Thursday, June 15, 2006

Ah, Season 3

I cuddled up in bed last night and watched the first disc of season 3. Oh, how I missed it! It really does pack a punch. Aside from enjoying the splendor that is the Alias of ole, I picked up on a few things…

Jack Bristow is the greatest character ever written! I swear the man is amazing! There isn’t anything he can’t do and the first four episodes of the season proves it. Locked up by the NSC, sprung free by his daughter who supposedly killed a Russian diplomat, Jack has to save her, but the clock is ticking! Secret conversations with Irina, inner-workings with a computer genius, the lying, the cheating, he’s so damn good! Jack has some of the best lines in the first four episodes. My particular favorite: “Michael Vaughn is just a boy who was never good enough for you.” Heartbreaker! Standing there behind the glass of the prison, seeing his long dead daughter crying before him! I can’t stand it!

Later, Jack meets with Sloane to gather intel on Sydney’s missing two years. The exchange between the two men has to be one of my favorite scenes of all time, and it really connects to the scene between Jack and Sloane in the finale of season 5.

Jack states: “A world relief organization? The shear audacity of your apparent turn around would be laughable if you weren’t so dangerous.”

Sloane asks Jack to trust him- to “trust in the consistency of my obsessions.” Then Sloane lays out the story of the Rambaldi message, one word- Peace. Jack then replies, “I would have found it anticlimactic, that after expecting to assemble a weapon of ultimate power that you end up with a revelation you could have acquired from a fortune cookie.” BRILLIANT! The writing is BRILL!

Sloane then provides Jack with a disc containing all of his leads into Sydney’s disappearance. Jack asks Sloane if the disc is a means to excuse him from any involvement in Sydney’s missing 2 years. Then Jack says something and I nearly fell out of bed!! He says, “I will bury you!” And he did!! In a cave for all eternity!! Love it!

A couple other things I noticed or had questions about:

Poor Weiss! The man obviously moved up in the ranks with Vaughn out playing teacher and Sydney apparently dead and buried- but then, as both of them return, Weiss again plays gopher, no longer leading missions, no longer the point guy. I feel bad for the guy and I am kind of glad he got the promotion in Washington. He got sick of playing sidekick!

Lauren is fabulous, just frickin’ fabulous! I love that at first, we kind of like her, she’s innocent and we are curious to learn more about her. Then, she and Sydney have that heated exchange in the conference room over letting Sark go and she rattles off about how condescending Sydney is. That’s when we start to hate her! How dare she say those things about Sydney! She stole Sydney’s man! She tries to make a mends on the plane to Moscow, but no- we won’t take her back. LOVE IT! Again, incredible character. BUT, BUT, BUT- there is still a loose end. What exactly was the purpose of Lauren marrying Vaughn? Vaughn left the CIA, gave up his clearance and access to CIA files after Sydney’s death. What was Lauren going to get from him as a college French teacher? Nothing! Did the Covenant expect that Sydney would return to the CIA, hence, prompting Vaughn to return to the CIA, thus, allowing Lauren to get intel? As far as I can tell, Lauren had just as much access, if not more than Vaughn to the CIA’s information on, not only the Covenant, but Rambaldi as well. I suppose the love triangle just makes for good TV.

Also, why does Sark love wine so much? He sure does drink an awful lot in season 3!

I wanted to mention too, that 3.1 “The Two” was written by JJ Abrams- which is very evident considering all the turns the episode takes-from Jack being in prison, to Sydney breaking him out. Episode 3.2 “Succession” was written by my favorite Alias writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Jeff Pinkner, Alias producer and another of my favs, wrote 3.3 “Reunion”- love the scene with Sydney and Weiss taking shots of tequila while the sweet singing of Patsy Kline plays in the background. Interestingly enough, my least favorite Alias writers, Monica Breen and Alison Shapker (who wrote the series finale) wrote 3.4 “A Missing Link” which features the great Simon Walker and the introduction of Julia Thorne.

What are your thoughts on going back to this season? I know many of you are not huge fans of season 3, but I just can’t get over how extremely intelligent it is and how deep and dark the plot gets. Can we find differences or variations of the plot between episodes, considering they are each written by different writers? Or does the story stay consistent? I loved diving back in- how about you?

PS. What are we thinking about the new layout? Good? Bad? Ugly? I have a few more banners in the works, so I might change it up once in awhile.

18 comments:

Tammy said...

I LOVE season 3! I watched a couple episodes the other night, but only with one ear tuned as I was working on some art projects. Kazari Bomani is one of my favorite guest characters. He is just so bad!

It's a great season to go back and rehash in my opinion!

Lots of characters to love and to hate!!

Jack has to be my all time favorite - he's been the most consistent overall for me. VERY well played by Victor Garber. I think I'll possibly miss him the most!

Anonymous said...

I have to say..I L-O-V-E the Syd and Weiss relationship in season 3..you never get to see their friendship grow in season 2, as it was focused more on the romantic relationship between Syd and Vaughn. Weiss was really there for her in season 3. I really appreciated him the most in this season.

Girlscout said...

Me too Amy! I love him- in that scene then they are drunk, talking about how "you need s shoulder to cry on..." Love it!

SRM said...

I love season 3 almost as much as 1 and 2, I think the writing, characters and plot twists are fantastic and it gets better everytime I watch it. To answer a couple of GS's questions, why does Sark love wine? Because he's just that sophisticated of a badboy. ;-) About why Lauren married Vaughn, I remember toward the end of that season when Lauren was trying to weasel her way out of Vaughn torturing her, she said something like "When the Covenant hired me to marry you and coax you back into the CIA...", so her purpose was to get Vaughn back as an agent. But you're right that she had almost the same amount of access as he did, so why they needed him back is the question. Possibly something to do with Prophet 5?

The new layout is great, but I think Robby is right (from the previous post) that a lot of white text on top of black gets to be hard to read and vibrates a little. Is there a way to make the text area white for better legibility?

Girlscout said...

Well, this layout stuff is frying my brain. I need to spend some more time on it. I will play around with it again tonight and see what I can come up with.

sidewinder said...

Yeah I love Season 3 too but I haven't watched my DVDs in a while right now I'm watching the streaming episodes on line for season 5.

Oh and I'm writing a fanfic for Season 5 if any of you want to read it...
Honor Thy Father

blah said...

i think that one of the best things about Season three is all the relationships: syd and jack (family); lauren and vaughn (love); syd and vaughn (forbiden love); lauren and sark (hot love); lauren and vaughn (betrayal)...

SRM said...

I agree dark alias, love your classifications hehe

Anonymous said...

Awesome new layout.
Just not fond of the banner.
I think you should find pic's that better show the characters, rather than witty lines.

blah said...

i like those witty lines, anyways, if you guys are intrested check out this new blogg: Unveil Doppelgang

blah said...

i dont' know how to post links on this, here's the url http://unveil-doppelgang.blogspot.com/

Tammy said...

OOOH! This banner is my favorite so far! I've liked all of them though! This with the red is great against the black (which I also happen to like!!)

It's addictive to play with and make changes, huh?! I'm forever doing that at my blog!

RUDY said...

The Covenant knew Syd was alive and they probably placed Lauren with Vaughn to make sure Syd didn't make contact because if she did then the Covenant would know that she wasn't Julia. But I'd probably bet that her aunt Elena already knew that and put Lauren there to help cover all ends...just in case.

blah said...

good idea rudy

SKlaft said...

I too loved season three. The complexity and depth of the story may actually outmatch the previous seasons (though, we all know Ss1 & 2 were the best ever).

The complaint I had about S3 was that ABC had finally convinced the producers to make stand alone episodes, which, I thought, took away from what had already made the great.

Setting that asside, I have always thought the show seriously lost direction after the plane ride with Kendall and Syd destroys the eggs with a flame thrower. Having figured out the mystery of her missing years half way through the season, Sydney lost one of the main motivations for continuing to be a spy.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah... season 3 was great, continues to be great, and thanks to DVD's, will remain a part of the greatest TV show ever.

Kellie said...

Hi - newbie here - been lurking for a few months and love Let's Talk Alias. I love your new website design too. It looks great and the song is fun.

I am just finishing up Season 4. I loved season 3 - every episode was heartbreaking and the reunion was satisfying. Watching season 4 was helpful in tying up the finale and helping to tie everything together in my head. The disconnect for me though is with Sloane - he goes out of his way to end things in Season 4 regarding Rimbaldi, and then turns around and kills his daughter and goes off the deep end again. Though in the Another Mister Sloane episode, he does have the maniacal look in his eyes after he bludgeons fake-Sloane's man to death. There I guess we know he isn't really over Rimbaldi.

My conclusion on Sloane in S4 is that he wasn't interested in destroying the world with the giant Mueller device, but instead wanted the more "positive" Rimbaldi benefits like immortality so he could continue to manipulate people/companies/governments. Though when he kills that guy he does say that this is not about immortality, so I was left a little confused there.

Anyway, in S3, I hated Lauren, but she is what made it so good and heartbreaking. I hated loving hating her : ) Also, Jack is the best character of all time - I love his lines in S4 too! He is just awesome.

blah said...

kellie, welcome.
I agree completely with you. A way that i look at sloane and the whole thing of stoping rambaldi in season four is that he had his daughter. When he lost his first daughter he filled the whole in his heart with ramabaldi, but now that he has his own daugher she replaced rambaldi and was loyal to her. But in season five when he accedently killed Nadia he went back to rambaldi. Does that make sense?

Dark

Kellie said...

Thanks for the welcome!

It does make sense. With the simplicity of the Finale, you can't read too much into it, however he was perusing page 47 before Nadia came over to his house and was accidentally killed. Maybe he would have gove over the edge either way, or maybe he would have held onto his good side had Nadia not died. We will never know, but I LOVE the Sloane character almost as much as Jack. They are both phenomenal, complex characters. Each time I watch the series, I notice more and more nuances, especially in retrospect : )