|
TV Guide Online
January 12, 2004
Roush Room: Dispatches
by Matt Roush
In the Broadway musical spoof Urinetown, a character jokes that nothing kills a show like too much exposition. I was reminded of this as I sat through Sunday's intriguing, numbing, perplexing, exciting, and just plain weird episode of Alias in which we finally learned, more or less, just what happened during Sydney's two years of (we now discover) self-induced amnesia.
Finding out that it was all linked to the Rambaldi project — that her once-antagonist boss Kendall is now on her side, and has always secretly been connected to the Department of Special Research (with a "Project Black Hole" devoted to Rambaldi) — led to a new realization on my part that Alias has finally evolved into the true successor to The X-Files (which occupied this same Sunday time period for years).
And just as I grew weary of The X-Files's convoluted alien-conspiracy "mythology" as the seasons wore on, Alias wore me out (but also at times fascinated me) with this bizarre back story. "You might want to sit down for this," Kendall warned Syd at one point. "And take notes," I added to myself.
In short, if that's possible: Syd was captured by the Covenant after her big bloody fight with Allison, her death was faked (using pulp extracted from her teeth) and she was brainwashed — unsuccessfully, though she fooled the Covenant into thinking otherwise — into a programmed killer. The scar on her belly was from the Covenant's surgery to extract eggs to fertilize with Rambaldi's DNA, contained in the cube everyone was looking for. (Syd apparently is the "chosen one" from the prophecies who can facilitate Rambaldi's "second coming.") So far so good.
After Syd eyeballed Vaughn kissing Lauren — Vaughn having moved on after believing Syd was dead — she opted to work with Kendall under the alias of Julia Thorne, with the goal to find the cube with Rambaldi's DNA. She faked the murder of Lazarey, who, like Sloane — and where was he in this episode? — was obsessed with Rambaldi, and together they unearthed the cube in a vault in a cave in a Namibian gorge. Shades of Indiana Jones as Lazarey used a set of 12 ancient keys to open the booby-trapped vault, and Syd had to chop off his hand to rescue him from the collapsing cave. In the twist that no doubt caused many a viewer's eyes to roll, Syd then erased her own memory to keep the Covenant from ever gaining access to the cube — although they eventually led her back to it, and ultimately stole back the precious cube with the fateful DNA.
Now that all of this is out of the way, I have come to understand that enjoying Alias has little to do with getting all of the answers. It's about the adventure, just like X-Files was always more enjoyable when appreciating that some things are better unknown than explained. Now I'm anxious for Alias to get back to the fabulous grind of escapist adventure, much as I came to prefer X-Files's stand-alone horror stories for their wit, wonder and pure entertainment value.
Some final thoughts: Loved Syd's former partner Dixon getting back into the action, joining the raid on Sark and the Covenant's Patagonian lab ("It's personal for me, too"). And do we really think Sark got away without taking one of those test tubes with Rambaldi's DNA and Syd's eggs? That story's not over yet, I'm betting. And what of Lazarey's dying words about "the passenger"? I'm not sure I really care.
Finally, there's the climactic revelation that Vaughn's wife Lauren is one of the bad guys, a Covenant turncoat assassinating Lazarey on Sark's orders. I'm already getting e-mails and having office conversations with those who think this is way too easy an out, but I find that criticism too easy. Lauren was a failed chraracter from the get-go, and the only way to resolve this creative dead end was to make her evil or to kill her — possibly both. At least now, she's going to be a more interesting character, for the short run anyway. I hope.
© TV Guide Magazine Group, Inc. 2004
 Back To All About Alias 2004
|
|
