Alias 4.10: "The Index"
Written by Alison Schapker and Monica Breen
Directed by Craig Zisk
In which Sydney and Dixon become convinced that Sloane is pulling the Alliance of Twelve back together, while Vaughn discovers something unexpected about his father’s death…
Status Report
Now that the season has turned back on course after straying into network-imposed confusion, the plot threads have truly begun to interconnect. With this being close to the middle of the season (if not the actual midpoint), it makes sense that the broad direction of the season arc would begin taking shape. It’s still not as clear as one would like it to be, but it’s a lot closer than it was a few episodes earlier.
Sydney and Dixon discussed keeping an eye on Sloane in earlier episodes, and each of them confronted Sloane with their personal venom firmly intact. Now those suspicions have come to fruition, from their point of view; they believe they have proof that Sloane is pulling the Alliance of 12 back together. Because they want to let Sloane hang himself, they go behind everyone’s backs, skipping people like Jack and Nadia. This leads to the welcome return of Director Chase, who ends up taking Sydney and Dixon seriously, even if she disapproves of their methods.
This, of course, brings up issues of trust amongst the characters, setting Sydney and Dixon apart from the rest due to their own isolated efforts. Had Sydney or Dixon thought to involve Jack, then the entire situation might have been avoided. In the end, it’s not so much that Jack and Sloane were doing something off the books, but rather, that Dixon was willing to jump to conclusions in order to satisfy his thirst for comeuppance.
This alone would have been a worthy plot thread, since it sets Sydney against Nadia, who is trying very hard to take her father on his word. Sydney ought to know better. After all, she grew up with a very detached relationship with her father, and even now, she is forced to reconcile his often morally questionable decisions. The differences between Jack and Sloane are not at all as clear cut as one might think, as evident since the very first episode.
It becomes a question of perspective on both sides. Would Sydney interpret her father’s choices as evil, simply on Nadia’s word? Of course she wouldn’t, and similarly, she wouldn’t put her father at arm’s length simply to make Nadia more comfortable. And yet Sydney has no issue asking that of Nadia at nearly every opportunity, or using Nadia against Sloane without asking. Sydney’s lucky that her sister didn’t call her out for it and give her a kick to the head for good measure.
And that’s just taking it from an overall perspective, ignoring the fact that Sydney convinced Nadia to accept a birthday celebration that she didn’t want, when Nadia was clearly uncomfortable about the whole thing, and then used it as a pretext to get into Sloane’s house. Nadia has to be wondering whether or not she or her opinions are of any real value to Sydney. And it can’t help Sydney’s position with Sloane to have once again placed her interests over everyone else.
In a sense, this episode does something that is very important: it places the emphasis on Sydney and her life in balance. Usually, the writers depict Sydney as always being in the right, and indeed, it’s easy to forget that she can be as self-centered and emotionally damaged as anyone else in her extended family (recalling her incredibly self-involved tirade against Vaughn at the beginning of the third season). Sydney is not at all heroic in this episode, and that helps to humanize her.
More than that, it also suggests that Sydney is not so far away from the kind of personality that would bind Rambaldi’s works in fury and render powers unto desolation. When she’s focused on something personally significant, she will pursue it to the ends of the earth, even if it means stomping on her loved ones and friends along the way. Sure, she’s damned sorry when it’s all over and done, but every so often, she slides into the kind of self-righteous attitude that she loathes in Sloane and even her father.
On the other hand, Nadia is being crafted as a young woman with a good heart and all the right intentions, but someone with enough baggage to wreak terrible revenge under the right circumstances. Even knowing the worst about her father, she’s trying to forgive him and move on, if only to have the kind of family that she never had as a child. It would be rather ironic for Sydney to become, in effect, the villain and Nadia the heroine. That might seem a bit subversive, but the seeds have long since been planted. When Jack and Irina are your parents, how morally forthright can you be?
This is all true despite the fact that Sloane was, in fact, working outside the mandate of his agreement with the CIA. This answers one of the questions raised in the previous episode: the pact with Jack is separate and distinct from the pact with the CIA, and the one overrides the other under many circumstances. Clearly Jack and Sloane were looking for the Blackwell Index for some purpose connected to Sentinel, who many believe could be a codename for Irina. If the Index is the dirt on nearly every criminal mastermind on the planet, collected by the Alliance, then it would be incredibly useful in any effort to identify and contain the efforts of the Magnific Order of Rambaldi. And of course, if Jack and Sloane are trying to keep Sydney and Nadia out of that process, then this episode fits that rationale very well.
If this were an episode like “Nocturne”, then that would have been the extent of the story: Sydney and Dixon accidentally interfere in a secret mission conducted by Sloane and Jack. But this episode also boasts one heck of a subplot involving Vaughn’s visit to an ailing uncle. It doesn’t take long for the visiting nurse to mention that someone named “Bill” was supposed to be coming by, and soon after, Vaughn receives something that the uncle wanted “Bill” to have on his next visit: a key to a locker with a journal written by Vaughn’s father.
The writers screwed up royally in the late third season when it came to the role that Vaughn’s father played in the story. In essence, they had him being killed after Irina returned to the Soviets, because he was looking for Nadia, which would have been hard if he was one of Irina’s CIA victims before her own apparent death (first season continuity). This episode not only begins to repair or justify that mistake, but it uses the opening provided by that misbegotten plot element to explore the link between Vaughn’s father and the Order.
If, as the signs and portents seem to indicate, the main villain of this season is the Magnific Order of Rambaldi itself, then Vaughn’s father (if still alive) may attempt to use Vaughn’s relationship to Sydney and/or Nadia to bring about the Rambaldi endgame. Indeed, it continues to lend credence to the idea that everything in Sydney’s life has been engineered by those within the Order and those attempting to co-opt the Order’s plans.
This plot device is one of the best elements of the episode because it adds to the overall uneasy feeling about Sydney’s side of the potential sibling conflict. Her natural allies would be Vaughn, Dixon, and Jack. As of this episode, Dixon is obsessed with Sloane to the point of breaking the law himself, Jack is in collusion with Sloane, and Vaughn is being positioned for unknown reasons by someone connected with his father. Sydney’s allies are rather dark, psychologically damaged individuals. It should be interesting to see how that affects her future decisions.
Perhaps as something of a counterbalance to the dark territory of the other plot threads, there’s the light-hearted and semi-tragic attempt by Weiss to make a good impression with Sloane, all in the name of wooing Nadia. There’s something rather surreal to the concept of Weiss, who has never strayed far from being a good man, trying to gain the confidence and goodwill of the most diabolical megalomaniac on the planet. What’s worse is that Weiss simply can’t catch a break!
Like the two-part story that aired before this episode in the season arc, several scenes work on two different levels. For new viewers, there’s the inevitable tension of ally working against supposed ally; for long-time viewers, there are thematic and visual echoes to earlier seasons. Remember when Sydney used to pretend to be Sloane’s dutiful agent, while ransacking his home for Rambaldi pages? Well, now she’s pretending to be his dutiful agent while ransacking his home to copy a hard drive. In one sense, it’s repetition, but the context is different enough to make it fresh while also historically meaningful.
Granted, there were some problems with the episode overall. The pacing felt off at times, though that’s rather subjective, and there’s the curious matter of ramming a car through a warehouse door without scratching the paint (while in the real world, cleaning snow off the hood can leave dents). Beyond that, the “encryption” looked more like a glorified screensaver than a legitimate security device. And how getting three people into a warehouse represents a reconstitution of the Alliance of 12 doesn’t quite make sense.
But this was much closer to the “Alias” of the last two episodes than the “Alias” that the stand-alone, badly shuffled offerings earlier in the season, and that’s a very good thing. Overall, the revamped premise (originally hard to accept as presented) is gaining a strong and even continuity-driven rationale. Thus an early suspicion seems to be coming true: the introduction of writers from “Angel” has given the series the ability to develop a strong arc while also appeasing, to some extent, the network executives that don’t understand the value of the format.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode continued to build on the strengths of the previous two-part story, giving more scope to the season arc while also continuing to flesh out the character development. Vaughn’s plot thread promises to have major implications for the future, and Sydney comes across as less heroic than her usual role. These are strengths for the series overall, and hopefully the rest of the season will continue in the same direction.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Season Average (as of 4.10): 7.5
Directed by Craig Zisk
In which Sydney and Dixon become convinced that Sloane is pulling the Alliance of Twelve back together, while Vaughn discovers something unexpected about his father’s death…
Status Report
Now that the season has turned back on course after straying into network-imposed confusion, the plot threads have truly begun to interconnect. With this being close to the middle of the season (if not the actual midpoint), it makes sense that the broad direction of the season arc would begin taking shape. It’s still not as clear as one would like it to be, but it’s a lot closer than it was a few episodes earlier.
Sydney and Dixon discussed keeping an eye on Sloane in earlier episodes, and each of them confronted Sloane with their personal venom firmly intact. Now those suspicions have come to fruition, from their point of view; they believe they have proof that Sloane is pulling the Alliance of 12 back together. Because they want to let Sloane hang himself, they go behind everyone’s backs, skipping people like Jack and Nadia. This leads to the welcome return of Director Chase, who ends up taking Sydney and Dixon seriously, even if she disapproves of their methods.
This, of course, brings up issues of trust amongst the characters, setting Sydney and Dixon apart from the rest due to their own isolated efforts. Had Sydney or Dixon thought to involve Jack, then the entire situation might have been avoided. In the end, it’s not so much that Jack and Sloane were doing something off the books, but rather, that Dixon was willing to jump to conclusions in order to satisfy his thirst for comeuppance.
This alone would have been a worthy plot thread, since it sets Sydney against Nadia, who is trying very hard to take her father on his word. Sydney ought to know better. After all, she grew up with a very detached relationship with her father, and even now, she is forced to reconcile his often morally questionable decisions. The differences between Jack and Sloane are not at all as clear cut as one might think, as evident since the very first episode.
It becomes a question of perspective on both sides. Would Sydney interpret her father’s choices as evil, simply on Nadia’s word? Of course she wouldn’t, and similarly, she wouldn’t put her father at arm’s length simply to make Nadia more comfortable. And yet Sydney has no issue asking that of Nadia at nearly every opportunity, or using Nadia against Sloane without asking. Sydney’s lucky that her sister didn’t call her out for it and give her a kick to the head for good measure.
And that’s just taking it from an overall perspective, ignoring the fact that Sydney convinced Nadia to accept a birthday celebration that she didn’t want, when Nadia was clearly uncomfortable about the whole thing, and then used it as a pretext to get into Sloane’s house. Nadia has to be wondering whether or not she or her opinions are of any real value to Sydney. And it can’t help Sydney’s position with Sloane to have once again placed her interests over everyone else.
In a sense, this episode does something that is very important: it places the emphasis on Sydney and her life in balance. Usually, the writers depict Sydney as always being in the right, and indeed, it’s easy to forget that she can be as self-centered and emotionally damaged as anyone else in her extended family (recalling her incredibly self-involved tirade against Vaughn at the beginning of the third season). Sydney is not at all heroic in this episode, and that helps to humanize her.
More than that, it also suggests that Sydney is not so far away from the kind of personality that would bind Rambaldi’s works in fury and render powers unto desolation. When she’s focused on something personally significant, she will pursue it to the ends of the earth, even if it means stomping on her loved ones and friends along the way. Sure, she’s damned sorry when it’s all over and done, but every so often, she slides into the kind of self-righteous attitude that she loathes in Sloane and even her father.
On the other hand, Nadia is being crafted as a young woman with a good heart and all the right intentions, but someone with enough baggage to wreak terrible revenge under the right circumstances. Even knowing the worst about her father, she’s trying to forgive him and move on, if only to have the kind of family that she never had as a child. It would be rather ironic for Sydney to become, in effect, the villain and Nadia the heroine. That might seem a bit subversive, but the seeds have long since been planted. When Jack and Irina are your parents, how morally forthright can you be?
This is all true despite the fact that Sloane was, in fact, working outside the mandate of his agreement with the CIA. This answers one of the questions raised in the previous episode: the pact with Jack is separate and distinct from the pact with the CIA, and the one overrides the other under many circumstances. Clearly Jack and Sloane were looking for the Blackwell Index for some purpose connected to Sentinel, who many believe could be a codename for Irina. If the Index is the dirt on nearly every criminal mastermind on the planet, collected by the Alliance, then it would be incredibly useful in any effort to identify and contain the efforts of the Magnific Order of Rambaldi. And of course, if Jack and Sloane are trying to keep Sydney and Nadia out of that process, then this episode fits that rationale very well.
If this were an episode like “Nocturne”, then that would have been the extent of the story: Sydney and Dixon accidentally interfere in a secret mission conducted by Sloane and Jack. But this episode also boasts one heck of a subplot involving Vaughn’s visit to an ailing uncle. It doesn’t take long for the visiting nurse to mention that someone named “Bill” was supposed to be coming by, and soon after, Vaughn receives something that the uncle wanted “Bill” to have on his next visit: a key to a locker with a journal written by Vaughn’s father.
The writers screwed up royally in the late third season when it came to the role that Vaughn’s father played in the story. In essence, they had him being killed after Irina returned to the Soviets, because he was looking for Nadia, which would have been hard if he was one of Irina’s CIA victims before her own apparent death (first season continuity). This episode not only begins to repair or justify that mistake, but it uses the opening provided by that misbegotten plot element to explore the link between Vaughn’s father and the Order.
If, as the signs and portents seem to indicate, the main villain of this season is the Magnific Order of Rambaldi itself, then Vaughn’s father (if still alive) may attempt to use Vaughn’s relationship to Sydney and/or Nadia to bring about the Rambaldi endgame. Indeed, it continues to lend credence to the idea that everything in Sydney’s life has been engineered by those within the Order and those attempting to co-opt the Order’s plans.
This plot device is one of the best elements of the episode because it adds to the overall uneasy feeling about Sydney’s side of the potential sibling conflict. Her natural allies would be Vaughn, Dixon, and Jack. As of this episode, Dixon is obsessed with Sloane to the point of breaking the law himself, Jack is in collusion with Sloane, and Vaughn is being positioned for unknown reasons by someone connected with his father. Sydney’s allies are rather dark, psychologically damaged individuals. It should be interesting to see how that affects her future decisions.
Perhaps as something of a counterbalance to the dark territory of the other plot threads, there’s the light-hearted and semi-tragic attempt by Weiss to make a good impression with Sloane, all in the name of wooing Nadia. There’s something rather surreal to the concept of Weiss, who has never strayed far from being a good man, trying to gain the confidence and goodwill of the most diabolical megalomaniac on the planet. What’s worse is that Weiss simply can’t catch a break!
Like the two-part story that aired before this episode in the season arc, several scenes work on two different levels. For new viewers, there’s the inevitable tension of ally working against supposed ally; for long-time viewers, there are thematic and visual echoes to earlier seasons. Remember when Sydney used to pretend to be Sloane’s dutiful agent, while ransacking his home for Rambaldi pages? Well, now she’s pretending to be his dutiful agent while ransacking his home to copy a hard drive. In one sense, it’s repetition, but the context is different enough to make it fresh while also historically meaningful.
Granted, there were some problems with the episode overall. The pacing felt off at times, though that’s rather subjective, and there’s the curious matter of ramming a car through a warehouse door without scratching the paint (while in the real world, cleaning snow off the hood can leave dents). Beyond that, the “encryption” looked more like a glorified screensaver than a legitimate security device. And how getting three people into a warehouse represents a reconstitution of the Alliance of 12 doesn’t quite make sense.
But this was much closer to the “Alias” of the last two episodes than the “Alias” that the stand-alone, badly shuffled offerings earlier in the season, and that’s a very good thing. Overall, the revamped premise (originally hard to accept as presented) is gaining a strong and even continuity-driven rationale. Thus an early suspicion seems to be coming true: the introduction of writers from “Angel” has given the series the ability to develop a strong arc while also appeasing, to some extent, the network executives that don’t understand the value of the format.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode continued to build on the strengths of the previous two-part story, giving more scope to the season arc while also continuing to flesh out the character development. Vaughn’s plot thread promises to have major implications for the future, and Sydney comes across as less heroic than her usual role. These are strengths for the series overall, and hopefully the rest of the season will continue in the same direction.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Season Average (as of 4.10): 7.5
posted by John Keegan | 17:01
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