Due to the major distractions I experienced while watching last night’s episode, and the complex plot and storyline that is the box, I walked away utterly confused. But in a good way! In an Alias way!Let’s get down and dirty and try to alleviate some of my perplexity…
Roomies
Sydney doing yoga, Rachel in her old pajamas and the sweet, realistic nature of their morning conversation shot me straight back to season 1 and Francie. I love the idea of Rachel and Sydney living together. As Sydney mentioned, they are both in a transitional period of their lives, and who better to understand each other than Rachel and Sydney. I look forward to watching Sydney’s nurturing side surface, and seeing Rachel come out of her shell.
The Joker and Jack
In season 2, I believe Sloane approaches Jack in the very restaurant that they met in last night. Last night, Sloane asks to be reinstated at APO for Nadia’s sake and we learn that Jack has already put in the request. I was shocked! What? Jack wants Sloane back? And then I remembered; these two are in some secret cahoots. They have plans we are unaware of and having Sloane back at APO will benefit not only Nadia and Gordon Dean, but this hair-brain scheme that Jack and Sloane concocted in season 4.
Sloane is approached by the mysterious Shed contact and finally introduced to Gordon Dean, “one of his benefactors.” I am guessing there are either 12 benefactors (old Alliance roots) or 5 benefactors (hence, Prophet 5). Either way, Dean has a mole inside APO, a mole that will show no mercy if his daughter’s life is threatened. *Side note: I wonder if will occur to Gordon Dean to ask Sloane where Sydney lives. Sloane’s been there, he’s been in the house. Wouldn’t that make sense if you were trying to kill Rachel or Sydney? I suppose that’s just too easy for Alias.
I literally got chills watching Arvin Sloane waltz back into APO, Jack standing at the end of the corridor. And I imagine Sydney will not only get chills, but a serious case of déjà vu when she returns from her mission with Grace. Speaking of…
Side by Side
Grace and Syd side by side, I love it! I love him, I truly do. He’s not terribly smart when it comes to math and science, he’s a man of few words, but I can already feel chemistry between Thomas Grace and Sydney Bristow. Not in the Vaughn sense of chemistry, but in the Dixon sense. Grace and Syd are still learning to trust each other. They are still learning about each others strengths and weaknesses, which could mark a very fun friendship for the both of them.
Rienne on the Run
We find Renee held up in Marseille with her frozen papa, after ambushing a US storage facility in Frankfurt to steal a drug that can wake her father. Sydney and Grace find her just as daddy is waking, in a fit of hysteria after being on ice for 23 years. Did we not all grab a pen and paper and do the math? 23 years, Vaughn’s dad was killed in 1979, damn, that’s 26 years. Bugger! Ah, well, it wasn’t as if it was Renee’s dad anyway. It turns out Mr. Science Experiment was actually the doctor that developed the chamber, Mr. Aldo DeSantis. This we find out after the DSR files don’t coincide with the files recovered in San Francisco. DiSantis is extracted and is met by Dean. DiSantis says, “the girl is alive and she is working with the CIA.” Hmmm. So, this is where the trail failed me. I am lost! Is the man in the box really her father, just with a different brain? Or is it a different man all together? Because wasn’t it mentioned by Marshall or Rachel, that the files contained evidence that the frozen man had had a transplant? HELP ME! This storyline is giving me a brain-ache! But in a good way! In an Alias way!
Nod to Vaughn
Did anyone else shed a tear as the camera panned into the hockey rink? Were you not expecting to see Vaughn on the ice in his hockey gear? Instead we find Diane Lewis, the one woman keeping Sloane from reinstatement. We soften for Sloane as he pleads with Diane to let him return to APO, to use their resources to cure his daughter and then we cringe as he shares photos of Diane’s daughter and threatens her life. Good old Sloane! I love him this way! Smarmy and stealth! Welcome back Arvin.
Next Week on Alias
Ohhh, Rachel on her own mission! Can’t wait to see if the girl's got what it takes. So, what did you think?
PS. I recieved my season 4 DVD in the mail yesterday and I have already watched all episodes with commentary. I heart JJ Abrams and Ken Olin. I just love those guys. The Bloopers are great, especially the surprise appearance of Melissa George (aka Lauren Reed) that had the set in a freak out.
17 comments:
thanks for the always brilliant episode rundown GS, and don't worry, you're not the only one lost regarding the storyline (and I wasn't even distracted while watching it). Here's what I understood...Dr. Desantis was the guy who kidnapped Renee's father and went under some kind of doubling experiment to look like Renee's father. My three questions on that topic are this: 1. why did it take 23 years to double him? 2. What does Dr. D. have to do w/ Prophet 5? 3. What's the point of him being doubled to look like Renee's father if she knows he's a fraud?
Those are the questions that lost me last night, but I agree with your opinions on Syd and Rachel living together, Sloane back to his baddie self, and Grace and Syd working together. What struck me as odd is how quickly Jack has come to trust Grace, sending him to protect Syd, that surprised me. Next week's eppy looks fun, the preview w/ Rachel saying how she'll put on her little skirt etc. sounded pretty funny. :)
I am new to your blog, but I LOVE it! Thanks for analyzing and commenting about all those "Alias-y" things that make our brains melt down... I have missed a couple episodes this season so far because of a broken VCR, but I have kept up partly due to the writings here!! I also received season 4 in the mail yesterday, but I'm currently mid-way through watching season 3, so want to finish that and continue in order! Thanks again for a great blog!!
Tammy, welcome and thank you! Glad to have someone new to throw ideas around with. As you go back and watch episodes, make sure you jot down anything that seems suspicious or strikes you as odd. And then bring them all here. We love to spot new things on old episodes that can help us understand this season!
Did everyone get their Season 4 yesterday??? Me too. I haven't watched them yet though because yesterday I started back at good old Season One and this time I'm taking notes so I can develop some ideas. I'm happy to know there's people I can say that to who won't think I'm off my rocker! Allthough the good folks at Best Buy were happy to gather around and discuss theories as I picked up my DVDs. Apparently they have a large Alias follwing in their employ.
according to amazon.com I won't get my preordered season 4 until next week sometime *sniff*, oh well. Looking forward to all the good episode commentaries and (of course) the bloopers!
KLG, I love going back. I love to watch the season's backwards. If I see something in season 3 that refers to season 1 or 2, then I skip and go back to that episode to find connections or quotes that link it. Watching backwards is great, before you know the background and you have a better understanding. I always watch The Godfather movies backwards. HAHA
huh, watching them backwards, that's a new idea, never tried that...
I ordered on Amaon as well but got my season 4 on the 25th. Hmmm....I though that was odd since that was the day it came out, Right? Anyway, I Loved the bloopers as well!!! I Always watch those first! My 2 year old likes to sit and re watch them over and over again!! :)
Was it me or did the bloopers seem different than other seasons? There wasn't any music in some of them and it seemed weird. I loved the scene with Syd and Jack and they just couldn't get it right. And then the one when Michael gets serious and says "Jen, stop laughing." It was funny to see him like that. He gets really serious.
wait wait, don't say what the bloopers are yet, haven't seen them yet!! :)
Oops, sorry SRG. There are tons on there, tons. It was cool. I won't talk about them anymore. I should have made a spoiler warning. HAHA
Here are few things I noticed in E5 last night:
We are now in 2006. If you factor in the 4 month skip in time at the beginning of the season (Sept.2005) you end up in 2006. So, Syd came back from her missing years in real time and the series really started in 1999?
Renee and Vaughn working together for 7 years.
What we can know about Aldo DiSantis, the man in the box? There were 2 time blocks used last night with relation to DiSantis- 20 years and 23 years. The question is "Is 23 years precise and 20 a rounded number for the same time frame?" I'll keep them as they were stated for now and I will give my narrative based on all of what we were told:
As a child Renee had an illness that required very expensive medications to treat. Her father took a job for a lot of money as a lab rat being experimented on by Dr. DiSantis. Renee's father came home one day with a lot of money and took his daughter into hiding. DiSantis came looking for him and found him in Geneva. They kidnapped him and when Renee was old enough she began her quest to find Prophet 5 to take revenge for what she assumed was her father's murder. Somehow she found information about the box and that it had here father in it. She stole it from DSR and stole the drug needed to revive the person in the box.
Once revived DiSantis told everyone there that he was Renee's father, but he activated the homing beacon in the box so the people he is connected to could find and extract him and take him to his original destination- North Korea.
Based on the DiSantis files of Gordon Dean, which APO copied, the name of the man in the box was Gorso and the box was set up to provide him with nutrition and drugs to prevent rejection of transplanted organs while in an induced coma. The files also indicated that DiSantis, who was in the box Renee stole from DSR, and the man Dean's DiSantis files show was put into the box have decades ago do not have the same brain.
It looks as though the experiments on Renee's father may have been to put DiSantis' brain into Renee's father's body, or else DiSantis' brain (and who knows what else) has been altered. Dean's files show that the man in the box had undergone genetic and neural path manipulation. Once in a N.Korean facility, Dean introduces himself to DiSantis and tells him that there shouldn't be any lingering side effects from the procedure. DiSantis reply is, "23 years." (So, is that when he actually went into the box, or when the procedure was done?) Dean continues, "The cohesion problem was solved once we understood how to resequence the information." Does that mean they finally figured it out, so it was now safe to revive him, or does it mean they figured quickly figured out how to stabilize him once he was revived?
Whatever happened 20 or 23 years ago would be either 1986 (1984) or 1983 (1981- when Irina faked her death and gave birth to Nadia) in Alias timeline time.
THANK YOU UNCLE111!! Finally, some clearity! I did forget to mention Renee's childhood illness. I am falling off the wagon. I need to get back on!
I did have a hard time with the accent as well! I actually tend to use closed captioning with Alias so that I can truly see what they say (names, etc.) Sometimes stuff is hard to catch! I've picked up stuff with captions I would have missed otherwise.
The next episode appears to be scheduled for November 10. Not too long of a delay at least!!
Really good episode analysis. I was thinking the same thing about Dean myself last night. Why doesn't he just find out from Sloane where Sydney and Rachel are adn kill them, but of course like ultimate Alias power hungry megalomaniac Dean has another agenda besides just killing off Rachel or Sydney.
Thanks for the explanation of the year 2006 uncle111.
As to Grace I think I like him because he isn't a brain, but he does use logic to solve problems. He's more about street smarts. Although they do work for the CIA it seems like everyone is part action hero part genius. Grace is very interesting for mixing it up a bit.
The only thing that bothered me a little bit was that Rachel kinda made it seem like Marshall didn't find the best way of hacking into the pentagon. I love Marshall and I got a little defensive when she made her comment about just going through the sewer line. I know she's smart and I'm really interested in what she can do, but I just like Marshall being smarter than everyone.
I know some people were making some pretty wild speculations about Thomas Grace and Jack last night, but I'd like to bring the issue up here in the hope of a bit more lucidity.
Does anyone else think that Jack's unflinching confidence in Agent Grace is a bit uncharacteristic? No, I am not criticizing the writing; I am thinking that there must be something of a history between the men that is yet untold. I realize that Jack probably sees alot of himself in the younger man: headstrong, willing to compromise protocol for what is percieved to be the greater good... but there seems to be something more, a tighter bond between them.
There was the conversation we witnissed as he was being instated: "I trust [so-&-so's] recomendation implicitly," says Jack. That's not like him.
When Syd shows her discomfort with the perception of Vaughn being replaced was interesting as well. Jack defended him in such a way that leads me to believe he knew something more than Sydney knew from reading his file.
Then, last night, the exchange between them was a conversation that took place between their eyes and not in dialogue. Without actually saying, "I am trusting you with my daughter and grandchild's life. Don't fail me," Jack got his point accross. Without saying a word, Grace replied, "You already know you can count on me, Jack."
I trust my gut for interpreting these things. There is something more to this relationship, mark my words.
I agree Robetron, I thought it was weird how quick Jack has come to trust Grace, very unlike him. We know there's something in Grace's file that made Jack hesitate, so why does he have so much confidence in him? I'm thinking this will be part of the future storylines...
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