Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Oh, Our Pro...

Aside from being a super-spy, trained in hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship and bomb diffusion, all the while holding a Master’s in Education, Sydney Bristow is the ultra protagonist. For those of you not familiar with the term, a protagonist is the central character of a story, often times the hero or heroine. In Sydney’s line of business, she comes up against main foil characters or antagonists. Antagonists represent or create obstacles for the protagonist, and Sydney has come up against many, many antagonists.

As you know, I’ve spoken of Alias as an onion, and how the core of the Alias onion is conflict. It is the relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist that creates this conflict. One of Sydney’s number one antagonists is K-Directorate Agent Ana Espinoza. Born in Russia, raised in Cuba, (the last of the Cold War babies) Ana is trained in wet-work and close range hits. Ana has been Sydney’s enemy since her SD-6 days, constantly keeping Sydney from reaching her goals and completing her missions. They have had some of best action sequences, duking it out over high-demand Rambaldi artifacts, racing to stay one step ahead of each other. We see Ana reappear in season 4 as a loyal Rambaldi follower. She kidnaps Nadia, brands her with the Order of Rambaldi <0> and uses her as bate to force Sydney into completing a hit for her. Despite years of all out physical battles and her best efforts, Ana Espinoza was duped by Sark and finally captured. What role she will play in the future is as predictable as her behavior.

Who is your favorite Alias antagonist? How would you categorize Irina Derevko? Is she an antagonist? Aside from Sydney, who would you view as protagonist?

6 comments:

SRM said...

that's a great summary girlscout, but Ana was actually captured last season. In the 2-episode story w/ her and Sark, it ended w/ Sark trapping Ana and shouting to Sydney that he was "a man of his word". Syd and Ana had a good fight after that, but Syd won and arrested her. I wonder if we'll see her again this season?

I would say one of the best antagonists would be Sloane. After what he did to Syd by killing her fiancee, best friend, and lying to her for 7 years, you loathed the very sight of him, yet he always seems to convince people that he's "changed" and not evil anymore. There's always the question of whether that's true, and the obvious torment he causes Syd.

Girlscout said...

Good call SRG Alias. I totally forgot about that!! Right, he locked her out of the elevator. Shoot!

SRM said...

hehe, it's ok, I only know the details because I just rewatched the episode on TNT last week. :) Wish they would have released the s4 DVDs before s5 started, but ah well. I'm sure I'll know them by heart just like s1-3 soon enough. ;-)

Girlscout said...

Very good points Jenn. I am in the process of researching a specific term for characters like Irina. I, too, see her as both an antagonist and protagonist. In Sydney's mind she's a hero and in Jack's she's not. I am off to library to find some more literary and TV books. I will have an article posted tomorrow dealing more on this.

For sure, Irina hasn't been the best mother and I don't think she set out to be Sydney's antagonist. I think she is though, even if she didn't mean to be. She has kept Sydney from doing her job, but also helped to end SD-6. Hmmm.

amy said...

lets see...as far as other protagonists i think one of the reasons this show is so awesome and we are so attached to syd is because from the beginning she is really the stand-out protagonist and you almost couldn't classify anyone else as one because of all the spying, lying, betraying, and suspense....even vaughn has proven to not be all up-front (though i would want to call him a protagonist!)

sloane of course always keeps us on our toes and who doesn't love sark....

lauren was a pretty well developed antagonist...starts out easy to hate, then they slowly make you think she might be ok, then the big reveal....her evil just kept getting worse with an underlying tension...like did she really hesitate when killing her dad because of some inner conflict? when vaughn had her hanging up there from the chains we saw more of this seemingly compassionate and victimized lauren - only to have elena free her and expose that it was all false...

amy said...

i meant katya - darn those derevko sisters always getting me confused!!!