October 2004 posts
Starts (By any other name 1.2-1.3) --
Tchaikovsky, 14:21:44 10/18/04 Mon
Hello everyone.
So, the shrink paused for a second, laid back in his chair, sprang
back forward again and said:
"Have you tried watching more television?"
It occurred to me watching the second and third episodes of Alias,
(but particularly the second, since the third is well-written
and has a proto-arcyness), that I don't do well at things at the
start. My commitment to something, once it has begun is really
quite strong. I used to routinely get the three pounds extra per
quarter for 100% attendance at my church choir. And that was for
a Tuesday and Friday rehearsal and two Sunday services. I've only
missed one Wind Orchestra rehearsal in three and a half years.
Etc etc etc. But at the beginning of something, I have a tendency
to be unsatisfied and impatient. It's noticeable at the beginning
of my Angel viewing; I keep giving the series short shrift in
comparison with Buffy. It's noticeable with my relationships with
people. Once I've made friends with somebody, I really enjoy being
with them. But I make relatively little effort with casual acquaintances
and end up not converting good starts. If that reads as a bit
cold, then that's me, I suppose. I'm a sucker for comfort and
no change.
So here I was sitting watching Alias and thinking, This is boring.
I might give this up. And it suddenly came to me that the thing
is, I'm not connected with the characters. I know who they are
and a couple of character traits, but that's about it. I'm not
going to cry at Parity like I cried at You're Welcome.
It's symptomatic of starting something. I have to be patient.
So, I shall continue to give this show time, and in the long run,
I have faith I shall be rewarded. I should do that with people
as well.
1.2- 'So it begins'
Well, it does. Then it scurries about in a hundred geographies
before coming to the end just as it appears our hero might be
on the way out. The episode has precious little structure, and
keeps coming at revelations in a wonky or confusing way, often
merely repeating what Abrams did better in the pilot. I think
it has a degree of The Train Job syndrome, if you know
what I mean. What it does do well, is reinforce what's going to
be the pattern of the series, unless something extraordinary is
only a few episodes away. This being that, we'll see Sydney gallivanting
around, in various dresses, disguises and wigs. There'll be the
odd bit of violence with the heavies, and the real meat of the
episode, (for people like me who use action scenes to go and get
a cup of tea) is the intriguing conflict between Sydney's two
jobs, her social life and her courses at school.
Let's get one thing straight. This is definitely a fantasy show.
A lot of shows you wouldn't think are. In fact, there's a good
case to be made that all drama ashows are essentially fantasy;
it's just the things we have to suspend our disbelief about are
different. Here, Sydney is so far doing way, way too much all
at the same time to look like anything other than a ghost. She
appears to have time for long chats with her house-mates, as well
as time to write essays, (even if they come in late), and time
for two jobs, one of which has to go on outside work hours, and
where in one she spends a lot of time jetting round the world.
It remains to be seen whether, like in Buffy, this siutation is
addressed head on, or whether it's just another reason that this
is a fantasy show. Along with the fact that Sydney is fluent in
every language under the sun, she appears to have a thorough and
unsuperficial knowledge of game theory. Again, it doesn't bother
me whether this is resolved or not, I just want to declare that
I'm suspending my disbelief so that, later down the line, I don't
get a comment from some passer-by saying 'Yeah, but that Alias
could never really happen, could it'.
Delights in the newness:
-I think it's true to say that Marshall is nothing like me whatsoever,
except in his tendency to fall over his sentences occasionally
when speaking. But I just love him, already. He's half-carrying
the show for me at the moment (a touch harsh on some of others
actually). In 'So it begins', he gets the priceless line, (one
of those ones thrown in there by the writers in certain knowledge
virtually no-one will get it first time), 'I'm a bit Pavlovian
about these puppies. No pun intended'. Magnificent.
-The Godfather, family business type angle is still working nicely.
I like the father/daughter angst- you want to introduce Jack to
his emotions occasionally, but then you hang back, wondering just
what it would cost him, to, for example, tell Sydney the real
cause of her mother's death. I vacillate with being annoyed about
his lack of warmth, and then being delighted that his actions
seemingly speak louder than both his words and his gestures. Hug
her, already!
-The flashbacks in this are relatively elaborate again. Sydney
is explaining to Vaughn a load of stuff which happened rather
a long time ago, but it's handled elegantly, allowing us to indulge
in the fact that Sydney's spy life actually didn't all begin at
one space and time- we're shown that things begin bit by bit,
just as they end bit by bit, with SP6 stuff and CIA stuff paralleled
impressively.
-Just occasionally, Abrams wants to play the Cordelia card, and
ask his audience what Sydney would be if she wasn't a spy. I don't
know whether her life and job are supposed to represent as much
as a spiritual life, (maybe for now, just something beyond Sydney's
studies and normal life), but when we find out that her
boyfriend had a plane booked, (by her father, no less) to Singapore,
and that their life their could have been free from the trappings
of Other Names and cool soirees where you don't get nearly enough
time to quaff the aperitifs, it rings a bell in us. It's the times
in our life where we yearned to sit around and do nothing, just
relax for a bit. And we didn't, because we had to go on with our
job; for money, for the company we were working for, even to give
us some reason to be around.
-I like the fact that Sydney has to crawl into a grave to find
the bomb. She's made to confront death again in the metaphor,
just as she was in the reality the week before. She keeps her
emotions balanced enough to continue; defuses the bomb with eleven
seconds still remaining, (kudos to Abrams for not going for the
00:01 schtick). But there's still the other bomb away in Cairo.
The core of the grief is still around, and, feeling like a gun
to the head, is the constant enforcement of a decision that killed
your alternate future, and a person you loved.
So we're left with the cliffhanger
1.3- 'Parity'
Which then is resolved rather quickly. Since the same thing happens
at the end of this episode, it's worth considering where, for
the purpose of the themes of the episode, the moral of each chunk
is given. We don't have it tied up in a Captain Picard's Philosophy
for Credent People bow, so we have to find our moral in a scene
two-thirds of the way through. Or whatever. It's an interesting
challenge I shall keep my eye on.
-The idea of parity is embraced in this episode with a very thoughtful
examination of another one of the cliches employed in James Bond
land. Here we have Anna Espinosa, (Gina Torres!), as the person
who matches Sydney's abilities as an agent. There's parity. We
see her apparently beating Syd to the McGuffin, and then Sydney
shoots it out of her hand, captilising on her desire to gloat
in what would otherwise be a lost cause. Towards the end of the
episode, the two are very deliberately drawn visually as mirror
images, coming towards each other in the oval of the sports stadium,
coming to stand in front of the suitcase, to find in horror that
what was in there, instead of code, was...[See next review!]
There are other parities. The episode extends the question to
saying; why is it interesting to watch two people interact, if
their interaction is essentially confrontational? And the answer
is, because you want to know who's going to get the better of
whom. It's no more complicated, eventually, than a Tom and Jerry
cartoon. Anna is the person as a direct parallel to Sydney. But
there are other areas where we are to think about people who are
necessarily equal with her for the storyline to progress. Her
trust and equality with Dixon. Her excellent trump and over-trump
relationship with Vaughn, (it's demonstrated in record time, when
he is replaced, that an inferiorly intelligent person in
Vaughn's position, and the whole storyline falls apart). Her equal
distance with her father. These people aren't the same as her,
but they share an equal degree of an asset she possesses in her
chosen field, thus making them a metaphor for her as main character.
Vaughn, her brains. Dixon, her loyalty. Her father, her steeliness.
These can mutate and grow as the story continues.
-Another parity is the continuing attempt at one in Sydney's life
between CIA and SP6, and between work and education. These themes
are deep-running, but are set into motion here, surely to be elaborated
on as we proceed.
-I love the Rambaldi stuff, because when we start to lose our
purchase on the total Real Reality of the situations, we start
to be guided by the personalities and emotions of the characters,
and that's the heart of any good drama. Plus, any hints of prophecy
in a drama start to raise fascinating questions about the destiny
and free will of the protagonists in the play we are watching.
Makes you feel all warm inside...
That's it for now. I think I'm going to bound along at a couple
of episodes a day for the forseeable future. Just so you know,
y'know. Though those weekend marathons also sound juicily tempting.
TCH
Replies:
[> You know, I just can't get into Alias ... -- Ames,
14:53:51 10/18/04 Mon
I've watched episodes here and there, and I think I'm giving it
a fair chance, but it just doesn't click with me the way it seems
to with a lot of people. I think the problem is that the show
and the characters just take themselves too seriously - there's
not an iota of humour to be found. I'm fine with the dramatic
fantasy concept of a small band of people saving the world (obviously!),
but once in a while they should stop to realize how ludicrous
it all is. And Alias, for all its cloaking in the appearance of
gritty reality, is just as fantastic and unlikely as battling
monsters and demons with magic.
[> [> Re: You know, I just can't get into Alias ...
-- Tchaikovsky, 15:07:36 10/18/04 Mon
And Alias, for all its cloaking in the appearance of gritty
reality, is just as fantastic and unlikely as battling monsters
and demons with magic.
Completely agreed on that part. I'm still definitely going through
the 'Getting to know you' phase of the show at the moment. I'm
told by people I trust, (and who have similar opinions to me on
other shows, which is just as important!), that it becomes excellent,
so I'm giving it a while longer.
I think I might leave other people to argue the rest of the case,
having seen only three episodes thusfar.
TCH
[> [> It doesn't really have a cloaking of 'gritty reality.'
That's "24." -- Rob, 15:26:21 10/18/04 Mon
Alias has always been very forthright in its sci-fi/fantasy bend.
24, which can be just as over-the-top and unlikely has a deadly
serious aura about it that sometimes seems like it takes itself
too seriously.
Rob
[> [> [> Also... -- Rob, 22:05:10 10/18/04
Mon
...comic relief characters such as Marshall and Weiss severely
and intentionally undercut the seriousness. Which is another element
which "24" does not have. Also, "Alias"'s
soundtrack itself particularly during the missions indicate that
this is meant to be fun.
Rob
[> I just have to say... -- Rob, 15:44:47 10/18/04
Mon
...it's very refreshing to see these episodes analyzed separately,
each as its own separate work, because every time I have watched
a season of Alias through on a DVD set, I end up seeing
a number of episodes in a row, and with all of the cliffhanger
endings, they tend to bleed into one another to the point that
I usually see it as just one long movie. This has its strengths
and weaknesses, one of the strengths being you tend to not notice
many of the weaknesses! But you also don't get to appreciate the
structure of each episode on its own merits, and it's great to
get a chance to do that through your reviews. Unfortunately, I
have to keep suppressing what I really want to say in my responses,
because I don't want to spoil you for stuff in the far future,
and at the same time don't want to inadvertently spoil you for
something I thought happened in a particular episode but
actually was in the beginning of the next one!
Although this isn't quite Whedon-level material, I like to think
of it as Baby Whedon, or if that's too condescending, Whedon-lite.
Despite preconceived notions people may have about the show before
seeing it, it is clear upon watching that it is intended to be
just as metaphorical as Buffy. I love it for many of the
same reasons (also why I love Farscape, which I would call
Whedon-Equal-If-Not-Better), mostly in how it crafts compelling,
(mostly) three-dimensional characters and puts them in fantastical
situations that are actually exaggerated or symbolic versions
of what might happen in the real world, if only on an emotional
level. Alias has grown into quite a complex show and parts
of the second and most of the first could be compared to the best
of Whedon, and, most incredibly, not come off looking too inferior.
Which is more than can be said for most of what is on TV.*
Rob
*Not counting Six Feet Under here of course, because it's
not TV, it's HBO. ;-)
[> [> Cliffhange -- Tchaikovsky, 16:02:46 10/18/04
Mon
rs. Who needs them? I think they have the tendency to fiddle with
your ability to view each episode separately, but I suppose they
lure the audience in in the most simple way possible.
Do you think the first Season is the best of the three then?
TCH
*LOL
[> [> [> The best is S2, IMO, but... -- Rob, 16:06:06
10/18/04 Mon
...I do happen to love the cliffhangers of S1, which are scaled
back to some extent in the second season, because it gives it
the feeling of an old-fashioned movie serial. Interestingly, though
as the story gets more complex and sophisticated in the second
season, so do the cliffhangers. Most cliffhangers in the second
season are not of the immediate "Syd-in-peril" variety,
but revolve around, as with Joss' best episode-endings, surprise
revelations or mysteries. Actually, some of the best of the later
S1 episodes revolve around that, too.
Rob
[> [> [> [> I agree, like S2 best so far --
Masq, 17:16:09 10/18/04 Mon
More emotional resonance for Syd and her parental figures especially,
which is KEY for me in liking the show.
(that and Syd kicking butt)
But I have yet to start season 3.
[> [> [> [> [> S3 is good... -- Rob, 17:44:41
10/18/04 Mon
...and don't worry, I'm not going to go deranged psycho-cheerleader
on you. I completely acknowledge that it is flawed, but there
is still a lot of good, especially when you watch it back-to-back
on DVD. It jumped up much higher on my internal approval rating
on DVD versus seeing it as it was broadcast. I'm very excited
about the 20-weeks-straight-through-with-no-breaks-besides-the-Oscars
thing they're doing this year.
Rob
[> [> [> [> [> [> I'm prepping myself
-- Masq, 17:52:22 10/18/04 Mon
See all of Season 3 straight through, and then be ready to watch
season 4 on the air. On my crappy cable-less TV!! ; )
[> [> [> Oh, I see where I made a mistake! --
Rob, 21:23:58 10/18/04 Mon
I said "parts of the second and most of the first."
I meant that the other way around. Parts of the first and most
(if not all) of the second. *slaps forehead* D'oh!
Rob
[> [> [> [> Aha. Now you're making sense again.
-- TCH, 06:35:03 10/19/04 Tue
Was that Mike? *Angel season
5 spoilage* -- Kana, 03:24:32 10/19/04 Tue
In 'Time Bomb' when spike is thrown against a wall in the training
room by Ilyria, was it me or did i see Angel's stunt double Mike
Massa as clear as day. I'm not usually one for spotting things
like that so it must of been pretty clear seen as i noticed it
when i first saw the ep.
Wonderfalls on Vision --
Ames, 07:47:32 10/19/04 Tue
Vision TV is up to their 3rd week of broadcasting Wonderfalls,
and I finally figured out how this was sold to the religious channel.
I'd forgotten that episode 3 "Wound-Up Penguin" is very
religious - it's the one with the nun who loses her faith and
the priest who tries to bring her back to the fold. I can totally
see how someone could have shown selected clips of this episode
to the religious network execs and convinced them that it was
a fine wholesome family show.
Still looking forward to the first ep I haven't seen (Crime Dog)
in two weeks! And then DVD time in January (we hope)...
Lost, Episode 1x02: Pilot
(Part 2) -- Evan, 09:27:24 10/19/04 Tue
i) Getting along:
We re all in this together man, let s treat each other with a
little respect.
Shut up, lardo!
A nice thought, Hurley, but in a group of fifty people, it s no
surprise that some won t mix well. In this episode, the second
half of Pilot , we start to see a little bit of conflict on the
island, particularly between Sawyer, the abrasive Southerner and
self-described complex guy , and Sayid, the technologically-inclined,
soft-mannered but strong-willed Iraqi, who may rival Jack as the
group s alpha-male that the others turn to for leadership. Why
don t they get along? Simply put, because they re not supposed
to. Sawyer seems to be the type of person who will quickly jump
to the conclusion, his only evidence being a pair of handcuffs
found in the jungle, that Sayid must be a terrorist, responsible
for crashing the plane. And Sayid is the type of person who must
look at these ignorant stereotypes that many Americans can t help
but carry with them of Middle Easterners as violent extremists
who lack morals as a horrible insult, because Sayid knows that
he and most other Middle Easterners don t possess these qualities
at all (and, furthermore, from his current perspective, this is
actually a fairly accurate description of his opponent).
Now, I m not convinced that these two are destined never to get
along no matter what. Sawyer, while he is no doubt being a real
jerk at the moment, is simply looking for someone to blame so
that he has a way to carry out his aggression-as-a-means-to-solving-problems.
I doubt he even truly believes what he s saying don t terrorists
usually hijack the plane, not magically cause it to crash from
their seat in the back row? And, as we can see from his face as
he sits quietly reading some piece of paper (hooray for setting
up future episodes!), Sawyer has a sensitive side as well. Maybe
once he s gotten to know everybody a little better and has finished
getting his don t fuck with me defense mechanism adequately out
in the open, he ll soften up a bit. As for Sayid, well, he pretty
much has every reason to continue resenting Sawyer and what he
stands for, but he won t, because I don t think resentment is
part of his personality.
ii) Bickering Siblings:
Boone and Shannon also have some good conflict in this episode.
Shannon is a spoiled girl, no doubt, but she isn t completely
brainless or lacking in self-awareness. Yeah, she s mean to people,
but it isn t because she thinks she has the right to be; it s
probably for no other reason than simply because she can get away
with it. When Boone approaches her, she s crying. Crying because
she was mean to the man at the airport who wouldn t give her first
class seats, the man who saved her life . And Shannon is still
sure that they will be rescued, so she s not helping the others
do useful things such as sort through bags and clear the wreckage.
I ve been through a trauma here is her response to Boone s accusation
that she s worthless just sitting around. We ve all been through
a trauma, he says, the only difference is that since the crash
you ve actually given yourself a pedicure!
Shannon knows that she was mean to that guy at the airport, and
she knows that Boone s accusations are in some sense true. She
feels guilt about being mean, and, I suspect, about her lifestyle
in general. People seem to treat her as if she has MORE worth
than everyone else (see Charlie). In truth, however, having the
world handed to you on a silver platter just negates whatever
worth you really could have, and deep down Shannon knows this.
But, hey, when you can get away with it, it s easier to just do
what s expected of you, be the person who others think you are,
so you don t have to go through the trouble of explaining otherwise.
Why do I believe all this? Because when Boone, God s gift to humanity
, calls her on it, she gets super defensive. In an effort to prove
her brother wrong (i.e. to prove to herself that he s wrong),
she decides to do something unpredictable: volunteer to go on
the hike with Sayid and several others, whose goal is to reach
higher ground so that they can be certain the S.O.S. they send
will actually be transmitted, without wasting the batteries when
they have no signal. How she thinks she can help, I have no idea.
But she gets her wish. (Nudge nudge).
At the top of the hill, they discover that another message is
already being transmitted. Conveniently, it s in French, a language
that in the group only Shannon can speak, giving her the chance
to prove to everyone how useful she really is. She wasn t (consciously)
expecting this, and at first she shrinks back at the opportunity.
You spent a year in Paris, Boone exclaims. Drinking", she
says, "not studying!! But she comes through and lets them
all know what the message is. It says that the French got stranded
on the island too and that something killed them all (except the
woman with the radio). Furthermore, each time the transmission
repeats, it numbers itself. Sayid does some quick and impressive
calculations and figures out that it s been going for 16 years
without being answered.
They ve essentially discovered that they have no hope and they
re all gonna die but wasn t that pretty much what they were expecting?
(Note: I hear people don t like Shannon much. Personally, I think
there s more to her than meets the eye, and I m looking forward
to seeing where they take her character.)
iii) The Polar Bear:
During the hike, the gang hears some rustling in the bushes. Something
is rushing at them very quickly. Everyone turns around and runs;
they ve heard the stories of what happened to the pilot. Sawyer,
however, stays behind, and out of nowhere, he pulls a gun! BLAOW.
He shoots a polar bear!!
Kate asks, Where did that come from? She means the gun, not the
polar bear. Sawyer tells them he got it off of a U.S. Marshall
who was transporting some criminal. Then, they jump to conclusions
(or rather, they take a tiny step, and there conclusions are!).
Some criminal, huh? You mean yourself? Sawyer and Sayid start
fighting again, yadda yadda yadda
Let s get back to the polar bear. How in the hell did a polar
bear end up on a tropical island? I really don t know, and all
I can do so far is speculate. But I will mention this: pay careful
attention to the scene where Walt is reading a Spanish comic book
that he found on the beach. See any interesting animals in there?
iv) Other character tidbits:
In last week s episode, Claire, 8 months pregnant, got slammed
into the ground stomach first. I cringed. In this episode we find
out that she hasn t felt the baby move since the crash. Thankfully,
she does start to feel it again later in the episode, as Jin,
the male half of the culturally isolated Korean couple, tries
to offer her some food he scrounged up. I smiled. But Jin felt
somewhat uncomfortable putting his hand on this random girl s
stomach. Jin, it would appear, is an old-fashioned type. The type
who won t let his wife, Sun, talk to another man when the top
button of her shirt is undone. The type who s always in control,
slapping Sun s hand away when she tries to help before he asks
her to. But he bosses her around because he s jealous. And he
s jealous because he loves her. And all you need is love, right?
Well, no. When Jin s not looking, that button comes right back
off. It looks like she s just about ready to take that control
back.
Other new developments include the revelation that the handcuffs
belonged neither to Sayid nor Sawyer, but to Kate. The alleged
U.S. Marshall, buddy with the shrapnel in his stomach, was transporting
her from Australia back to prison, and he assures Jack that she
is very dangerous (although, for now, Jack is unaware of who exactly
that pronoun refers to.)
But is this guy trustworthy?
You ve gotta stay positive, kiddo, there s always that off-chance
that they ll believe your story. I know I sure did .
I don t care what you believe.
Oh, I know that s true. That s always been true.
Oooh, cryptic.
Lastly, we have Michael, father of Walt, a 9 no,10-year old boy
who lived with his mother, in Australia for the time being (they
relocated often), until she got sick and died. Michael and Walt,
a father and son who clearly haven t spent much time together
in the past, were on their way to begin their new life together
in American when they got violently shaken out of the sky. Walt
needs love and protection from his father in a situation like
this, but mostly he s just annoyed with him for not finding his
lost dog. Instead, Walt makes a connection with Locke, the orange-peel
guy. They play backgammon together ( One side s light, one side
s dark ) and Locke asks Walt if he can tell him a secret
v) Wrapping Up:
I don t really have much in terms of philosophy to add to the
discussion of this episode. I covered most of that in Pilot (Part
1). Originally, these two were meant to be seen together as a
two-hour pilot, and many people are angry with ABC for splitting
them up. I, on the other hand, think they work quite well as two
episodes. The dead pilot at the end of Part 1 is a great cliffhanger
and, structurally, it just worked for me.
But it s becoming clear (the pilot getting killed, the polar bear,
the French message) that our characters thoughts may have some
physical causal properties on this island. And by some physical
causal properties I mean the all out ability to alter reality.
Whether it be a wish fulfillment scenario, or something a little
more general, I m not yet sure. But I do know this: that sometime
in a future episode analysis, I ll be bringing up quantum physics.
Replies:
[> Staying totally unspoiled, but... -- dub ;o), 10:35:26
10/19/04 Tue
But it s becoming clear (the pilot getting killed, the polar
bear, the French message) that our characters thoughts may have
some physical causal properties on this island. And by some physical
causal properties I mean the all out ability to alter reality.
Whether it be a wish fulfillment scenario, or something a little
more general, I m not yet sure. But I do know this: that sometime
in a future episode analysis, I ll be bringing up quantum physics.
I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that our speculation on this
issue is accurate, because I'm worried that anything less will
be a major disappointment. I don't want to be spoiled, so I guess
there's no way to set my mind at rest until the show itself gets
around to being a little bit clearer on what is going on.
OTOH, Abrams could well just keep the weirdo events coming all
season, without attempting to provide a "logical" explanation.
I agree with you about the comic book--there's just no reason
to show that particular page with that particular illustration
unless it plays into what happens latter with the polar bear--that
would be taking coincidence just too far.
[> [> Yeah, I'll be kind of embarrassed if I'm dead wrong
hahaha -- Evan, 11:44:16 10/19/04 Tue
The wonder of the accident
(By any other name 1.4-1.5) -- Tchaikovsky, 14:38:16 10/19/04
Tue
Hello.
Isn't it wonderful how in the film medium, by which I mean both
television and motion pictures, things happen by accident. I think
it faintly unlikely, though I may be wholly wrong, that Picasso
ever drew something and then thought, 'Oh, hang on a second there,
that nose in the wrong place could mean something!'. Or
that Mozart miswrote in a G in the first violins at the top of
an F7 and realised that it sounded mellow and fruity, creating
the F9 chord. Yet in cinema and in television, a collaborative
venture of many hands, of much fluke and hoping that things turn
out like they were dreamt, (rather than, as Picasso and Mozart
could, ingeniously transferring their genius dreams individually),
things happen accidentally that weren't expected and strengthen
bits and pieces.
Think of the film moments; the muted colours in the climactic
scene in 'Taxi Driver', originally only made so to pacify the
grumbliong MPAA. The ending of Casablanca, the only one
that makes sense in the central tableau, in the relationship of
Rick and Renault, but apparently chosen at the last moment. The
part-improvised iconic ID scene in The Usual Suspects Things
which accidentally go right. On top of this, imagine all those
countless actors who turn down roles, and fourth choices who make
the films their own. Just reserves to start with, they craft an
unforgettable character.
1.4- 'A Broken Heart'
All of which came to me, and luckily apropos of the episode, in
the climactic scene of this fourth episode of Alias, the best
scene to date. Incidentally, here's the core, (the heart) of this
episode, and it comes three quarters of the way through, thus
allowing us to segue into the cliffhanger for the last ten minutes.
It's almost, at times, like watching the last three acts of an
episode and then the first act of the next episode, but on this
occasion the ending had a bomb being implanted into a heart, literally
breaking the heart; so hooray for the thematic unity.
But back, eliptically, (how else do I write?) to the scene with
Vaughn, back on Sydney's case in both senses, and our gal on the
plaza in Los Angeles. You're watching this very beautiful scene,
where Sydney cries her eyes out and explains what's going on in
her life, how much she has to lie to everyone, how much she wants
to be as strong and difficult to her father as her father is to
her, but how she is hamstringed by love. How she liked the agent
who ended up dead on her mission, and things are just getting
on top of her. How she doesn't want the pager to rule her life.
Suddenly, she throws it into the ocean. Vaughn, stoic, so far
having not revealed nearly enough about himself to be as open
to Sydney as Syd has just been to him, is sardonic: 'You just
through your pager in the Pacific'. And through the Grave-ian
absurdity of the moment, Sydney notices herself as a character
in someone else's life, and breaks into laughter. How ridiculous,
she thinks, does it look from Vaughn's perspective, this loss
of control, this story? As ridiculous as Buffy, recounting the
improbable melodrama of Season Six, drained of its dreary, beautiful
motives, to the bemused, amused Giles.
And so, yes, this scene really works. But here's the clincher.
As Sydney is slowly pouring her soul out to Vaughn, we go wide
for a few moments to see the fair on the beach-side. And the largest
of all the attractions is what looks like a giant Ferris wheel.
The lights on it are flashing, concentrically, slowly resolving
inwards and drawing our attention into its middle, where, since
it's a structure which turns, there is nothing at all. An emptiness.
A broken heart.
I'd put ten of these green dollars on the fact that this wasn't
in the script. Though the director surely noticed the interestingness
of the wheel, it still seems likely he put it in there to make
the shot visually stimulating, and for no other reason. And yet,
despite this accidental nature, the scene vaults off from nicely
observed to brilliant because of this little detail, encapsulating
Sydney's momentary breakdown, the conflicts, always present in
a double agent of being thrown in a myriad of directions all at
once. A wonderful accident, perhaps. But a great moment of television
regardless of intent.
-The reason this works particularly well for me is partly because
of the insistence the writer of the episode puts on her central
theme, perhaps more so than earlier episodes. We see the broken
heart of the window of the Church in Malaga, opening the episode.
Rambaldi, literally displayed as what he figuratively is, a missing
link, the broken up heart of Renaissance law, part Leonardo da
Vinci, part Charles Babbage, part Nostradamus. We have a whole
subplot of Francie's broken heart over Charlie, who is apparently
cheating on her. I delight in the fact that in only the fourth
episode, we're seeing real characterisation given to a person
who is perhaps tenth most integral to the series, (Syd, Jack,
Vaughn, Sloane, Dixon, Will, Marcus, Weiss, Anna). Jack's heart
is broken into in a different way, decrypted, robbed. Instead
of his usual solid relaxation during psych tests, (suggested,
at least), we see him worried about what his daughter is going
to find out about him and his dead wife. When Jack stands Sydney
up at the restaurant out of cowardice, that was my heart, right
here, breaking.
So yes, I loved this episode, it's easily my favourite so far.
-I think what makes the series less utterly delightful to me than
Buffy and Angel, so far, (though take into account my disclaimer
in my last post), is a rather subtle distinction between what
Rob and what Ames have been saying in the last thread. Though
the show itself, as Rob rightly points out, undercuts the supposed
seriousness of all these campy missions, (the characters of Marcus,
for example, and the crazyfun music underneath each mission),
what is different is that, aside from the odd moment, the main
characters themselves take themselves and their situations earnestly.
They don't act with any of the brilliant flippancy of Buffy. You
can't ever imagine Sydney saying 'If the apocalpyse comes, beep
me'. Or Vaughn: 'I laugh in the face of danger. Then I run and
hide until it goes away'. I think part of the issue is that Buffy
was originally a show about the teen experience, whereas this
is a show about twenty-somethings largely, people treating their
professional existences as if it meant the world. And I can take
that, analyse it, and enjoy it. But if we never get that Greenwaltian
subversion running below the surface, the magic that invested
itself in 'The Girl In Question', but less controversially in
many of Greenwalt's earlier episodes, we miss just a touch of
the fun of it all. Not much. Just a lick. That's how I manage
to agree with what both Ames and Rob are saying. The writers may
not take the story too seriously, but the main characters, to
date, really do.
1.5 'Doppelganger'
It's hardly suprising, considering the persistent duality played
on in the series, how many of the titles have a fundamental suggestion
of two-ness in them (cf Parity), but here we go again.
This is a much weaker episode, though one with a fascinating cliffhanger.
A proper one where instead of it being 'What's inside the suitcase?'
or 'Why isn't Sydney about to die?' (ie a plot reveal), it's 'How
does what's happened affect the characters? (a story reveal).
I don't want to be tricked by not knowing what's going to happen
until next week, I want to be tricked by not knowing what has
already been shown to have happened will affect the characters
I have an affection for. And that's what this one does, as Dixon,
using some initiative, has a secondary detonator which blows up
many CIA men- something that wouldn't have happened had Sydney
not, earlier in the epsiode, been allowed by Vaughn to explain
her double agent status. Queue fisticuffs, (verbal at least),
next time through.
The little there is to discuss in this episode before the final
die-cast:
-The file copying done by Vaughn gives an indication that, in
this most fiddly to read of all boundary lines, Vaughn takes an
interest in Sydney personally as well as professionally. Although
Jack's files are entirely work-related, it is not in her remit
to see them, and thus suggests that Vaughn wants to ingratiate
himself for the good of Sydney as a person rather than an agent.
Vaughn/Sydney looks all set to become the main romantic centre
of the show, much to the dismay of Will, the hopelessly curious,
(he is Syd's curiosity, in a sense), journalist.
-The lunatic chase sequence at the beginning of the episode is
really good fun, as long as you don't take the fact that Dixon
could do open heart surgery on a stranger while an ambulance is
travelling one hundred miles an hour too seriously. It also sets
up, along with the Halloween party, the devestation in Sydney's
eyes at the end.
-Halloween= skeletons in closets, demons under beds. Nuff said.
-When Sydney is really, really pressed by Dixon, it pays off beautifully
on screen. I am deeply impressed by the way that Sydney already
has three relationships which have emotional resonance, (Jack,
Vaughn, Dixon).
-Jack's method of coercion is perhaps a little surprising, though
perhaps not so much. His devotion to his daughter continues to
shine through in deeds but not words, which I, as a chronic Hamlet,
(ie words but not deeds) find violently unsatisfactory. Affection,
Jack. Two 'fs'. Not that I don't love the steely, determined fool,
don't get me wrong.
-The whole Kate Jones plot-line, also used as Syd's undercover
name, totally baffles me for the moment, so I'll stay schtum.
That's all for now. Tune in tomorrow evening for your soiree equivalent
of two pints of milk, the Daily Two Reviews of Alias. Until then,
I have a group of people to double-cross you with...
TCH
Replies:
[> Re: The wonder of the accident (By any other name 1.4-1.5)
-- Rob, 18:44:44 10/19/04 Tue
Oh, I love your analysis of the Ferris wheel in that scene.
That's how I manage to agree with what both Ames and Rob are
saying. The writers may not take the story too seriously, but
the main characters, to date, really do.
That is true, but for me, the fact that the writers/directors
themselves find ways to undercut the drama and seriousness that
emanate from the main characters is enough, because if we had
a snarky heroine who flippantly commented on the absurdness of
her situation, the show would be little but a complete Buffy
clone, transplanted into the spy/espionage world. Alias
for me pulls off a perfect balance of outrageousness and outlandishness,
without ever veering into camp, which is tough to do. Even Buffy
crossed that line from time to time. Him, anyone? ;-)
Rob
[> [> The genius of 'Him' -- Tchaikovsky, 06:19:08
10/20/04 Wed
OK, no, you're quite right, I don't have anything constructive
to say, so I may as well say nothing at all...
TCH
[> [> [> Interesting, I never thought of it like that
before... -- Rob, 07:36:04 10/20/04 Wed
Heh, just wanted to see how many people I could lure into the
entry. ;-)
Rob
[> [> [> [> Agreed; that aspect is particularly
amazing -- Tchaikovsky, 08:07:00 10/20/04 Wed
You can tell I have nothing else to do. Well, that's not strictly
true. I just finished The Guardian's cryptic crossword and am
feeling pleased with myself. Not that that's on topic, I just
felt the need to crow.
TCH
[> [> [mumble] I liked "Him" [/mumble]
-- Sheri, 23:59:42 10/20/04 Wed
[> [> [> Seriously... -- Tchaikovsky, 07:10:57
10/21/04 Thu
I thought it was quite good too. It does offer the dubious honour
though of being perhaps the only Buffy episode ever where Rob
hated it on a first viewing, and went as far as posting a comment
entitled 'Ten Things I Hate About 'Him'' on this very board. One
of those heart stopping moments when the world just freezes for
a second...
TCH- who likes farce as much as the next (wo)man.
[> [> [> [> Re: Seriously... -- Rob, 08:48:45
10/21/04 Thu
Even though I can watch the episode now and even enjoy some of
it (except for the Dawn cheerleading section at the beginning,
which makes me cringe), I will always hold a bitter resentment
towards it for, even for a brief moment, breaking my perfect Buffy-loving
streak. ;-)
Rob
[> [> [> [> [> Cringing as a good thing
-- shambleau, 13:24:02 10/24/04 Sun
To me, the cheerleading sequence is brilliant because it is one
of the few times that the high-school-as-hell metaphor was literalized.
The audience was made to FEEL hell for once. Humiliation is the
core experience of high school and junior high that make it so
painful. For examples, see Xander being dressed as a girl by the
frat jocks, or Willow receiving Cordelia's "softer side of
Sears" broadside. But you didn't, in either of those cases,
cringe while watching them. The emotional focus for the audience
was on the sympathy it felt for the victim and on dislike of the
attacker.
In "Him", as it was regularly on Freaks and Geeks, the
focus was on the experience of humiliation itself and on forcing
the audience to experience it also. I think that cringing in reaction
to a scene doesn't mean that the scene was bad any more than choking
up or screaming in reaction to a scene is. Of course, if you are
cringing because you think the scene was poorly executed, that's
a different matter. Still, I sometimes get the impression, and
I haven't read your ten-point critique, so I'm not speaking of
you, that for some people the mere fact that they cringed at a
scene is proof that the scene sucked, that cringing is not a valid
response for writers to aim for.
Granted, I think the emotion that you feel when something you
see on screen makes you cringe is unpleasant as hell and that
can affect how much you even want to watch. I once saw an old
thirties movie starring Katherine Hepburn as a small-town social
climber. I forget the name. There's a party where she is trying
to impress her rich boyfriend that goes horribly wrong. She is
humiliated in every possible way. I couldn't take it and I walked
out. It hurt too much to watch. Now I've sat through some horrible
movies, and I almost never walk out on one of those. This one
wasn't horrible, it was so real I couldn't handle it. But it was
a terrific scene artistically. And yet I walked out. So, is a
scene which affects you so strongly you're thrown out of the film
artistically invalid? I'm not sure, but I tend to think that it's
the viewer's problem, not the artist's.
I remember a critique by Shadowkat of the attempted rape scene
in Seeing Red. If I recall correctly, she attacked the scene not
for any character violation, but for breaking the implicit contract
between audience and writers that the show would be metaphorical.
The scene was too raw, too real, and brought people's real world
issues into the Buffyverse and that that was a bad thing. This
may be an unfair summation, but that's how I remember it.
In the symposium included on the S6 DVD set, Joss talks about
how S6 was when they began to drop the metaphors, or at least
the most obvious ones. They'd already done it once with The Body,
but S6 is when ME tried to rewrite the contract between the audience
and the writers and ran into major resistance.
To me, Dawn's humiliation and Xander's blinding were continuations
of this S6 revamping (sorry, couldn't resist). They were horrifically
real situations where you cringe or yelp in pain, as I did when
Xander lost his eye. I literally jumped out of my seat and yelled
"No!". Xander's blinding was too real, meaning it made
me feel the pain of losing an eye as something that could happen
to me. The scene still makes me uncommfortable, but I think it
was a valid way to bring home the danger of what they were facing.
They dropped the metaphor there, just as they did with Dawn's
humiliation. In both cases, there's great discomfort in watching
the scene, but to me it shows how the show continued to evolve
even in the responses it evoked in the audience. And, to paraphrase
the demon Martha, that's a good thing.
[> [> [> [> [> [> The Pack's dodge ball game
... -- Ann, 15:30:00 10/24/04 Sun
was the first of these many cringworthy moments that you list,
of literal high school terrors.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> The horror of high
school dodgeball was also depicted beautifully in a "Freaks
and Geeks" episode... -- Rob, 00:13:20 10/26/04 Tue
...as well as John Waters' Hairspray, movie and play.
Rob
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Cringing as a good
thing -- Jane, 19:31:24 10/24/04 Sun
In "Him", as it was regularly on Freaks and Geeks,
the focus was on the experience of humiliation itself and on forcing
the audience to experience it also. I think that cringing in reaction
to a scene doesn't mean that the scene was bad any more than choking
up or screaming in reaction to a scene is. Of course, if you are
cringing because you think the scene was poorly executed, that's
a different matter. Still, I sometimes get the impression, and
I haven't read your ten-point critique, so I'm not speaking of
you, that for some people the mere fact that they cringed at a
scene is proof that the scene sucked, that cringing is not a valid
response for writers to aim for.
This is a very good point. I could hardly watch those scenes,
the cheerleading try-out, and the one in which Dawn tries to join
in the conversation with "him" and his in crowd, without
covering my eyes. It wasn't that I thought it was poorly written,
quite the contrary. It brought me back to that place in high school,
and to my own personal humiliations. I was definitely not part
of the in crowd, and boy, did I long to be. So my cringing is
done in empathy; scenes that can have that kind of effect have
that push-me - pull-me power. Kind of like watching a really gruesome
accident.
[> Re: The wonder of the accident (By any other name 1.4-1.5)
-- Ann, 08:09:10 10/20/04 Wed
I will try again. Voy ate my response.
Suddenly, she throws it into the ocean. Vaughn, stoic, so far
having not revealed nearly enough about himself to be as open
to Sydney as Syd has just been to him, is sardonic: 'You just
through your pager in the Pacific'. Remember this, it will
be illustrative to the theme of communication in coming episodes
and years. Placement is everything.
What there really a broken heart at the center? Wow. What I remember
from that scene, and I do remember the ferris wheel, was that
it was the same shape as a spider s web. The web one weaves, deceit
slowly turning in the background.
I love this show. Thank you for the walk down memory lane.
[> [> A pleasure -- Tchaikovsky, 08:26:16 10/20/04
Wed
If you go back and watch the scene, you'll see that the lights,
as we cut back to the wheel, are closing in on the gap in the
centre. Just an accident, quite possibly, but it certainly works
as metaphor for Sydney's anxiety. Webbing, equally so.
TCH
For your Alias amusement:
The Lost Episode -- Ann, 18:36:10 10/19/04 Tue
Here. I forgot
I had this bookmarked. Enjoy. I don't think there are any major
spoilers. Just silliness.
Replies:
[> Oooh! I'd heard of this, but I never got a chance to
see it!! Thanks! -- Rob, 18:39:07 10/19/04 Tue
Book Melee (we need another
noun for this one) -- Ann, 19:16:19 10/19/04 Tue
Some books grab you by the collar, sit you down, and allow you
sink into their depths. They, from the first line, the first word
even, keep you involved. They draw you into their world, one that
you can experience as if you are a participant in the action.
The lyric hold keeps you from wandering. Their pages, fan you
with their words, as if each an invitation to go on further into
the imagination of the author and his or her newly created world,
because every book is a newly fashioned world with each reading.
And then some don t.
This, sadly, was my experience with The Three Stigmata of Palmer
Eldritch by Philip K. Dick. I have enjoyed others that he has
written. However, this one didn t grab me, didn t hold me, and
the smell of the pages was strong. Hopefully, not a metaphorical
comment on my experience. The pages were literally yellowed; the
only copy I could find was one from the public library. I love
the sci-fi genre and with so tempting a title as this, it should
have just pulled me in. However, as they say, you can t judge
a book by its cover; you also can t judge it by its title. I tried
many times. I carried it with me. I pulled it out at assorted
times through out the day and evening. I gave it many chances.
I really did. Only one chapter, sort of, but now I can t find
the section even, tempted me. Then the tone and the momentum changed
and I was lost again. The experience I had with this book was
different than any I have had in some time. It could be me. I
admit that. Sometimes you are not ready to meet the book, so it
requires you to try again. I very occasionally find this to be
the case. I have had the experience of not connecting with a book,
and when the book is chosen again years later, I find it resonates
in ways I could not have imagined the first time I tried. The
novel by W.O. Mitchell, Who Has Seen the Wind, took me ten years
to finally meet and finish. I will still give this book a chance.
I never give up on any book. (Well Mein Kampf I did. That was
impossible to read.)
Can anyone post something, who has read this, Shadowkat or cjl,
that could draw me back in? Really, I would like to know more
about your experience with this book.
I will post in a few days about the next selection. dmw has dibbs,
I told him so in the last go round, so I would appreciate his
input.
Thanks.
Ann
Replies:
[> Because of these wonderful posts and another, I am giving
it another try -- Ann, 15:40:48 10/28/04 Thu
I am about half way through.
[> Ann, this is a complex book, and I don't have time for
a full analysis... -- cjl, 13:45:28 10/20/04 Wed
But let me give you a brief summary of its themes:
1. "...and nothing will be same again." There is an
amazing, and remarkably succinct sequence in Martin Amis' Time's
Arrow where the protagonist (who is living his life backwards)
notes the point when Global Consciousness fades into the reverse
march of history.
It's a part of life on Earth that there are wondrous times when
an idea takes hold and transforms how we think about the world.
(The Earth is not the center of the universe. Einstein's theory
of relativity. TV. Computers. Insert your choice here.) Eldritch's
Chew-Z is another one of those key points in history. Chew-Z infects
the consciousness of mankind, and nobody will ever look at the
world the same way again.
I find it fascinating that Chew-Z seems to infect the novel itself,
as it spins off into all the mini-worlds created by the people
who have ingested the drug. Which brings me to...
2. "Our own little world." As Shadowkat has noted in
her essays on Three Stigmata, the ascendency of Chew-Z sends the
various characters into their own pocket universes, much the way
the internet isolates users into sub-groups, many of which remain
isolated from each other. There is a refreshing lack of judgment
on PKD's part here: he could easily condemn the unending pursuit
of personal gratification as detrimental to the social order,
but the social order in Three Stigmata may not be worth preserving.
There may be something to the experience of Chew-Z, despite its
nightmarish aspects, mainly:
3. "A strange sort of faith." What is Eldritch? Has
he been transformed by his years in an alien environment? Is he
one of the aliens? Or is he something altogether different, a
theosophical fungus spreading a new form of gospel to humankind?
Does Chew-Z address a yearning within all of us--activate the
God Gene, as it were--and tap into the desire to connect to the
All in ways we'd never dreamed of before?
Think it over.
[> Some thoughts -- Sara, who occasionally tries to
think, often unsuccessfully, 16:24:38 10/20/04 Wed
Although I really liked this book, as with all Phillip K. Dick
books I'm not sure I understood it. But, having said that, I think
there was a theme involving consumerism and the temporary satisfication
of living in a fantasy world that is "perfect" - beautiful
people, fabulous clothes, hot cars, swanky surroundings, and the
emptiness it leaves you looking at your own life. I think matched
with that is the desperate attempt to hold on to the conventional
life that is the model of the fantasy world for those who don't
have it, even when that conventional life is literally burning
up at your feet. Escape, control and risks are at the center of
this. At least, I think they are....
[> Re: Book Melee (we need another noun for this one)
-- shadowkat, 07:45:36 10/23/04 Sat
Unforutnately have no time. So I'll try to write my thoughts out
on this fairly quickly.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer K. Aldritch - is in some ways a horror
tale of what happens when you escape completely into an unreal
world.
In the novel, people escape their world. They escape into fantasy.
They do this by chewing a drug known as Can-D.
When they chew Can-D, they leave their bodies and fall into the
action figures and personas of favorite characters, from a long-dead
television series. Perky Pat. Perky Pat and her boyfriend and
their high-school escapades. They write fanfic in their heads.
They live Perky PAt's existence with their friends, husbands,
neighbors. But not their own. They live in their heads.
But the Perky Pat existence is a limited one. It's just Perky
and her boyfriend and her nice clothes, nice beach.
Nicer than the world these people have certainly. These poor folks
live on desolate worlds. And the one they left is over-populated,
over-heated (you can't go outside)and
overcome with merchandise.
But the world is fine and good, as long as they can escape into
Perky PAt. As long as I can escape into this world I'm fine. I
don't have to deal with my life. The addiction note, is not the
drug Can-D, but the escaping from physical reality from life into
a fantasy world where you control the characters and you can be
this other person.
A friend of mine read an article on fandom recently and the parasocial
relationships fans develop with characters and each other through
a medium. These relationships are safer than real relationships
- no one gets hurt. You develop a relationship with the character
- and at first you can't control it - since the character is someone
elses, but then through writing fanfic, he/she/it becomes yours
and your best friend. Expand this, bring in other people, and
you begin to interrelate with each other through the characters
or rather your obsession with them. Taken to extreems, the fan
begins to visualize themselves in love with the character, they
want to either be the character or live vicarously through them.
In some cases this may transfer to the actor or actress playing
the role - and they begin to create stories about the actors,
worlds that the actor inhabits, fantasies around the actors, and
may in fact even attempt to make those fantasies real.
Now imagine a drug in which you can literally do that. At least
in your head. Can-D, you chew and you become Perky Pat and your
significant other becomes her boyfriend. And corporations make
money off of your craving for that escape.
Yet, it's limiting, because you are *just* Perky Pat.
Enter Palmer K. Eldritch, who offers a new substance Chew-Z, this
substance allows you to create your own world, own dream vision.
That long lost love you wanted? Well you can live happily after
with him or her in surround a vision.
You can live your dreams or nightmares. But the price is - once
in, you can't get out. Yes, your body keeps moving, you do your
work, like a robot almost, but your mind is in another world.
It's not a real world. It's a world of your creation and control.
And by giving into the temptation to escape, you allow the fungus,
Palmer K. Eldritch, to take root in you, you become him and he
becomes you and he in essence controls your reality. It's about
addiction really - how you think you are in control but in reality
it is the substance you are addicted to that has taken control
over your life.
People think addictions are only substances - like alchol or drugs.
What Philip K. Dick demonstrates in Eldritch is the addiction
is the desire to escape from your world.
Your reality. And the risks involved in doing so.
That's one theme.
The other theme - is the desire to become perfect, better.
To evolve. And do whatever it takes to do so. Yet is the evolution
worth the price? Are we better off? And is this desire for perfection
- yet another way of avoiding what is?
Why can't we be happy with what we've got?
The main protagonist (forget his name) ex-wife and her new husband
use their earnings from selling artistic pottery to a Chew-Z manufacturer
to evolve. What happens is the new husband does evolve - his brain
expands, he grows a shell to protect from sun, but his wife devolves,
she loses her artistic creativity, she is remaking things she
made before.
And the new husband loses the one thing he loved most, her and
her art - by trying to quickly become better.
Then we have the consumerism - Leo, the corporate magnate,creator
of Can-D, who keeps coming up with new products to sell to the
world.
Who wants to be the savior, yet in many ways is the one causing
the problem. He ironically is the one who introduces his competitors
product on the market and ironically the first to fall under it's
influence. He too is wrapped up with escape, escaping who is,
lying to himself.
The book is about how we escape our lives and the price paid for
doing it.
Continuing with "Previously
on..." -- Ames, 21:42:15 10/19/04 Tue
It's a slow process, but so far I've worked through compiling
the "Previously on..." segments for Seasons 1 and 2
of BtVS and Season 3 of Angel, in addition to the sample I posted
earlier for BtVS Season 7.
A few interesting notes on BtVS:
The first episode of BtVS which had a "Previously on..."
was ep 7 "Angel". It was the only instance in Season
1.
Season 2 started off with a "Previously on..." recapping
season 1 at the beginning of the first ep "When She Was Bad".
This is the only "Previously on..." to appear on the
Region 1 DVD sets so far (the upcoming Season 7 DVD set is supposed
to include the missing "Previously on..." from "The
Gift").
The next one didn't occur until ep 6 "Halloween". It
was primarily a recap of Spike, who hadn't appeared for a few
episodes. The next was "What's My Line Part 2", which
had a "Previously on..." to recap up to Part 1.
Then "Innocence", "Passion", "Killed
By Death", and "Becoming Part 2" all had a "Previously
on..." to keep the Season 2 arc up to date.
Season 3 started without a "Previously on..." because
they wanted to dive right in, but the second ep "Dead Man's
Party" started with a pretty good recap of Season 2.
That's as far as I've compiled so far, but one thing occurs to
me as a clarification of my previous comments on the decreasing
length of episodes over the seasons. I blamed increased advertising
time, but I entirely missed the fact that I was looking at the
Region 1 DVD episodes, which don't include the "Previously
on..." segments. Obviously these got longer of the years,
and are at least partly to blame for the decreasing episode length.
Replies:
[> Re: Continuing with "Previously on..."
-- Alistair, 11:20:04 10/20/04 Wed
The best previously on was right before "the Gift" the
season finale of season 5. It recapped the entire show in this
insane montage which by itself was like reliving all of Buffy
which had come before.
[> Re: Continuing with "Previously on..."
-- Rob, 11:42:38 10/20/04 Wed
That's as far as I've compiled so far, but one thing occurs
to me as a clarification of my previous comments on the decreasing
length of episodes over the seasons. I blamed increased advertising
time, but I entirely missed the fact that I was looking at the
Region 1 DVD episodes, which don't include the "Previously
on..." segments. Obviously these got longer of the years,
and are at least partly to blame for the decreasing episode length.
Good point. One of the few shows that does keep their "previously
on"s on DVD is "Farscape," and I've noticed that
some of them are as long as 2 or 3 minutes in the later seasons.
Rob
[> Um, "Prophecy Girl" had a "Previously
On . . ." -- Finn Mac Cool, 19:03:10 10/20/04 Wed
I clearly remember it, some stuff about the Annointed One and
Angel.
[> [> Re: Um, "Prophecy Girl" had a "Previously
On . . ." -- Ames, 08:16:25 10/21/04 Thu
Are you sure that you aren't remembering the Season 1 recap at
the start of "When She Was Bad"? That covered Angel
and the Annointed One.
Donne and dusted (By Any
Other Name 1.6-1.7) -- Tchaikovsky, 15:18:24 10/20/04 Wed
Hello. How are you all? Hope you're well.
(good old Marshall)
1.6- 'Reckoning'
Occasionally the bell tolls a little bit too loudly, and I'm afraid
I think the 'No man is an island' poetry reference, which I really
ought to be delighted by, smacked of false profundity, in my reckoning.
This I think was the weakest episode to date. It also had a random
moment of pathos that really didn't work and a moment of odd,
failing patriotism.
-Donne's point, used to much greater effect in About a Boy
is that you can't sit all by yourself in your room all day; can't
sneer at anyone who comes into contact with you, and ultimately,
can't shut yourself off from death. Every time someone dies, and
the whisper of a peal comes back to you, you die a little. So
what relevance does this message have ultimately to this episode.
Well, I suppose it's fair enough to identify Sydney as the candidate
for this message. Oddly, though, there's no real hint that she;s
had an epiphany about this in the episode itself. Around half
way through, when she comes back to see Francie's chicken fricaseeing
in the oven, she is happy enough to disclose that she's had a
bad trip. One thing that keeps Sydney going, in the long run,
is that although she's rarely honest about the little details
of her life to anyone, she's emotionally honest to just about
everyone. So she reveals that she had a bad trip, and that people
in her job were terminated. And then, instead of suppressing her
emotion, she can express it to her friend and let the frustration,
the guilt out of her. The classic situation in films is that people
pretend nothing is going on at all, and then behave oddly around
friends and family resulting in even more disturbance. Syd seems
to have the right way of dealing with the situation covered.
To stretch the poetry much further is to claim that Orlando Bloom
is part of the Holy Trinity, so I'll ease off, pointing out that
poetry shouldn't just be fobbed off on the audience so cursorily.
-'Those men died for their country', claims Vaughn to Sydney's
silence. How are we supposed to interpret this? As a truth of
their loyalty to the flag? As an analogy to the lions led by donkeys
in the first world war, their pointless sacrifices explained by
the insufficient loin cloth of patriotism? As a weak excuse? There
were bits and pieces of this episode that puzzled me, and unfortunately
it wasn't really the bits that were supposed to.
-The 'My Dad was a hero' bit doesn't work either, since we haven't
seen the child before. It acts as some kind of saccharine emotion.
But the problem with this scene, over and above the fact that
we're unfamiliar with the characters, is symptomatic of the episode.
Long chunks are devoted to things we're not interested in, and
in parallel, we miss some really interesting things that the last
episode promised us. There's never a genuine contretemps between
Sydney and either Dixon or Vaughn, and in the situation, that's
daft. We're not allowed to feel anything, because we're too busy
being rushed off in myriad directions which are barely ever interesting.
-The music playing over the funeral was familiar to me, and it
occured to me a few beats before the end that the words are some
kind of spiritual, but the music is lifted from the beautiful
middle Woodwind section of Sibelius' Finlandia. It's a
shame it wasn't used for any wider reason, but it cheered me up
a little.
-We leave on Fisher's death, yet another case in point on this
episodes mis-steps. His death has no emotional resonance because
we've only just been introduced to him. It only acts as a guarantor
that, yes, Sydney is about to be in peril again.
This is the weakest episode to date, and really mediocre television,
I'm afraid.
1.7- 'Color-blind'
Excuse me if I turn a blind eye to the odd 'u' in this review!
Right, before anyone thinks someone's just run over my cat or
something, this is a much better episode.
It has some really interesting assertions in it, lines that are
begging to be written down. in particular, I liked the first interaction
in the series between Vaughn and Jack Bristow. Of course, the
very first time we see Jack on the series, it's as the icy-cold
father-in-law to Danny, and we, like him, have no idea where exactly
where to place him. He corrects Danny and explains how it's just
a courtesy call on his part. We laugh, but uncomfortably. Here,
it appears that Jack is not all that impressed by Vaughn's claim
to Syd. Or at very least, he doesn't like the way he's gone about
ingratiating himself by digging up Jack's files. And this is,
really, understandable. The really fascinating moment in the conversation,
is where the two turn to Sydney herself. Vaughn contends that
it would be worth certain shortfalls in the mission in order to
get Sydney back safe. Jack demurs; to her, he says, the Mission,
her life, is what gets her up in the morning. Sydney's life is
not as important to her as the mission.
The question we're made to ask here is manifold. Firstly, does
Jack actually know his own daughter well enough to make a well-informed
judgement on the matter? Or does he only say this because, in
his professional opinion, it is more likely to get the naive Vaughn,
(lacking, as he makes clear he believes in wisdom), to do what
is good for the mission? Furthermore, though, regardless of Jack's
purposes in making the statement, is it true? Does Sydney indeed
go through her life as colour-blind as Shepherd does, interested
only in what will help her to accomplish the next task set her
by SD-6 or the CIA? She has many times asserted that this is in
fact not true. The spying came upon her, and is a stopgap measure.
But, in a delight of a thing does well, does she really relish
her profession above all else?
Also, we get the little slipped-in comment from Sloane, also speaking
to Jack, along the lines of 'I believe in her as I'd believe in
my own daughter'. What is Sloane trying to do here? We are perhaps
supposed to think that Sloane is gently admonishing Jack for the
lack of time he has spent with her recently. But then again, it
could be a way of attempting to ingratiate himself with one of
his more important lieutenants. More questions are raised than
answered by the comment itself, which is the best way in serial
drama.
-The name Eloise Kurtz raises all sorts of thoughts, mostly along
the rather obvious lines of 'What horror has she seen?'. The storyline
shows no sign of immediately resolving itself, but in the mean-time,
Will continues to live his life colour-blind to only finding out
about Danny's fate. This fixation is so pronounced that he seems
genuinely shocked and surprised when Jenny kisses him at Thanksgiving.
It may be that he's still caught up in winning Syd's affection
through his investigations, but it showcases how one-tracked he's
been at his work in the recent past considering Jenny falls all
ove rhiim at any possible opportunity.
-It occurred to me that, despite the fact that Anna has been used
as integral aspects of Syd's character, there are actually only
two female characters who are regulars in the cast, these being
Jennifer Garner herself and Merrin Dungey as Francie, (who appears
to be the most in the dark of all the regulars as to what's going
on). So the question has to be posed, despite the strong female
central character, how are we supposed to react to a workplace
which is otherwise predominantly male? Is the subject of gender
brought up explicitly or implicitly in the show? I've really seen
nothing explicit to date on the subject, just implicit stuff to
the suggestions that Bristow is aomply qualified and amazingly
competent at her job.
-The most interesting performance of all in this episode, perhaps,
comes from yet another male character, Shepherd. Sometimes you
need a Scot to inject a bit of real suffering into an apparently
gritty situation, and the actor here does a fine job. His chemistry
with Sydney is excellent, and he manages to handle the scenes
where it's revealed he killed Danny without mawkish over-happiness
that Syd doesn't seek vengeance, or any kind of generic bad guy
sneer. These scenes were only a hair's breadth away from becoming
a schmaltzy trashy version of a victim having to help her murderer,
and it could have been genuinely troubling had it not been well
acted and directed. As it was, it just about worked for me.
The scene of Francie, Wil, Sydney and Charlie as the real family
of the show was touching, as, heartrendingly, was Sydney's automatic
closing of the door behind her when her father showed up during
the Thanksgiving meal. He's not privileged to understand what
goes on in the moments where his daughter relaxes. To complexify
the situation though, he explains succinctly why he chose to tell
her of Shepherd's murder of Danny, as something he shouldn't hide
from her for no reason, thereby cutting short her implicit allegation
of his insensitivity. This relationship continues to deepen.
The ending is also interesting. Just as the family rift is mending
itself, and Sydney gives Jack the cold leftovers of her familiarity,
it comes to appear that this may be the worst time of all for
the family moles to show their relationship to each other, as
Sloane vows to make an example of any double-dealers he catches
in his cell. Full steam ahead, with an intelligent rather than
merely visceral ending.
Well, um, that's all for now, so, err, have a safe journey home.
You don't have far to go do you? Well, umm, bye.
TCH
PS- Hope I'm not taking up too much board space with all these
threads. Feel free to archive any which are getting in the way!
Replies:
[> Time, matter, space, (By any other name, 1.8-1.9)
-- Tchaikovsky, 16:08:42 10/21/04 Thu
Bunging this under the other one to conserve space. If these ever
get popular and people go searching for them in the archives,
there'll be hell to pay. In the mean-time two less grumpy reviews,
luckily for everyone:
1.8- 'Time Will Tell'
This isn't a dreadfully deep or intelligent episode, but it has
loads of fun stuff going on. At the centre of the storyline comes
the combination of the odd synthetic piece of material taken by
Sydney from the church window in Malaga, and the clock made by
Donnati. The bringing together of time and matter to produce a
picture of space. Neatness. It suggests, perhaps rather along
way below the surface of the story, that what Rambaldi has to
say is universal, that it covers both the objects in the earth,
and the dimensions the earth is made in, space, and the extra
dimension, the fourth one, which humans live in, that of time.
This actually isn't the only plot-line in which these three aspects
are combined during this episode. We also have the book. A book
which, at first, appears to be a generous gift from Jack to his
wife Laura. But when Francie spills things on it, the book is
revealed to have code inside it. Over time, the story of Jack's
kindness is revoked, and although Sydney continues to learn 'little
by little' that 'He has a heart', the story is changed by the
discovery of the special properties of the book, apparently revealing
more about Jack as a KGB agent, involving the space of the world
once again. Time, matter, space.
Thirdly, we have Tippin's tip-off from his mechanic friend. The
tip-off allows him make contact with someone in another space,
cia the genius of the flower, the symbol of ephemerality, something
changing with time. This flower, however, is artificial, has been
made to have a life much longer than that of its floral counterparts.
Which brings us back to Donnati, who is prophesied to live until
the clock comes back to him, and then is shot down by K-directorate.
Here we have the first hint of genuine fantasy in Alias,
that Rambaldi could grant Donnati a life of around five hundred
years. It is used to show how Rambaldi's skill at bringing this
trinity of things together: matter, time, space, is so extraordinary
that Abrams can base a programme around it. And because of this
groundwork done at the metaphorical level, the Rambaldi storyline
continues to intrigue the viewer.
-Sydney reminds Espinosa of her earlier taunting when she kisses
the glass after locking it behind her. It binds them together
once again, with Espinosa as Sydney's shadow. At the end of this
episode, however, we see Espinosa finally, and apparently ultimately
in Sydney's case, getting the better of her, and consigning Sydney
to the abyss that yawns below her. Anna, in her alternate version
of Sydney, shows her two sides interestingly. Both, we see her
delight when she does something better than her- when she surpasses
herself with her mission. But also the despair, that body falling
into black, when she doesn't do as well as she could; when she
finds Rambaldi's journal but fails to return it safely to SD-6
and the CIA.
-Oh, the Vaughn/Bristow fun. It's not one of th emost originally
written sexual tension storylines ever, but I do enjoy the way
the two of them nudge their mutual interest forwards without ever
seeming to discuss it outright. In this case, he's virtually brazen
by their previous flirtations, mentioning the idea of romantic
interest explicitly. Perhaps one day soon they might hug each
other or something...
-Chile in the first decade of the 1500's. I know I was speedily
shouted down when I ignorantly complained about Darla in Virginia
in 1609, but surely unless he was a member of Columbus' or Vespucci's
adventures, it's unlikely that such a position was known to contain
land. I will watch for the resolution of this with interest: another
piece of the puzzle to do with how we view space, our place within
the world.
1.9- 'Mea Culpa'
This is one of those episodes which works like one of those elaborate
gadgets that Marshall makes. It's all the plot's contents and
not much the character's motivations, but it's just such good
fun, a game of chess played with real people: with our main character,
indeed.
-This is also the episode where we see a little more of Sloane,
played by the brilliant Ron Rifkin who to date is in my opinion
by far the best actor on the series, (any other contenders?),
First of all, we see him upside down in a paperweight, as if to
suggest we are about to revise our views of him. What happens
is something more complicated than our view of the character merely
being turned upside down. First of all, there is the conversation
where he explains to Sydney how he was around when she was a baby,
and how, on and off, he saw her grow up over the years. This introduces
a whole Mafia spin to SD-6; she's almost inheriting the spyness
of her father and her father's apparent friend. The idea that
Sloane thinks of Sydney is a surrogate daughter is surprising,
especially when her real father is so close to him professionally,
but presumably is hiding some kind of past between the two that
we will discover later.
Then we get the confirmation from the professional that he believes
Sydney is the mole. This, as is the natural order of things, would
have spelt the end for our hero had it not been for the fact that
the office is in fact infiltrated by two double agents. It is
Jack who manages to outfox Sloane's devilishly intelligent scheme,
whereby he hopes to lure Sydney's contacts out by 'leaking' a
statement to them only claiming they were to have Sydney killed
during her dead drop. In parallel to all this, Sydney explains
to someone else that Sloane's conversation felt like he was saying
goodbye; perhaps to lure her into the sense that she might be
despatched by SD6, so she relayed information to the CIA which
would make Vaughn even jumpier. In the meanwhile, he talks to
the man wielding the psychometric test results, and claims that
he'll deal with the situation. It is telling, however, that, as
the tester explains to Sloane later, there is a vital flaw in
his plan. Had Bristow been guilty, she would have been saved by
the CIA and lost to SD6. While she appears innocent, (due to Jack's
intervention), she is free of any suspicion within SD6. Bizarrely
enough, when you look at the Magic Eye drawing for long enough,
it appears Syd was safe either way. So is Sloane, despite his
shady look to Sydney, actually protecting her above and beyond
what is good for his cell? The intriguing cat-and-mouse continues.
At the end of the episode when it becomes clear that Syd's relay
is giving the bank codes to a line other than SD6's, (poor old
Marshall telling Dryer, who doesn't want to harm a fly, ironic
considering his position), Sloane is checkmated. His next move
in the story becomes achingly interesting.
As the paragraph above demonstrates, the episode is really interesting
through the sheer tangle of narrative it weaves in itself. There
are other interesting moments as well though:
-Who is, in the end 'mea culpa'? In the episode's smaller storyline,
Syd forgets to be around for Francie's wedding dress shopping.
That she is honest enough to explain that it was not her thoughts
of her marriage to Danny, but instead merely her work which kept
her form being there, is again emotionally honest if not quite
honest in every detail. It is becoming clear that Syd is painstakingly
careful to be honest with Francie at every turn, even when it
is not the easy option- because she is in the one sector of her
life where conflicting loyalties and continuing double-dealing
is not a necessity.
Other 'mea culpa's include Sloane, who has to own up, finally,
to the fact that he was shielding his eyes from Sydney's guilt;
Wil, who needs to explain to his editor precisely why he's been
blowing hot and cold over his willingness to write his front page
story, and Vaughn, as over-protective of Sydney and almost making
a mistake when her own father, (who obviously has her best
interests at heart?!) tells him how to proceed, in essence
playing Russian Roulette with Syd's life. But though all these
people own up to their mistakes, it's interesting that the real
admissions of guilt, or explanations which would power the plot
forward in this episode, don't come. We see lots of minor admissions,
but nothing of Jack or Sydney explaining their position in the
machinations of SD-6, nor Wil coming clean to Sydney that he is
still tracking the odd circumstances of Danny's death. In this
episode, the title is the ultimate mislead.
-There's a very lovely final shot, with Sloane sitting alone in
his office, lots of empty chairs all around him. Life as a director
is hard, particularly when the person who feels like your own
daughter turns out to be the prodigal mole. It can feel like you
have no-one at all to trust, just ghosts and liars whose intentions
are shaded in mystery. It's hard for Sloane, but it's what makes
the series interesting viewing.
Still waiting for an episode which will make me go 'Gah!' at the
brilliance of the whole though. Any suggestions about how long
I need to wait?
Thanks for reading
TCH
[> Sydney becomes Electra (1.10-1.11) -- Tchaikovsky,
18:16:45 10/22/04 Fri
Hello.
I have been interested in Sydney as Electra from day one. Rah's
fault: Jack Agamemnon? They barely even talk! But there were a
couple of cool bits in this episode which set up the parallel,
even if they don't go as far in explaining it as perhaps the show
does later on, (here I'm mindful of my jumping on the Connor as
Oedipus bandwagon as early as 'A New World').
1.10- 'Spirit'
Also, both these episodes have that intangible creator's spirit.
Abrams cuts loose with a few character moments in this episode
in particular which you almost feel he didn't trust to the other
writers. The other angle of it is that, in letting your characters
free to your group of writers, it is only a marginal, conditional
release in network television. You can take them back and develop
your core ideas about them a few times a Season, and the licence
you take with extending their backstory is liable to be bigger
than someone else, crayoning all over your Raphael, is liable
to get away with.
Hence witness, for example:
-The Santa Claus speech. Here the creator melds out of the character's
deep past a recollection that just chimed with her at the moment
that much further down the line. It's reminiscent of the much-discussed,
still dichotomising Yellow Crayon speech in 'Grave'. When we stretch
back into a character's past, does the child we meet there greet
us with an unwarranted sentimentality for a later, less pleasant
person? In bad writing this is the case. However in neither of
these cases do I think the show's creator mine merely for cheap
sentiment. Whedon, (infilling for David Fury), arcs out, in as
simple terms as possible, (this is Xander talking), the change
that his best friend has undergone. Meanwhile in Abram's series,
he uses a sub-conscious flash of a moment- a trigger like the
madeleine in the herbal tea for Combray- to explain to Sydney
quite why she was instinctively sure that her father was lying.
It's a sad Connorian moment, (since Oedipus and Electra are so
carelessly inter-twined), that her first significant memory of
her childhood in the series is her father repeatedly lying to
her with such assurance. That the reason he's doing it is part
of society's own culture of lying to its children is sobering;
what are we supposed to think about how Western culture cushions
its progeny into unrealistic expectations of how life is to proceed?
Or are these lies, these stories with shards of truth, part of
the essential human need to narrativise, and do they continue
profitably into adulthood? If one thing is for sure, it's that
Sydney and Jack's work would be impossible without a need to construct
stories. And that's what makes the life of the spy so perenially
delightful for writers.
[You know how you sometimes write a paragraph with a stated aim
in mind, and you end up in a place you never envisioned? The above
was one of those times. Cool though.]
-To parallel with Sydney's childhood disillusion waiting to happen,
we have a very well-acted scene between Sloane and Bristow, J,
where Sloane recounts his feeling of walking down the White House
steps as a CIA agent, feeling that life was good, and then suddenly
sensing a darkness to come. When anything goes wrong, he tells
himself, he contents himself with the fact that he knew it was
going to all along. This is a more complicated, philosophical
thought than it may initially seem? Is it fatalism, (in the original,
not negatively-connotated sense)? Is it a fear of his own limitations,
his own failure to live up to some Ideal version of himself, an
admission of spirituality? Or something else; a genuine prophecy
received in a world where Rambaldi apparently knows what is to
come, (cf Donnati)? All interesting thoughts. To claim you saw
the bad time in your past is to instil the traumas you go through
with a feeling of self-control, that they were pre-destined and
hence, in the scary logic that fascists sometimes use, that you
pre-destined them. It's interesting the resonances that come from
Sloane walking up to the Jefferson memorial. Jefferson who drafted
the American Declaration of Independence: the important man behind
Washington, who gets the iconic founder badge. Jefferson who withdrew
to an elevated house to 'contemplate the world'. Does Sloane believe
in himself idly meditating on what his minions are fated to do,
himself free from harm in his own elevated plane, writing rules
of his department that stand in stone? Much remains to be revealed.
-The death of Russock brings interest both to Jack's character
initially, and later, drifting into the next episode, to Sydney's
where she admits that in the same situation, she too would have
done anything she could to save her Father. Everything else just
drops away, she claims. The idea that the morality of killing
people does not impede humanity at all from seeking protection
of its loved ones worries me a little. Not that protection of
family isn't a primal human instinct, but I think this idea that
it runs deeper than the desire not to kill other humanity is actually
counter-intuitive and false. Of course, in this whole scene I
may be looking into a well I expect to be deep, only to find it
has been crafted to look bottomless, but a dip of the hand will
reveal dull, featureless stone inches below the surface of the
water.
Also ne pas ultra cool:
-The spinny, spinny camera moves at the beginning. I would say
resembling Altman on drugs, but I have an inkling that would be
a naive formulation considering Altman's habits on many of his
films. We're quickly set up with the idea of a daze- that the
mole has upset people's constant view of life, the stars by which
they, Javert-like, hold their belief in order. The fact that Sydney,
our main character, has done such a thing is a good sign for Abrams,
since it means that the central character is the source of the
conflict of the drama, which is as it should be.
-Will reaches the name of SD-6, (which everyone was too polite
to stop me from calling SP6 earlier this week. Apologies!) What's
in a name? Enough, it appears, to strike fear and desertion into
the hearts of criminals and false leads. Wil knows he's on to
something, but will his so far lonely plot-furrow yield him a
harvest where his problems tie into Sydney's professional duties?
If so, there could be quite a deliciously complex climax at some
point in the future.
-Father and daughter keep being brought together in this episode,
despite suggestions to the contrary as Vaughn reveals his hidden
motives. We see them on a mission together for the first time,
but it's ironic that an episode where they keep being obsessively
thought of in the same breath should leave them in such an oppositional
position, with Jack toting the gun at his daughter.
-The Vaughn strand's use in this episode is really interesting.
First, we see him give Syd the picture frame. Then it slowly becomes
clear that he's to be a catalyst for Syd finding more out about
her father, for ultimately, it appears on the surface, turning
hium in as a KGB agent. Then we get the scene where Vaughn's picture
frame urges Syd to find her photographs of her mother and father.
The frame is metaphorically doing the same job as its buyer. Then,
for a second we see Electra surface, as she pushes her picture
with her mother into the dark, forbidding foreground, while she
concentrates on one with her father. But this in turn nudges the
Santa Claus recollection I started with out of her. Vaughn has
played his part in, not in the strictest sense of the word, admittedly,
framing Jack.
Good stuff. Next one's not quite so great, but has the big reveal
at the CIA closing out the fourth act.
1.11- 'The Confession'
By this stage, titles themselves are becoming misleads. Deep in
the fibre of this show, in the marrow of its bones, is the idea
of deception; deceiving others and self confusion. Because of
this, the titles of the episodes sometimes reflect the show's
bluff and double-bluff tendencies. The confessions we expect to
here are not the ones we get, almost to a fault. It's the only
television show I remember where the title of the episode itself
is a beginning point for bartering. This isn't a meditation on
confession, it's a free association starting from the simplistic
idea and building up and out.
-The spire, the peak of this mountain climb is reached at the
end of the episode. Jack does make a confession, and it is in
front of senior CIA members as well as Vaughn and Syd. But it
is not a confession of his own guilt, but his wife's. This calls
into question the very nature of self-hood, and how much a lover,
a spouse disappeared, died, departed, can leave you with a responsibility
for their past actions. Does Sydney suspect in some way, that
her own of Vaughn's condemnation of the actions of the agent who
killed the CIA agent was dealt poetic justice by their discovery
that the culprit is already dead? In that case, can we see Vaughn
as Orestes to Syd's Electra, wishing death on the never-even-personified
Clytemnestra, and shocked once their wish, mistakenly aimed at
the innocent Agamemnon, is rewarded by the fates? This is Greek
tragedy. Whether the themes deepen and don't need such long-winded
hypothesis in future is a matter for the writers.
Before that, we have some entertainment along the way, pausing
for the Kitkats of nourishment contained herein:
-The interesting scene where Jack and Sydney argue, about why
Sydney wasn't told by Jack of the nature of SD-6 earlier, foreshadows
the eventual pay-off. As it has always occurred so far, Jack has
a good reason for his relationship with Sydney and the information
he wishes to leave out or keep in. Here again, Jack could not
expose SD-6 as in opposition to the CIA without explaining his
own position to her, or making her think that he was wilfully
doing evil against the state.
-Loved the use of 'Someone to watch over me' in the Wil/Sydney
scene here. There is so much Guardian Angel type stuff going in
throughout the missions, with radio lines to powers who will sort
information out for you, (note Vaughn in particular doing a wonderful
job as Syd gets covered in gasoline), that this choice, particularly
used at a non-obvious moment, is particularly appropriate.
-The very gentle revelation that Jack was in fact unhappy that
Sydney became an agent: 'It turned my stomach that you were in
this business'. I loved this moment; a parallel to the Baptism
into blood scene in 'The Godfather', (my, if that film doesn't
stay with ya), and also the little character in the anime in the
first part of 'Kill Bill', similarly brought into the business
of brutality. In this case, it's more deceit and deception that
Jack doesn't want for Sydney.
-There's also a thankfully subtle, not over-wrought comparison
to Vaughn as the dutiful boyfriend outing the corrupt father-in-law,
the Good Boyfriend Bad Father idea that is the opposite of Angel
and Giles in their second Season. This was left simmering under
the surface, where it belonged.
-The monkey thing from Marshall? Just aimless fun, or are we supposed
to think of how much we really have developed from simian creatures
fighting over bananas?
-Fleeting use of pi; like giving candy to a baby, always going
to end well in my world. Particularly when the Natural Ratio turns
out to be false!
-Sydney is starting to pursue things that have angered her, and
this is a disconcerting trend. Just because she's aware of something
someone has annoyed her by doing, doesn't mean that she need make
a particular cause her Moby Dick. I watch this development with
anxiety.
Two really good episodes. Amazing what some fairy dust from your
Series Creator can do to your enthusiasm, even past 2am...
TCH- following the instruction that 'Tiredness Kills, Take A Break'.
[> things i like (By Any Other Name 1.12-1.13) -- Tchaikovsky,
17:19:00 10/23/04 Sat
Today was one of those solitary days when you don't talk to anyone
and you don't care all that much. Because of all the little bits
of beauty that were thrown into relief by the fact I actually
did my maths work on the first day of the weekend rather than
the second.
Isn't is great how mushrooms tan over a hob. Going from that slightly
anaemic colour to brown and ready for eating. And the smell of
them with bacon. I'm also a big fan of watching old movie stars
interviewed. Watching those old Parkinson shows is fun, and today
on the new show they had Lauren Bacall on, (along with Nigella
Lawson and Lily Savage!). It's amazing how film stars seemed to
know how to talk in the olden says. At 80, Bacall is still way
more magnetic than a Zellweger or a Kidman being interviewed,
(the person I'd really like to see interviewed is Naomi Watts,
but I suppose I'll have to wait the couple of years til she becomes
a superstar. Then there was my weekly swim, churning out those
sixty lengths, getting deep into a thought that I find impossible
anywhere else, because I'm doing something demanding, just not
intellectually demanding.
And then there's Alias, and the delight both of a two-part
episode, so I can watch it all fit tidily together, and Quentin
Tarantino clearly improvising his sections of dialogue. Ladies
and gentleman, I give you...
1.12 and 1.13- 'The Box'
I'm starting to develop an affection for the characters now; pretty
much all of them, though particularly Sydney, (obviously), Sloane
and Marshall, (also with degrees of obviousness). All of which
effortlessly elevates the quality of the drama, for once you empathise
with someone, torturing them with needles and making them cut
off their fingers means that much more, even if it is inescapably
campy as a plot-line.
-I like the conceit of Sydney having a collage of her mother,
little sections pieced together, the whole forming the woman who
she believed died in a car crash. The reason why this is elegant
as an analogy is that the analogy holds on through to its logical
conclusion. Now Sydney knows that her mother was a KGB agent,
(knows? seems to know?!) she has to rearrange her memories like
rearranging photographs, and see if she can get the pieces to
fit together all other again.
-Will acts as Sydney's parallel in this episode, somewhat obviously,
but neatly nonetheless. They both go through the process of finding
something about their job that they can't cope with- in Sydney's
case the idea that she might turn into her mother, in Wil's the
simple scariness, the fear in David McNeill's eyes. Then, however,
they are confronted by a situation where their help is required,
and they do their professional (and extra-professional) duties
to such effect that they decide to continue. Here we are made
to think about whether either of the vocations, the journalist
or the double agent, actually have a duty of philanthropy contained
within them. Clearly a great journalist and a great double agent
can save hundreds of lives. But is it the duty of someone
as a journalist or a double agent to do just that? Or something
that hopefully happens along the way?
-We have the annoying colleague of Vaughn, who is perfectly set
up as the character a watcher wants to hate all the way through.
He is deceitful but also believes he is better than our favourite
CIA agent, and he's jostling for position with Devlin the boss.
I always have a very strong temptation to make the sign of the
cross every time I see him. But is he himself working for more
than just the CIA?
-I enjoyed the fact that Emily McNeill, written as a genuine teenager,
is played by someone who looks as if they could be in their teens,
and hence has the accompanying insecurity. This storyline, like
a branch of a tree shooting off downwards, is not directly connected
with the heart of the show, and thus has licence to do a lot more
than an average storyline. For that reason, I find it fascinating.
-It's also nice to see Dixon and Marshall doing something a bit
different. Here, although they don't get the action hero role,
they do at least emerge from the sobriquets of Faithful Sidekick
and Lovable Geek, to do several jobs to distract Tarantino, [Cole,
I mean Cole!] and his team.
-I also liked the little scene at the end where it becomes clear
that Sydney had decided what to say to Sloane, (that she was going
to stay on), before the chaos overcame SD-6. Her instincts run
in front of the need to be taught a lesson by fate, which is always
a good sign in a hero.
It appears we'll never find out, (although maybe I jump the gun),
about the British SAS person, who apparently was SAS considering
her happiness to go along with the idea of claiming she had only
intercepted one of Vaughn and Sydney. It added an extra dimension
to the necesarily, (since it's a two-parter) more complicated
story, but then is not capitalised upon, which disappointed me.
And so to Tarantino. He's an interesting actor, I thought a little
under-rated in 'Reservoir Dogs', and here he gets to inhabit himself
really. I wonder whether, in hiring him, Abrams was in a sense
pitting the extreme violence of Tarantino's movies themselves
against the more thoughtful Network Television capped emotional
drama of 'Alias'. Tarantino is clever enough to be in on the joke,
and plays his character with the brilliantly entertaining and
nastily distasteful glee appropriate to a man basically playing
the centre of 'Die Hard'. Some of his lines are very much his:
phrases like 'Sloane's tastefully minimalistic office' and 'showing
her a mediocre romantic comedy' have a zing not usually evident
in the rather earnest stylings of the Alias writers. Tarantino
revels in his psychosis, though even he is a lackey for the mysterious
The Man. Tarantino, like many men we see in such positions is
both confused by the idea of a woman, and easily provoked into
dangerously out of control anger. That he would shoot his own
first officer because Sloane had got so under his skin is an odd
and not entirely logical happening, useful for the show, but begging
the question whether he wouldn't be more likely to shoot the cause
of discomfort, Sloane himself. As it happens, Sloane, a hard,
hard man, gets away with nineteen of his fingers and toes intact.
I enjoyed this one. Not ingenious, but good nonetheless.
TCH- off to concentrate on the finer points of baseball as the
World Series hits the bottom of the first.
[> Thin Men, Painted Ladies, (1.14-1.15) -- Tchaikovsky,
11:19:49 10/24/04 Sun
Well, she was drawn actually, but hey, I spent seconds on that
pun.
You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known
Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man.
1.14- 'The Coup'
OK, I'm hooked. The combination of the Rambaldi stuff and the
interpersonal stuff in these episodes, while not knock-out crackling,
has cemented the slow burning interest I've had in the series,
to the point where when the second one ended, I had to stop my
instinct to go straight on and watch a third. Hence your rather
early evening reviews. It's Sunday, I should be resting, particularly
after staying up until 5am for the top of the ninth innings in
Boston. That baseball's a bit of a sport, hey?
The fourteenth episode is quite funny. Orci and Kurtzmann, who
as a partnership wrote the first non-Abrams episode of the show,
have a feel for the characters that equals Abrams' own, if not
quite as much genius for paying out interesting speeches with
interesting lines. Here though, they inject a bit of silliness
and (as Xander would put it), bawdy French farce into the proceedings,
as Sydney's social and professional lives come into full-blown
conflict. As a result of this, we get people self-consciously
examining their own roles within their jobs and hence their characters,
and allow them to shed temporarily the shawl of earnestness they
have about them the majority of the time.
Croutons in this gigglesome soup:
-The previouslies are starting to irritate me a little. I know
they're trying to compress the concept of the show into four massed-produced
sentece-packages, but need we see the same thing over and over
again. Vent ends.
-I like this idea, this perpetual touchstone of the series, of
inheritance. Somehow, now Sydney has found that both her parents
were spies, she feels as if she's the most at home in the environment
is her birthright, and was almost feted to happen all along. This
in turn ties in with the ideas of fate conferred on the plot lines
by the Rambaldi arc. There are all these problems of birth and
nurture inveigled into the fun action show, consolidated by the
presence of Jack, and burnished by the revelation of Laura Bristow's
heritage, so that Sydney feels the time may be right to shed the
persona of college girl and get on with the life and death of
her existence; perfectly literally.
-And so she goes to see her English teacher to withdraw from her
course on American literature, and is told to rethink the idea.
The whole plot from this point onwards is underscored by the idea
of making our own way in the world, coming to our own view of
ourselves independent of parents. Sydney's exploits in the Tarantino
held-up SD-6 in the preceding episode helped her to establish
her worth as an agent herself, wuite outside the influences and
confusions of Jack or Laura, and in fact largely without the crutch
of support of Vaughn. In this episode, though, we are persistently
reminded of the dangers of following a parent into a line of work:
that it can become so routine you stop to talk about your friends
wedding plans; that it can get obsessive, (partly in an ongoing
desire to emulate your parents) and lead to ruptures with your
best friends, and that you can end up swinging hundreds of feet
up in the air from a twirling rope in a Moscow backstreet. OK,
strike that last one.
-At the same time, we have Sydney really wondering about whether
her desire to become a teacher was a real desire of her own, or
whether that itself was just a spectre of her current situation,
an ideal she wanted to pursue merely because of the idea of replicating
her dead mother's absence. Of doing what she wanted to do. The
puzzle is never jigsawsolved for us, which is a relief. We're
left with the intractable exploration of how our parents' exploits
shape us still hanging in the air, like perfume out of place in
a Vegas betting hall.
-When we see our hero attempting to come off her course, she's
been handed 'The Tragic Hero: studies in F Scott Fitzgerald' which
was part of her work. How do we react to this. Firstly, Fitzgerald
expressed as well as anyone the problems that come sidling up
to you in their dirty mackintoshes when the American Dream, the
centrefold of so much cultural sanctity, becomes tarnished. The
whole CIA/ SD6 storyline also has echoes of that. At heart, we
are supposed to believe that the CIA is a good organisation with
noble, [OK, I said it, noble] ambitions. However, the secretive
nature of their operation, the use of people who must destroy
their lives in order to be functioning agents, and the quotidian
presentation of the greyer sides of morality to its inhabitants
leaves the intentions of protecting the USA and allowing it to
thrive buried under sullied ephemera. The CIA, like Gatsby, wanted
to pursue the green light across the harbour, the perfect dream
encapsulated in Daisy, the American way of becoming rich through
self-belief. In the end they find the aim so difficult to pursue
that the complexity of their pursuit becomes complex and mottled.
In Gatsby's case, it is too difficult to stomach altogether. In
the CIA's case, they attempt to soldier on.
In the meantime, what of Sydney Bristow? A character who joined
SD-6 in the best intentions, hoping to help her country. Who was
betrayed by them, and now betrays innocent colleagues whose own
ambitions are unknowing betrayals of the CIA, whom they believe
they are working for. Is she to end up tramelled under the foot
of Cole or Sloane, or a million other 'careless people...who tore
things up and then moved on' [quote approximate, apologies to
the Joneses out there!], and be Gatsby? Or will she turn out to
be the great observer and the great survivor, the Nick who in
the end has to go away to consider what it all means, but comes
back stronger in the end to tell the amazing story? The mystery
remains as to whether Sydney is the tragic hero she wrote about,
or a new mould of hero, one who can transcend the crumbling ideals
of the world that betrayed her, and rebuild herself with transitory
hopes and aspirations, like simple moments of good. It's the distillation
into network TV form of Cat Steven's maxim that, in a world as
uncertain as that of Alias, you'll still be here tomorrow,
but your dreams may not.
What Sydney can never become, due to the emotional wholeheartedness
of her investment in whatever she does, is the pallid academic
who reads Fitzgerald but never feels the mayfly sadness of the
1920's generation, never connects with the dogeared, (yes, I dogear),
pages of the work he reads with a maniacal determination. Sydney
is an incarnation of a Fitzgerald character, rather than the Mr
Joneses that Dylan met and disliked so vehemently.
One final footnote on this subject- is it accidental that in an
episode with a Gatsby theme, Dixon inter alia, becomes
Buchanan?
-While good things just go on smashing in Sydney's life, the biggest
trauma of all is the breakdown of the apparently perfect engagement
of Charlie and Francie. Initially, it seemed Francie's distrust
of her to-be-fiance was just carefree jealousy, but in time it's
shown to be real, and has to be revealed by Sydney rather than
the cowardly Charlie, not wanting to hurt her but failing to admit
to himself that the hurt has already been inflicted. It's another
good thing gone bad, a wedding made in heaven festering in dank
pools of chaos, (oddly, no, I haven't been reading Edgar Allen
Poe. I don't know what's come over me. Fitzgerald, maybe). The
problem comes to a head when Syd plays poker with Dixon's safety
in leaving him playing poker with their target. Here the juggling
balls of Sydney's life come perilously close to knocking each
other out of spin, and it's only by the skin of her teeth that
everything survives intact. The scene between Francie and Sydney
later is one of those excellent dramatic scenes that enshrines
a realistic situation which is not clear-cut, Seventh Heaven simplicity.
What Francie says about Sydney's job taking over her life is entirely
true. However, it's also true that Francie's attack on Sydney
os motivated by her rage at Charlie, and she understandably shoots
the messenger. While Francie quickly comes to realise that her
anger was misplaced, Sydney is nevertheless made to think about
the kernel of truth contained in Francie's outburst. How often
do we find out what somebody dislikes about us, (fairly and honestly),
when we are being chastised for something that genuinely holds
no water?
-The Vaughn/Sydney romance continues to build slowly, steadily.
-Is their such a word as 'surveilling'? If there is, scrap it.
It there isn't, don't invent it. That will be all.
-And Jack actually touches Sydney on the shoulder this week. What
tenderness! Anyhow, it means as much as various hags would do
in other shows. It's odd how saving up physical affection can
really make little things mean so much more.
-And with nary a complaint about Sark's sillily imperfect English
accent, (cf Alexis Denisof, young man, and don't come back until
you've got it), we segue into...
1.15- 'Page 47'
I'd go as far as to say I loved this episode. Mostly it earnt
my adoration through the careful backstory that previous episodes
have built. But when we get to a set-piece dinner in a television
show, we tend to balk at the idea of a couple of people's intentions
becoming the pivot by which we must see the meal. Here, the scene
was an unmitigated delight. And that's because we have five people:
Will, Jack, Sloane, Emily, Sydney, and they all have subtly different
thoughts about what each other is saying. It's not broad bands
of opinion which divides the table into two sides or anything.
Each of them knows vaying amounts about each other. I mean look
at the schematic:
Will: Thinks he's met Sydney's father once before politely, new
to the Sloane's, a friendmaybemore to Sydney
Sydney: Deceiving Sloane, her boss and grasping Page 47 from safe,
friend to Emily, father helping her on mission, Wil her best friend
and that only, as far as she can see.
Emily: Husband, one of husband's best friends, her friend Sydney,
and the new Will, who's intriguing to her because she has seen
his articles in the newspaper and enjoyed them.
Jack: Under the suggestion of best friendship with Sloane, is
deceiving him. Has recently intimidated Will without him realising
it. In league with Sydney, non-plussed by Emily's babbling.
Sloane: Casts himself as a new believer in the Rambaldi mystery
to Sydney, seeing her as surrogate sister. Regards Will as a possible
thorn in SD-6's side, with his wife frail and not needing over-exertion,
and Jack being his capable assistant.
When all these facts and nuances are bound together and then used
as well as in the serially fascinating dinner sequence, it's a
delight to watch- like a later episode of Firefly (um,
except way better Masq. Way, way better ;-)).
Fragments which lead to the genius moments:
-There are some truths Sydney must never learn', says Sloane to
Jack. Whether the father believes this to be true is a moot point,
but he rarely makes an effort to spill the beans for Syd. To complicate
matters, Sloane's observation is also a threat, an indictment
to be careful not to raise his ire, otherwise he might just let
facts, accidentally, slip.
-I liked the elegant, double use of the phrase 'Fish' in the Petersburg
discussion about The Man's operations. It calls back Luco Brasi
sleeping with the fishes, in this most Godfather-recalling show.
-I like the complication and eventual strength of Vaughn's argument
with Syd about exploiting Emily, who's dying of cancer. His eventual
argument about it being Emily's last chance, even unknowingly,
to do some good, is persuasive at the moment, but starts to decompose
once you look at it carefully. Nonetheless, the intellectual battle
between Vaughn and Sydney continues to be interesting.
-Sloane's left handed, (good news for his writing then). Another
person joins our ranks. Whether I want to be in the same rank,
(or file) as Sloane is another matter. But he's great to watch.
-The Will/Sydney scene as he's awoken after being tortured by
Jack? very clever indeed.
-What did Rambaldi see? asks Sloane leadingly, only omitting the
phrase, tune in next week to find out. it continues to be the
show's mystery in an enigma wrapped in a riddle, (Churchill had
it in the wrong order, dear), and pulls the plot forward effortlessly.
-There's a whole interesting dimension added to the question of
Bosses who don't treat their employees rightly in Wil's award
winning story, and watching Arvin shuffle uncomfortably in his
chair while Emily listens wide-eyed is delightful. It's set into
context by Sloane's earlier killing of an innocent man, casually
laced into the script.
-Feminism alert: oh, hooray, another female character! Oh, she's
powerless and dying of cancer. I know Alias only pretends to be
a show about strong women, (at most it's a show about a strong
woman), but surely they could think this through a little harder.
As a bonus in this episode, Jenny is slightly callously dumped
by the tortured But Right Will. Those women hey? Always complainin'...
-I loved the work in of the liquid in the vial uncovering the
details on Page 47, like one of those magic colouring books where
you add water. Plus, the best, most personal cliffhanger to date!
Doesn't the time fly by when you enjoy yourself. I apologise for
this entry having more references than an Empson poem, but on
the upside, I don't have a long straggly beard.
Thanks for reading.
TCH
[> The Destroyer and a clip show, (1.16-1.17) -- Tchaikovsky,
08:47:20 10/25/04 Mon
Chevroleting speedily toward the end of the Season now, today
with a review of a really good episode, and a couple of notes
on a clip-show which has a really odd feel to it- though it annoyingly
recycles things a fiathful viewer has already seen and ingested,
in the process draining thematic resonances out of scenes which
orked very well the first time, thankyou, it also has one of the
biggest endings of a show to date, (though not reall a plot revelation
so much as a realisation. But that's for later. First of all,
1.16- 'The Prophecy'
There's an utterly beautiful scene visible through my window at
the moment; so much so that I wonder why I'm not outside walking.
It's one of those fays that only autumn does, where there's an
acknowledgement that the sunshine is as tenuous as a lead just
hanging on to the bough of a tree. Yet through this hopelessness
there's joy in the moment. There's men raking leaves off the paths
between my room and the sports centre, a minute or so's gap and
full of half-naked trees and bejewelled grass. People bluster
past in various states of delight, or occasionally stress. And
I sit here, Projective Geometry essay and Dynamical Systems assignment
complete, and wonder how anyone couldn't just be blown away, Oz-bound,
by the sumptuousness of it all. And keep thoughts of my job search
very much hidden in my most inaccessable drawer.
Autumn has a spirit that I admire it for. Even on Sloane-grey
days when drizzle weeps half-heartedly from the sky, it manages
moments of transcendence, of joy in its own existence, even as
the Greek Tragedy Season. (See TCH's series: 'The Rite of Spring:
coming of age theatre', 'Summer lovin': The eternal romantic comedy',
and 'A Winter's Tale: Film noir of nature', CUP, 1986). And that's
what we're given here in this episode, [phew]. The mounting insecurity
loaded onto people when they start to believe a prophecy is inevitably
true, that the end of the story is already known and ineluctable,
that the signs are indubitable and not Delphic. But coupled with
that, moments of delight despite the tragedy approaching, despite
the knwledge, implicit in the characters, that something big is
coming, that there are only five episodes left in the Season.
A few la leaf falls oneliness thoughts then:
-The whole episode, wreathed in this mature search for joy, begins
with that bastion of cheap thrills, a bond escape scene. We see
Sydney being hunted down by dogs, (literally). And then she jumps
off a vast cliff and comes parachuting down into Rio de Janeiro.
I was quite baffled by the James Bond-ness of it all, the obvious
lack of desire to take itself seriously, and the fact that the
situation appeared unusually to have nothing to do with the intricate
cross-stitch plot-line going on in the mind of JJ Abrams. And
then Roger Moore turned up, the homage button clicked down on
itself, and everything became completely clear.
-James Bond covers a lot of the the same territory as Alias but
without the underlying complexity and nuance achievable in a serial
television show, (which is not to say that Bond couldn't have
nuance if it wanted to, it largely has no time for such affectation).
I'm not a great fan, but it does have that sense of joy despite
the (implicit) thought that James will one day be horribly murdered.
The revelling in life's ephemerality, the joy of autumn. In this
episode, the scene where Vaughn virtually takes Sydney on a date
to the Vatican high security cellars, (see his constant babbling
about going to dinner and a show afterwards), has a little of
that quality, and I enjoyed it all the more for the departure
from the show's occasional dourness.
-Also, oooh look it's Lindsay Crouse. Apparently playing Maggie
Walsh's identical twin sister with long hair. She has a skill
for nononsense highly intelligent government shadows, doesn't
she? I enjoyed the idea of DSR throughout this episode, and it's
little, quiet comparisons, made stronger through Crouse's presence,
of the Intiative. It's where government suits try to get a handle
on what the paranormal is, and regulate it. As always in a show
created by someone who thinks of themselves as an artist, (even
in the most prosaic of senses), it's not going to work. Abrams
and Whedon balk at the regulation of magic and superstition, metaphors
for the genius of creation, being cut into A4 summary sheets by
someone sitting at a plush new typewriter.
-The psychometric tests that Sydney undergoes have that complex
double-edgedness present in a lot of Alias's recent, intelligent
plot developments. The realisation Sydney must initially come
to is that to try to wriggle her way out of the Prophecy, to not
submit to finding out about her true self, is cowardly. Yet in
the next episode, we see DSR going too far, and bumbling into
corrupt territory. Sydney's intial instincts turn out to be right
for the wrong reason. And then to complicate matters further,
when she wants to get free, Jack and Vaughn come and do it in
the worst manner possible, encapsulating the Careful What you
Wish For standpoint.
-Within the psychometric tests is the studied hint that Sydney
has an aversion to her mother, although it wasn't clear to me
on one viewing whether Sydney made the comment deliberately so
they could pop-psych her on it in the future, or whether she said
it thoughtlessly, hence giving proof of her Electra complex. It's
in the section where she is asked to comment on a picture, and
Sydney retorts that the child 'isn't interested in what the mother's
saying. She wants to go outside to play'. Complex or Invention?
-We get the parallel story where we are comparing Mrs Sloane's
inevitable terminal lymphoma to Sydney's growing sense of dread
about her destiny. And again we're back to metaphors of autumn.
She knows she is going to die, inevitably, but she wants to live
out the remainders of her life finding joy in the journey towards
her own mortality. Sloane claims that Sydney's visit made her
'as happy as she's been in a long while', and Sydney, in consolidating
that good mood, learns a valuable, (if slightly heavy-handed)
lesson about Prophecy herself. It's like 'Destiny' all over again.
Except without the Mountain Dew.
-What of Bond himself, the character Roger Moore plays after the
homage? Well, he's an impeccably crafted English villain, double-dealing
and devious, never needing to do anything quickly. He's the Bond
Villain de semain, but in Alias' murkier waters, he paddles away
entirely unharmed from his merciless exploitation of Sloane's
own friendship. It is ironic that Sloane, showing himself to be
above such petty subjectivities as trust in friends, kills (?)Briault
only for another trust to betray him and for open hostility against
Khasinau to be delayed awhile. I thought Roger Moore was very
good fun here, stately but evil, like a refined version of Sloane
himself.
-Jack's special regard for his daughter is shown a little more
baldly than usual when he asserts: 'If she wasn't my daughter,
I probably wouldn't be doing this'. How touching. (I should re-enforce
my statement that any snarkiness towards Jack is entirely affectionate.
Bless him and his awkwardness).
-Usually I'm an acoustic schmaltz merchant by trade, but I have
a real soft spot for The Hives' 'Hate to Say I Told You So' as
played over the Vatican sequence, so I enjoyed that.
-And at the end, Sydney becomes just that little bit more like
Connor, as she becomes, in many people's minds at least, The Destroyer.
1.17- 'Q + A'
This was largely boring recyclement that I don't want to dwell
on, so just a few points:
-I remain, tragically, a sucker for timeframe manipulation. So
I love watching Sydney drive into the Pacific Ocean, (following
her pager, notice), with no explanation whatsoever.
-Mount Sebassio, blah, blah. Syd has a nanny, blah, blah. I don't
like it when the writer is unable to mould a show because he has
to keep going back to shoehorn in earlier scenes. What can be
told quickly and compellingly in sixteen episodes needn't be told
so slowly over one.
-Joey Slotnick being beaten up was fun though.
The key to the episode, nay, to the Season, is the final, unanswered
question, (when we become Sydney), 'Do you believe Rambaldi was
a prophet?'. For the sake of the narrative, we want to .For the
sake of logic, we don't.
This is compromised a little by Syd's sudden realisation that
her mother isn't dead. It's an odd moment- I mean, you can come
to profoundly believe something, but I for one don't buy it that
a Genius would entirely overlook her mother's possible escape
for a couple of months, and then it would suddenly come to her
wth assuredness unbackedup by any evidence. This compromises the
otherwise powerful ending of a deeply mediocre episode for me.
So there you have it. Into the end-season type time now. My money's
on the Red Sox...
TCH
[> [> Re: The Destroyer and a clip show, (1.16-1.17)
-- Rob, 09:07:38 10/25/04 Mon
Q&A is an interesting episode, with an unusual structure. I also
loved the explanation-less opening that wasn't given context until
later. The recyclement bored me, too, but you should realize that
the ratings for this show were never stellar, and I remember articles
that were out when this episode aired: its purpose was to reel
in more viewers, to simplify it and make it seem unintimidating
for newbies. So it's kind of odd in that it is sort of a clip
show, but not really, because most of the "clips" are
newly shot scenes about things we already know. And I do give
it credit, as a quasi-clip show for not just resting on its laurels
but revealing a key point.
re: Syd's realization, I love the way it played out, because it
was a very "Buffy" moment, where she has a moment of
realization that no other person has had up to that point. Something
clicks in her head, and it becomes very clear. Call it some sort
of shared deja vu, but I think that when her car plunged into
that water, she somehow tapped into an unconscious link with what
happened to her mother, and it just made sense. The closest parallel
I can think of is, a few nights ago, I went to see Hairspray on
Broadway, and during the more catchy songs, I started tapping
my foot on the ground, in rhythm. Near the end of the show, I
had almost a flash to my childhood, and remembered that that is
what my grandfather used to do during Broadway shows or movies.
He died when I was 10, and most of my memories of him are vague,
but all of a sudden, I just knew I was unintentionally copying
him. I know this is a different situation, since Syd clearly didn't
ever see her mother escape from a submerged car, but I think she
had a similar feeling that this was right. You also have to remember
that while Syd is a genius, she also believes in the CIA and because
of what Sloane did to her, can have a very black-and-white moral
view of the world. If the CIA told her that her mother died, and
her father told her that her mother died, I could see her believing
it, particularly since that was the "truth" by which
she had lived her entire life. Processing that her mother was
a spy may not necessarily have opened something else, the next
logical leap, in her brain, until an epiphany such as this just
dawned upon her...and then it becomes completely crystal clear.
Rob
*Gemini* - Very Quick Thoughts
On *White Rabbit* (SPOILERS for Lost 1.04) -- OnM, 19:55:29
10/20/04 Wed
Water of love
Deep in the ground
But there ain't no water here
To be found
One of these days
When the water runs free
Gonna carry that
Water of love to me
... Dire Straits
OK, way too short on time to do a really thorough review, but
thought I'd offer some observations nevertheless. (BTW, I think
this is episode 4, please correct me if it's #5-- I missed seeing
one show the other week.)
WARNING - ***CURRENT EP SPOILERS*** FOLLOW!!
.
.
.
.
.
The episode seems to be mostly about duality, and water in various
forms was chosen for the primary metaphor.
The show starts out with someone being rescued from drowning in
the ocean, and another person does drown. The rescuer-- Jack--
had to make a choice where he could maybe save both, but only
one for sure. Risk it? Don't risk it?
The next metaphorical element that gets introduced is that there
is water everywhere, but very little left to drink. One character
emphasizes this by pointing out that his son shouldn't drink the
seawater.
The pregnant woman remarks that she thinks another woman is a
'Gemini', and turns out to be correct, and so the issue of duality
is framed.
Jack sees a man who appears to be his father, but this is impossible
because his father is dead. We later find out that Jack's father
had a drinking problem, and that it eventually killed him. The
first shot we see of Jack's father doesn't show his face, it shows
an arm and a hand, holding a glass of liquor-- a 'drink' in the
vernacular. The 'drink' is metaphorically drowning Jack's father?
There is ice in the glass with the liquor, we can hear it clinking
as Jack's father moves his arm.
Jack goes off into the forest in pursuit of the 'hallucination'
that appears to be his father. Running madly after the image in
a highly charged emotional state, he trips, tumbles down a hill
and falls off the edge of a cliff, miraculously managing to grab
onto a root or vine of some kind. Dangling there, he is all but
ready to fall to his death when a hand appears to help him-- the
hand of Mr. Locke (sp?). Locke helps him to safety, and then I
have a very Buffy moment when Jack begins to nervously laugh,
and I flash back to Prophecy Girl when Buffy hears the news (from
Giles) that she's going to face the Master and die-- and laughs,
on the edge of hysteria.
Locke doesn't seem surprised when Jack tells him that he saw his
father, and that to do so is impossible since his father is dead.
Locke then tells Jack that he "saw into the heart of the
island" (paraphrasing) and that Jack needs to go find out
what he's looking for. I then have an S5 Angel moment when Locke
tells Jack that "a leader can't lead until he knows where
he's going".
Later (it's dark now), Jack does so, but only after he hears the
sound of ice clinking in a glass, and turns to once again see
his father walking behind him. He follows the apparition and discovers
water, fresh water, flowing out of the rocks.
He follows the path of the flowing water, and sees a female doll
floating in one of the pools and stares at it in shock-- a reminder
that he failed to save the drowning woman in the beginning of
the show. (There is more wreckage of the plane nearby, the doll
obviously came from it-- or did it? Once again, we can't be sure
and no definite answer is provided, only the suggestion of one.)
He looks further through the wreckage, and finds the casket that
his father was in. When he opens it, it is empty. Jack then seems
to fly into a desperate rage, and smashes the coffin to bits.
When he returns to the shore where the others are, a fight is
going on over who 'stole' the water. It turns out the one who
did was trying to keep it safe and ration it, because he felt
Jack was not assuming the position of leader of the group and
a decision needed to be made. (Shades of Wesley abducting Connor
for 'the good of all concerned' and then being despised for doing
so?)
Jack makes a speech that seems to suggest he is now assuming the
leadership role he was avoiding before. The show ends with two
people sitting on the beach, looking out to sea and having a drink
of water.
***
Personal note: If I wasn't hooked on this show before, the stunningly
brilliant scene with the doll in the pool of fresh water mirroring
the drowning victim in the seawater clinched it for me. If Abrams
and crew can keep this up for the rest of the season, at minimum
we've got a St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, or Northern
Exposure quality series on our hands.
There will be an encore showing this Saturday, according to the
teaser for next week.
Replies:
[> Re: *Gemini* - Very Quick Thoughts On *White Rabbit*
(SPOILERS for Lost 1.04) -- Evan, 20:04:56 10/20/04 Wed
Interesting thoughts. Thanks!
One area in which I lack is analyzing imagery, so I hope you continue
writing about this show on here. This was fascinating.
[> It was the 4th ep, if you count both hours of the pilot
as a single ep, as was originally intended. -- Rob, 23:57:21
10/20/04 Wed
[> [> Does that count? -- Seven, 05:27:02 10/21/04
Thu
We count the different parts of What's My Line and Becoming as
different episodes, right?
Considering that both episodes (of Lost) deal with different issues,
I think of them as different eps.
I'm also kinda glad that they separated them. Had they not, I
wouldn't have seen an episode until the "third" one
(which someone said was actually titled, "Tabula Rasa")
I hate being lost (seriously, no pun intended) while watching
a show.
7
[> [> [> Re: Does that count? -- Rob, 07:37:50
10/21/04 Thu
It sort of does, since even when they were rerun, they were done
as one long episode, without a break, and up until they actually
scheduled it, they were one episode. In fact when you look at
production numbers, now they count the first hour as 1x00 and
the second as 1x01. So this one is still the fourth.
Rob
[> One very quick thought on "White Rabbit"...
-- Rob, 07:42:20 10/21/04 Thu
And I'm also sure everybody noticed that along with the Alice
in Wonderland/White Rabbit theme running through the episode
(and the title), Boone was reading Watership Down, which
satisfies thematically not only because of the rabbit subject
matter but because it tells the story of a whole colony of creatures
searching for a new home. It also might lend more credence to
the concept that there is some link between what people think
and what manifests on the island. Now, this isn't quite as direct
a link as the polar bear in the comic book and on the island,
but perhaps peoples' thoughts are linking, too.
Rob
[> A couple of observations (spoilers) -- dub, 11:06:51
10/21/04 Thu
We find out for the first time (I think) that Jack's surname is
"Shepherd," just in time for him to assume his role
as the shepherd caring for his flock.
I'm not sure if it's significant, but what Locke said to Jack
was that he had looked into "the eye" of the
island, and that it was beautiful. I made the connection to the
entity Locke had looked up at last week, while he was hunting
the boar. It was obviously something much taller than he, and
I got the impression he was looking it in the eye when he smiled.
Still don't know what significance that might have, though...
Your thoughts?
dub ;o)
[> [> Re: A couple of observations (spoilers) --
Evan, 14:25:40 10/21/04 Thu
Maybe everyone will see something different when they look the
island in its "eye" - which I'm assuming is the entity
that the others are perceiving as monstrous. Locke already has
a positive impression of the situation so he that could be why
he saw it as beautiful.
[> [> [> Re: A couple of observations (spoilers)
-- Jane, 17:44:38 10/21/04 Thu
Good point, Evan. If what we see is what we get, that might explain
a lot. Locke is already the recipient of a miracle, so he is more
than willing to see the island as good. Would that mean that the
airplane pilot was expecting to face something horrible and dangerous,
and got it in spades?
I just watched this week's episode. I am seriously hooked on this
show now. I have to pay closer attention - I missed the title
of the book what-ever-his-name was reading. I love all the little
subtle clues. Wonder what the words on Charley's shoulder mean,
if anything? Life is beautiful with eyes shut I think they
were. Also, what is written on the bandages on his fingers?
[> [> [> [> "Living is easy with eyes closed"...
-- Evan, 17:51:17 10/21/04 Thu
...is a Beatles lyric from "Fool On The Hill".
I don't know if it has too much relevance beyond Charley liking
the Beatles... but maybe...
[> [> [> [> [> no, it's from... -- anom,
22:25:50 10/21/04 Thu
...Strawberry Fields. The verse goes:
"Living is easy with eyes closed,
Misunderstanding all you see.
It s getting hard to be someone
But it all works out.
It doesn t matter much to me."
Charlie's got taste, anyway. The tattoo is open to lots of interpretation,
but I have a feeling we're gonna find out what he's got his eyes
closed to.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: no, it's from...
-- Rob, 23:20:36 10/21/04 Thu
It might have to do with his drug addiction, or whatever in his
past inspired him to begin his drug addiction.
Rob
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: no, it's from...
-- anom, 08:00:19 10/22/04 Fri
Don't know if the tattoo is directly related to the addiction,
but now that his stash has run out, we may be about to see what
he's been keeping his eyes closed to.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: no, it's from...
-- OnM, 04:28:22 10/22/04 Fri
While I don't think that Abrams would stop to use the old hack
about everything happening being 'just a dream', one possible
'modern' update would be for the experience to be part of a large
scale virtual reality project. If you stop and think about it,
we're assuming that this is taking place in the present day, but
so far there hasn't been anything definitive to prevent this from
being set sometime in the future, say 30-50 years from now. Perhaps
VR technology has evolved to the state where images, physical
sensations and everything else available to our brains could be
directly induced into our cerebral cortex.
All of these people could be collectively 'wired up' in a lab
somewhere, part of a voluntary research project. Hey, talk about
a 'reality' series!!
(Uh-oh... Matrix reference again!)
;-)
I had wondered about how this concept of a 'created reality' be
taken past a single season without getting boring, since after
all, once you reval the 'gimmick', where do you go? It could turn
into Gilligan's Island all too quickly.
However, if it was a research project, revealing this fact could
be the 1st season-ending cliffhanger, and then next year, we get
to pull back and see not only the created reality, but the creators
behind it. What are their motivations? Did it start out as pure
research, and then worked so unexpectedly well that nefarious
forces get interested in it? Does something go wrong with a failsafe
and one of the characters actually die in 'real' reality?
Hummm...
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> BTW, that was 'stoop
to use', not 'stop'. Sorry. -- OnM, bad typist, 04:29:42
10/22/04 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Ooo! Ooo! And...
-- OnM, 04:39:50 10/22/04 Fri
... when the critical moment occurs and we get to see the lab
facility, it's Locke who is in charge of the project-- and he's
in a wheelchair.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Ooo! Ooo!
And... -- mamcu, 06:59:21 10/22/04 Fri
But you know, that sort of undercuts the meaning of Lost, in a
way that the virtuality doesn't, in the Matrix. And since it has
been done there, somehow I just don't think they'd rerun it here.
I think what's going on is less technical and more a matter of
the mind and/or nature of reality.
But it's still a good possibility to keep open.
[> [> [> [> The book that Sawyer was reading...
-- Corwin of Amber, 19:18:30 10/21/04 Thu
was Watership Down. It's a fave from my childhood, about a group
of rabbits that lose their home burrow (to a flood, if I remember
correctly) and have to emigrate and form a new society. Kind of
a fluffier version of Lord of the Flies, actually. :)
[> [> [> [> [> Heh...Sort of a fluffy "Lord
of the Flies" gone fascist! -- Rob, 22:17:19 10/21/04
Thu
[> [> Re: A couple of observations (spoilers) --
OnM, 04:11:13 10/22/04 Fri
Hummm, right you are, I recall that now. Three things come to
mind:
1. Tropical storms have a quiet part, the 'eye' or center.
2. The 'eye is the window to the soul'.
3. We 'see eye to eye'.
BTW, I agree with the comment made here that if the inhabitants
of the island are mentally creating what they expect to find,
then Locke's tendency would be to find something positive. After
all, a 'walkabout' is about a journey to find a spiritual center,
and that was what Locke had intended to do in Australia.
[> [> [> So what about the pilot? (SPOILERS) --
Ames, 22:05:03 10/22/04 Fri
If people are somehow mentally creating the strange things they've
encountered, what was it that took the pilot out of the cockpit,
and who created it? Side effect of the drugs the drummer was taking
in the bathroom? Some secret fear the pilot had?
[> [> [> [> Fear and anger directed at him for
getting them stranded 1000 miles off course, maybe? -- Evan,
07:57:28 10/28/04 Thu
[> The Secret of the Island (SPOILERS for Lost 1.04), also
other islands -- mamcu, 07:12:20 10/22/04 Fri
That was brilliant, OnM. I knew you'd open our eyes to lot we
miss in the first viewing. Excellent on the water and the doubling.
One thing I feel fairly sure of: there's not going to be a simple
explanation or solution for how things operate here. It would
end the appeal, I think. My belief is that we're lost on the island
with the characters, and like them should not expect to be rescued
by an answer, but need to work, as your analysis does, within
the mystery. What's happening with the people, where did they
come from, where are they going, how do they manage to survive
on many levels...The island's going to keep its mystery at least
until the rescuers come.
However, still seeing echoes of other mysterious islands (besides
LoF, Crusoe, Gilligan):
Circe's Island in the Odyssey (she turned men into swine)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (he did something similar only with science,
not magic)
Treasure Island
Pitcairn's Island (of Mutiny on Bounty fame)
The Island of Dr. Death and the Death of Dr. Island(Gene Wolfe,
echoes Dr. Moreau but much more psychically ambiguous)
[> [> A bit more on Dr. Death (spoilers for stories)
-- mamcu, 07:16:09 10/22/04 Fri
In case you haven't read Wolfe's stories and don't want to, here's
a short overview:
Doctor--Death stories...are amazing not only in that all are great
stories but that, despite the title similarities, each is different
from the other. "The Island of Dr. Death," deals with
a young boy who flees life by entering the fantasy world of the
book he is reading -- a book that sounds as if it were The Island
of Dr. Moreau as written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. "The Death
of Dr. Island," possibly the best story in the book and one
of the best SF stories ever written, deals with a three young
sociopaths receiving therapy in a space station. Dr. Island is
the "island" in the space station providing the therapy.
The story examines human interaction, as well as what we do and
don't value in life, on multiple levels. "The Doctor of Death
Island" involves a prisoner who awakes from a cryogenic sleep
only to find that humans are now virtually immortal and that a
life sentence is still a life sentence. The ending is literally
Dickensian.
From Amazon review at http://greatsfandf.com/PHP/cabook.php?natl=greatsciencfi-20&asin=0312863543
[> Dual Meaning of "Lost" -- grifter, 07:39:24
10/22/04 Fri
The show s title "Lost" has two meanings: On one hand
it obviously refers to the group s status...lost on an island
far away from civilization with no hope of being rescued.
But on the other hand, after watching "White Rabbit",
I have the feeling that each character seems to have lost something
in Australia...Jack lost his father and his confidence in himself;
Locke lost the opportunity to fulfill his life s dream and go
on a survival trip; Kate has lost her freedom, being brought back
as a prisoner by the marshall. Even some of the side characters
seem to have lost something: Walt has lost his mother, the woman
sitting next to Jack on the plane has lost her husband during
the crash. I m sure there will be more...
The island seems to give them what they desire: Jack regains confidence
in himself and finds some kind of closure regarding his father;
Locke gets the opportunity to use his survival skills (not to
mention the use of his legs!); Kate gains freedom: the marshall
is dead and no one cares about her past.
I m sure the next few episodes will follow along the same lines:
while the past of one of the main character s is being revealed,
we see what or whom he or she has lost in the past.
Until now "Lost" has been really good, but since "White
Rabbit" I have the feeling that I somehow "get"
the emotional core of the show and know what I can expect from
it in the future. The episode has raised the bar and I hope the
next ones are up to it. "Lost" has gone from "Good"
to "Waaaaahhh!!!!!! Can t wait until the next episode airs!!".
[> Re: *Gemini* - Very Quick Thoughts On *White Rabbit*
(SPOILERS for Lost 1.04) -- LadyStarlight, 07:40:17 10/22/04
Fri
I just have to ask -- was I the only one who thought "Dru!"
when we saw the doll in the water?
I was? Okay, then, moving on....
[> [> Dru!!?? -- dub, 10:40:32 10/22/04 Fri
And that would provide another very good explanation for the empty
coffin!
;o)
[> [> [> She wants revenge on David Fury for writing
"Crush." -- cjl, 11:04:55 10/22/04 Fri
[> [> [> The empty coffin. -- Evan, 11:06:02
10/22/04 Fri
Is it possible that the flight didn't actually allow him to transport
the body in the end, and for some reason they only took the coffin?
Maybe dead bodies can't go on commercial flights, and he needed
to wait for some dead body transport plane.
[> [> [> [> Or, I guess the body could've just
fallen out. -- Evan, 11:12:35 10/22/04 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> No... -- Rob, 12:59:57
10/22/04 Fri
The coffin was locked. He had to struggle to get it opened. For
the body to have fallen out, the coffin would have to be completely
broken open.
Rob
[> [> [> [> Doubtful... -- Rob, 12:58:52
10/22/04 Fri
When he opened that coffin, it seemed pretty clear that his dad
should have been in there. Why would he have opened it
otherwise?
Rob
[> Big ol' question -- Seven, 12:42:42 10/22/04 Fri
Great analysis, OnM.
Just a couple techincal questions.
Posters have mentioned an "Abrahms". Is this person
the creator/writer?
Also, who is he/she? What has this person done that I might know?
Respectable guy/gal? And somebody please tell me if it's a guy
or a girl so I can stop using the slashes.
So far, I have been too interested in the show to actually read
the opening credits and see the creator's name.
[> [> I think this is the answer -- dub ;o), 19:49:39
10/22/04 Fri
JJ Abrams writes Lost, and he also wrote Alias, which many people
here have seen (but not me).
In addition, David Fury wrote for Buffy, Angel and (I think) Firefly,
and now he is writing for Lost as well.
;o)
[> [> [> not quite -- Seven, 08:02:56 10/23/04
Sat
Thanks for letting me know about JJ's Alias writing. However,
did he/she (still not sure what JJ stands for) create Alias and
Lost? What I'm trying to see is if this JJ guy/gal is to Lost
what Joss is to Buffy/Angel.
Also, I had heard that Mr. Fury was working on the show. And believe
me, I'm well aware of who he is. I love his stints as "Got
the mustard out" guy (OMWF), attempted ritual goat sacrifice
guy (Reprise) and puppet-boy (ST) - Loved all of 'em!!
[> [> [> [> Re: not quite -- Evan, 09:11:59
10/23/04 Sat
JJ Abrams is a he, and he is, in a sense, the "Joss"
of Lost. The only difference is that he has two fellow co-creators,
Damon Lindelof (who's written for "Crossing Jordan"
and "Nash Bridges) and Jeffrey Lieber (who wrote the screenplay
for "Tuck Everlasting" but doesn't seem to have any
past TV credentials).
Abrams' other works include creating the TV shows "Felicity"
and "Alias", has written screenplays for such films
as "Armageddon", "Takin' Care Of Business",
"Joy Ride" and "Regarding Henry", and is also
currently directing Mission Impossible 3 (I just found this out!)
David Fury is on the writing/production staff (he wrote the amazing
"Walkabout") but isn't one of the show's "creators".
Other Buffy-related people who seem to be involved according to
imdb's list of writers/directors are Tucker Gates (who directed
Angel's "Hero" and Buffy's "Fear, Itself"),
Marita Grabiak (who directed Buffy's "Storyteller" and
"End Of Days", Angel's "The Price", "The
House Always Wins", "Shiny Happy People" and "Unleashed",
Firefly's "Jaynestown" and Wonderfalls' "Karma
Chameleon"), and Brent Fletcher (who wrote Angel's "Soul
Purpose")..
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