garner’s sex appeal to the nth degree, and the excesses of the third season begged for clarification. Slipping the series out into the mid-season made the fans even more wary. Was this the end of “Alias”, a once-great series grasping at straws for mere survival?
Clearly, that wasn’t the case. ABC proved at least some degree of faith in Abrams by scheduling “Alias” right after Abrams’ current hit series, “Lost”, creating a powerful Wednesday night combination with a built-in audience. The fourth season also began with a two-hour premiere, rebooting the series yet again while also acknowledging the lingering plot threads. And apparently, the initial returns are highly favorable; the series has the best ratings since the second season, retaining a sizable percentage of the lead-in from “Lost”.
As one would expect, the first hour is dominated by the effort to shift the premise yet again, this time in a manner that speaks to the history of the series and replicates much of its early charm. Using Garner’s assets to full advantage (and the pun is fully intentional), the episode begins with Sydney cooing at a Russian scientist while wearing something that leaves nothing to the imagination. Coming right out of “Lost” into that scene is an enormous hook, to say the least!
But more importantly, it sets the stage for Sydney’s rude awakening. It’s unclear how much time has passed since the third season finale, but it’s been several weeks, if not longer. In the intervening months, Sydney has stridently avoided any contact with her father, has barely seen Vaughn, and has watched Dixon leave his position as Director. After a disastrous mission in Shanghai, involving Sydney in a rather lovely schoolgirl outfit, the new Director (Hayden Chase) seems to have lost patience with Sydney.
It’s all a pretext for Sydney to quit her position publicly, thus hiding her true goal: joining a new black ops division that officially doesn’t exist. For Sydney, it’s a way to take her life back and clear her head of the past. Her emotional health is immediately compromised when she discovers that her team consists of her father, Dixon, and Vaughn…and the new division has been tailored around Arvin Sloane.
Sydney is, understandably, less than pleased, and she has every right to be pissed. Sloane already played the “redemption” card, and it was all in the name of using legitimate resources to hunt down the ultimate Rambaldi artifact. Like most of the audience, Sydney wonders how Sloane went from villain to CIA black ops star in record time, especially since he had last been seen running off looking for the greatest secret of Rambaldi ever known.
The explanation is somewhat hard to swallow, but from a certain point of view, it makes sense. Sloane managed to find the Rambaldi artifact, which he claims he gave to the US government (probably Kendell’s group) in exchange for permission to develop his own black ops division. Using the “it takes a thief to catch a thief” logic, the CIA gave Sloane his wish, and then chose his old team to keep an eye on him.
This sets the stage for some rather interesting character dynamics. Not only is Sydney forced to work with her father again, a situation she finds very hard to accept, she’s also forced to deal with Sloane in control of her life once more. It’s hard to believe that Sloane has pure motives; it’s rather likely that his request has something to do with the Rambaldi artifact, and the nature of that artifact will inevitably be revealed.
The nature of the new division, called APO (Authorized Personnel Only), also makes it hard for Sydney and her fellow agents to know when Sloane is crossing the line. It was easy to counter Sloane’s activity when he was running SD-6, with Sydney’s subversive activities clearly defined by the CIA. Now, Sloane’s missions could be a mixture of CIA and personal goals. How, then, can Sydney ever be sure that her assignments are legit?
One would assume that Sydney would enjoy working together with Vaughn again, but the two of them don’t seem to know where they stand with each other. Vaughn burnt his own house to the ground, wanting to erase everything about his life with Lauren, and it seems that the emotional scars from that experience have yet to begin healing. Sydney is reluctant to let Vaughn back into her life, since her own emotions are still frayed with all the revelations of the recent past.
In the midst of all that, Sloane provides the team with their first mission, which brings the tale back to the teaser and Sydney’s latest excuse to bare flesh. The plot revolves around a dangerous chemical isotope, apparently being delivered to a terrorist named Vadik, whose trusted thug is an Asian assassin named Tamazaki. Despite some serious setbacks, the mission is completed. Sydney and Vaughn find it a lot easier to deal with one another after he saves her life.
The mission is only the beginning of the effort to find Vadik, and it seems that the key is none other than Sydney’s half-sister, Nadia Santos. Unfortunately for the free world, Nadia is the daughter of Irina Derevko and Arvin Sloane, and she left the spy game after helping her father see the whole Rambaldi thing through. Sydney tries to get Nadia to help, only to learn that Tamazaki was responsible for killing Nadia’s former partner, while she was busy hunting down Vadik during her recent work with Argentine intelligence.
By the end of the first hour, the general setup is essentially complete. It ends with a confrontation between Sydney and Jack, which goes over about as well as one would expect. Sydney is prompted to tell Vaughn the awful truth about what she discovered in Wittenburg, where secret documents related to her father were kept. This brings up one of the more frustrating elements of the new season.
While the audience never got to see much of the information contained in the secret files, one thing was very clear: it had something to do with a special project run by Jack and related to Sydney herself. The implication was obvious; Sydney had already discovered that her father had programmed her at an early age to be an agent using the Project: Christmas protocols. The new information suggested that Jack knew far more than he was letting on about Nadia and Sloane’s plans regarding Rambaldi.
It was terribly disappointing to learn that that the big secret was a plan, crafted by Jack, to assassinate Irina, a plan that was apparently carried out. This is something that couldn’t have happened too long before the third season finale, since Irina was still alive to dispatch Katya to mess with Jack, so how could that have anything to do with documents that plainly dated back to Sydney’s birth?
As usual with “Alias”, there are plans within plans, and it’s soon revealed that Tamazaki is the true identity of Vadik. As such, Sloane wants to draw Tamazaki out, and that requires the theft of a priceless family sword that connects Tamazaki to his alleged samurai heritage. Such a caper requires someone with the best skills for cracking security systems, and the solution to that problem is a convenient excuse for bringing another popular character back into the fold.
Marshall’s introduction reiterates some critical information. First, Weiss is completely oblivious to the fact that all of his former co-workers are suddenly working in a black ops division that officially doesn’t exist. Second, Marshall notes that Sark is still in custody, which leaves that character open for future use. That could eventually become important if the writers ever return to one of the other elements of the third season suddenly nowhere to be seen.
As freaked out as Marshall is at the thought of working for Sloane again (and one can’t blame him), he practically wets himself when he’s finally back in action with Sydney and the old guard. The theft of the katana puts the series back on the high-energy track that it should be on, and immediately gives the second half of the story a better, faster pace.
Not much time is wasted before the trap is set for Tamazaki, which doesn’t go at all well for Sydney. Perhaps all too aware that the audience wants more than just some spy missions and familiar tensions, the writers up the ante with some interesting and inventive Sydney torture. As it turns out, Tamazaki was expecting Sydney, something that she’s not at all pleased to hear. She’s even less pleased to learn that he was hired to kill her, and that his employer was killed the day before the contract was to be fulfilled.
Since Nadia was once on the case to hunt down Tamazaki’s assets, Vaughn does what it takes to get her involved. With Sydney spending much of the premiere running around in skimpy outfits, Nadia feels the need to keep up with the family and display her own ample assets. It’s disturbing how much Nadia resembles a young Irina in those scenes; the casting was brilliant, especially considering the direction that the season seems to be taking.
Nadia’s rescue of Sydney highlights an interesting future dynamic, but the real fireworks come with the subsequent revelation that Irina was the one who contracted Tamazaki to kill Sydney. Sydney is understandably stunned by the news. It doesn’t take long for Sydney to realize how Jack’s mission and Tamazaki’s contract were connected, and that connection helps to place some of the events of the late third season into context.
This goes a long way towards explaining why Katya tried to kill Sydney in the third season finale. There was a great deal of evidence to suggest that Irina was the true power behind the Covenant, working against Sloane to find the Rambaldi artifact. Irina could have been using Sydney to further her own goals, and when Sloane won the gambit, Irina might have wanted to eliminate a potential threat. After all, Sydney is supposedly the Chosen One of Rambaldi’s prophecy, and Irina would have known that Sydney and Nadia were destined to be in opposition in the future.
Irina’s legacy is obviously meant to dominate the early part of the fourth season, which is only appropriate. Irina’s activities have always been at the heart of Sydney’s world, after all. Knowing that her father killed her mother to save her life is bad enough, especially since she can’t bring herself to forgive her father so easily. It only gets worse when Nadia, now working within APO herself, vows to find Irina’s killer and exact vengeance.
That would seem to plant the seeds of future conflict between the two sisters. Whether or not that will play into the Rambaldi prophecies is hard to judge. It should come to fruition in that manner, but with the network mandate to drastically reduce the Rambaldi elements, it’s not even certain that the writers will go back to that plot point. For that matter, the leader of the Covenant may never be revealed, left to the imagination of the audience. If these plot threads are left dangling, it will be a serious blow to the integrity of the series.
That said, having Sydney and Nadia work together could serve to expand on several plot points. Every season has been about Sydney’s relationship to someone in her life. The first season was about Jack, the second about Irina, and the third was about Vaughn. It makes sense for Nadia to be the focus of the fourth season, and as such, Sydney is likely to be dealing with the fallout of Nadia’s interaction with everyone else in her life.
It would also be very interesting to see Weiss and Nadia enter a relationship. Weiss has been wasted as a character for far too long. Being the one on the outside, he adds an interesting source of tension. He’s friends with most of the members of APO, but he’s apparently not considered strong enough of an agent to join that division. Like Will before him, Weiss could cause problems if he starts to put the pieces together.
If the first two hours are any indication, then the fourth season will be dominated by character. This is exactly the direction that the series needed to take. As long as the Rambaldi mythology doesn’t disappear completely, then the plot for each episode can provide the backdrop for the overarching character drama, as it was in the first season. Enough of the lingering questions are tied to the characters themselves to allow the answers to come out organically. With the preliminaries out of the way, the series has all the elements necessary (including the right timeslot) to pull back out of the ratings tailspin.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode was a strong return to form, especially once the preliminaries were out of the way. The first hour was dominated by the introduction of the new (or rather, old) status quo, but the process was relatively smooth and perfectly set the stage for the second hour. With a renewed focus on character and a familiar but fresh dynamic, the series seems ready to take on the challenge of gaining back viewers. The challenge will be keeping the lingering plot threads from getting too far out of sight.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Season Average (as of 4.2): 8.0
Directed by Ken Olin
In which Sydney joins a top secret black ops division and finds herself in an all-too-familiar work environment, just in time to learn something very disturbing about her mother…
Status Report
After the third season, it was obvious that “Alias” was at a crossroads. The series had always been driven by a balance of plot and character arcs, and the third season lost sight of that dynamic. When character comes out of focus, the quality of the plot must necessarily compensate for that loss. The writers found it nearly impossible to keep the plot under control, and by the end of the season, the Rambaldi mystery had spiraled into a quagmire.
It’s no surprise, then, that JJ Abrams found himself facing cancellation. Since the very beginning, the network had been bemoaning the serialized nature of the series, seeking a more episodic format that favors new viewers and higher syndication revenues. With the series in serious need of an overhaul and the network holding too many of the cards, the inevitable compromise was made: a return to something like the first season dynamic with a more self-contained approach.
Abrams made several statements in support of this strategy, but the fans were not entirely convinced. The series was already playing up Jennifer Garner’s sex appeal to the nth degree, and the excesses of the third season begged for clarification. Slipping the series out into the mid-season made the fans even more wary. Was this the end of “Alias”, a once-great series grasping at straws for mere survival?
Clearly, that wasn’t the case. ABC proved at least some degree of faith in Abrams by scheduling “Alias” right after Abrams’ current hit series, “Lost”, creating a powerful Wednesday night combination with a built-in audience. The fourth season also began with a two-hour premiere, rebooting the series yet again while also acknowledging the lingering plot threads. And apparently, the initial returns are highly favorable; the series has the best ratings since the second season, retaining a sizable percentage of the lead-in from “Lost”.
As one would expect, the first hour is dominated by the effort to shift the premise yet again, this time in a manner that speaks to the history of the series and replicates much of its early charm. Using Garner’s assets to full advantage (and the pun is fully intentional), the episode begins with Sydney cooing at a Russian scientist while wearing something that leaves nothing to the imagination. Coming right out of “Lost” into that scene is an enormous hook, to say the least!
But more importantly, it sets the stage for Sydney’s rude awakening. It’s unclear how much time has passed since the third season finale, but it’s been several weeks, if not longer. In the intervening months, Sydney has stridently avoided any contact with her father, has barely seen Vaughn, and has watched Dixon leave his position as Director. After a disastrous mission in Shanghai, involving Sydney in a rather lovely schoolgirl outfit, the new Director (Hayden Chase) seems to have lost patience with Sydney.
It’s all a pretext for Sydney to quit her position publicly, thus hiding her true goal: joining a new black ops division that officially doesn’t exist. For Sydney, it’s a way to take her life back and clear her head of the past. Her emotional health is immediately compromised when she discovers that her team consists of her father, Dixon, and Vaughn…and the new division has been tailored around Arvin Sloane.
Sydney is, understandably, less than pleased, and she has every right to be pissed. Sloane already played the “redemption” card, and it was all in the name of using legitimate resources to hunt down the ultimate Rambaldi artifact. Like most of the audience, Sydney wonders how Sloane went from villain to CIA black ops star in record time, especially since he had last been seen running off looking for the greatest secret of Rambaldi ever known.
The explanation is somewhat hard to swallow, but from a certain point of view, it makes sense. Sloane managed to find the Rambaldi artifact, which he claims he gave to the US government (probably Kendell’s group) in exchange for permission to develop his own black ops division. Using the “it takes a thief to catch a thief” logic, the CIA gave Sloane his wish, and then chose his old team to keep an eye on him.
This sets the stage for some rather interesting character dynamics. Not only is Sydney forced to work with her father again, a situation she finds very hard to accept, she’s also forced to deal with Sloane in control of her life once more. It’s hard to believe that Sloane has pure motives; it’s rather likely that his request has something to do with the Rambaldi artifact, and the nature of that artifact will inevitably be revealed.
The nature of the new division, called APO (Authorized Personnel Only), also makes it hard for Sydney and her fellow agents to know when Sloane is crossing the line. It was easy to counter Sloane’s activity when he was running SD-6, with Sydney’s subversive activities clearly defined by the CIA. Now, Sloane’s missions could be a mixture of CIA and personal goals. How, then, can Sydney ever be sure that her assignments are legit?
One would assume that Sydney would enjoy working together with Vaughn again, but the two of them don’t seem to know where they stand with each other. Vaughn burnt his own house to the ground, wanting to erase everything about his life with Lauren, and it seems that the emotional scars from that experience have yet to begin healing. Sydney is reluctant to let Vaughn back into her life, since her own emotions are still frayed with all the revelations of the recent past.
In the midst of all that, Sloane provides the team with their first mission, which brings the tale back to the teaser and Sydney’s latest excuse to bare flesh. The plot revolves around a dangerous chemical isotope, apparently being delivered to a terrorist named Vadik, whose trusted thug is an Asian assassin named Tamazaki. Despite some serious setbacks, the mission is completed. Sydney and Vaughn find it a lot easier to deal with one another after he saves her life.
The mission is only the beginning of the effort to find Vadik, and it seems that the key is none other than Sydney’s half-sister, Nadia Santos. Unfortunately for the free world, Nadia is the daughter of Irina Derevko and Arvin Sloane, and she left the spy game after helping her father see the whole Rambaldi thing through. Sydney tries to get Nadia to help, only to learn that Tamazaki was responsible for killing Nadia’s former partner, while she was busy hunting down Vadik during her recent work with Argentine intelligence.
By the end of the first hour, the general setup is essentially complete. It ends with a confrontation between Sydney and Jack, which goes over about as well as one would expect. Sydney is prompted to tell Vaughn the awful truth about what she discovered in Wittenburg, where secret documents related to her father were kept. This brings up one of the more frustrating elements of the new season.
While the audience never got to see much of the information contained in the secret files, one thing was very clear: it had something to do with a special project run by Jack and related to Sydney herself. The implication was obvious; Sydney had already discovered that her father had programmed her at an early age to be an agent using the Project: Christmas protocols. The new information suggested that Jack knew far more than he was letting on about Nadia and Sloane’s plans regarding Rambaldi.
It was terribly disappointing to learn that that the big secret was a plan, crafted by Jack, to assassinate Irina, a plan that was apparently carried out. This is something that couldn’t have happened too long before the third season finale, since Irina was still alive to dispatch Katya to mess with Jack, so how could that have anything to do with documents that plainly dated back to Sydney’s birth?
As usual with “Alias”, there are plans within plans, and it’s soon revealed that Tamazaki is the true identity of Vadik. As such, Sloane wants to draw Tamazaki out, and that requires the theft of a priceless family sword that connects Tamazaki to his alleged samurai heritage. Such a caper requires someone with the best skills for cracking security systems, and the solution to that problem is a convenient excuse for bringing another popular character back into the fold.
Marshall’s introduction reiterates some critical information. First, Weiss is completely oblivious to the fact that all of his former co-workers are suddenly working in a black ops division that officially doesn’t exist. Second, Marshall notes that Sark is still in custody, which leaves that character open for future use. That could eventually become important if the writers ever return to one of the other elements of the third season suddenly nowhere to be seen.
As freaked out as Marshall is at the thought of working for Sloane again (and one can’t blame him), he practically wets himself when he’s finally back in action with Sydney and the old guard. The theft of the katana puts the series back on the high-energy track that it should be on, and immediately gives the second half of the story a better, faster pace.
Not much time is wasted before the trap is set for Tamazaki, which doesn’t go at all well for Sydney. Perhaps all too aware that the audience wants more than just some spy missions and familiar tensions, the writers up the ante with some interesting and inventive Sydney torture. As it turns out, Tamazaki was expecting Sydney, something that she’s not at all pleased to hear. She’s even less pleased to learn that he was hired to kill her, and that his employer was killed the day before the contract was to be fulfilled.
Since Nadia was once on the case to hunt down Tamazaki’s assets, Vaughn does what it takes to get her involved. With Sydney spending much of the premiere running around in skimpy outfits, Nadia feels the need to keep up with the family and display her own ample assets. It’s disturbing how much Nadia resembles a young Irina in those scenes; the casting was brilliant, especially considering the direction that the season seems to be taking.
Nadia’s rescue of Sydney highlights an interesting future dynamic, but the real fireworks come with the subsequent revelation that Irina was the one who contracted Tamazaki to kill Sydney. Sydney is understandably stunned by the news. It doesn’t take long for Sydney to realize how Jack’s mission and Tamazaki’s contract were connected, and that connection helps to place some of the events of the late third season into context.
This goes a long way towards explaining why Katya tried to kill Sydney in the third season finale. There was a great deal of evidence to suggest that Irina was the true power behind the Covenant, working against Sloane to find the Rambaldi artifact. Irina could have been using Sydney to further her own goals, and when Sloane won the gambit, Irina might have wanted to eliminate a potential threat. After all, Sydney is supposedly the Chosen One of Rambaldi’s prophecy, and Irina would have known that Sydney and Nadia were destined to be in opposition in the future.
Irina’s legacy is obviously meant to dominate the early part of the fourth season, which is only appropriate. Irina’s activities have always been at the heart of Sydney’s world, after all. Knowing that her father killed her mother to save her life is bad enough, especially since she can’t bring herself to forgive her father so easily. It only gets worse when Nadia, now working within APO herself, vows to find Irina’s killer and exact vengeance.
That would seem to plant the seeds of future conflict between the two sisters. Whether or not that will play into the Rambaldi prophecies is hard to judge. It should come to fruition in that manner, but with the network mandate to drastically reduce the Rambaldi elements, it’s not even certain that the writers will go back to that plot point. For that matter, the leader of the Covenant may never be revealed, left to the imagination of the audience. If these plot threads are left dangling, it will be a serious blow to the integrity of the series.
That said, having Sydney and Nadia work together could serve to expand on several plot points. Every season has been about Sydney’s relationship to someone in her life. The first season was about Jack, the second about Irina, and the third was about Vaughn. It makes sense for Nadia to be the focus of the fourth season, and as such, Sydney is likely to be dealing with the fallout of Nadia’s interaction with everyone else in her life.
It would also be very interesting to see Weiss and Nadia enter a relationship. Weiss has been wasted as a character for far too long. Being the one on the outside, he adds an interesting source of tension. He’s friends with most of the members of APO, but he’s apparently not considered strong enough of an agent to join that division. Like Will before him, Weiss could cause problems if he starts to put the pieces together.
If the first two hours are any indication, then the fourth season will be dominated by character. This is exactly the direction that the series needed to take. As long as the Rambaldi mythology doesn’t disappear completely, then the plot for each episode can provide the backdrop for the overarching character drama, as it was in the first season. Enough of the lingering questions are tied to the characters themselves to allow the answers to come out organically. With the preliminaries out of the way, the series has all the elements necessary (including the right timeslot) to pull back out of the ratings tailspin.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode was a strong return to form, especially once the preliminaries were out of the way. The first hour was dominated by the introduction of the new (or rather, old) status quo, but the process was relatively smooth and perfectly set the stage for the second hour. With a renewed focus on character and a familiar but fresh dynamic, the series seems ready to take on the challenge of gaining back viewers. The challenge will be keeping the lingering plot threads from getting too far out of sight.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Season Average (as of 4.2): 8.0
posted by John Keegan | 15:02
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