Alias is an Onion

Alias is an onion. There are millions of layers, most make you cry or at least make you want to curl up in the fetal position and thank your lucky stars that the CIA didn't recruit you.

The core of the Alias onion is conflict. All books, all TV shows have to have conflict to be interesting and compelling. Alias deals with so much conflict; man vs. man, man vs. himself, man vs. machine (that would be Marshall's area). But the numero uno of all conflicts is good versus evil. Sydney will always be fighting for good (even if her methods are slightly immoral and off-book) , and the bad guys for bad, and then there is the gray area, including people like Sloane and Irina. Good? Bad? Who knows, but that is were the suspense comes in.

Suspense is a very thick layer of Alias. Writers are able to hook us with dramatic and often shocking plot twists (i.e. “..my name’s not Michael Vaughn.”) Suspense leaves us asking questions; who, what, where, when, why? We want to know who is in the box, we want to know who is leading Prophet Five and we want to know, where in damn-nation is Vaughn? These secrets keep us coming back for more, they keep us faithful viewers tuned in and eventually they will herd all the lost sheep back to the farm.

We have been able to peel back many of the layers of Alias in the last week, as new characters and plot lines reveal themselves. We learned Vaughn’s secret, and suspect that he will be back once the danger is gone. We have learned that Thomas Grace has a secret, Jack knows what it is and we will see if it’s something Jack “can handle.” We know someone very important is on ice, and we know it took 45 kilos of Iridium to keep him that way. But, there are still many questions left unanswered. Will Sydney and the new recruits blend as a team in their fight against P5? What will happen to Nadia? And most importantly, when will we see Sark’s deviously adorable face again? We will just have to keep peeling back the layers and dicing up ideas, because we’ve got 20 episodes to go!