Resurrection
Dammit! Season finales are so good sometimes, and so unimaginably crap other times. Despite quite enjoying elements of Alias‘s season three, this pathetic excuse for a finale is a bit more Chosen than ‘Becoming’, if I can use a Buffy analogy. There’s spoilers below. Naturally. But they might improve your enjoyment of the episode if you’ve not seen it.
I would say — though this is by no means a hard-and-fast rule, that a good season finale answers a few questions from its preceding season, and then raises a few more. ‘Resurrection’ does none of the first and makes only a very lame attempt at the second.
A quick summary. Vaughn, having been both betrayed and tortured by his wife/covenant spy Lauren, is out for bloody vengeance. This makes for the best scenes of the episode — his violent ambush of the conniving so-and-so is played just short of over the top by Michael Vartan. “Hi Honey!” Meanwhile, of course, Sydney is worrying that his violent, Jack Bristow assisted quest is going to be rather bad for his mental well-being. Luckily for her, Vaughn himself gets ambushed, and later finds a much less morally ambiguous opportunity to kill Lauren. How convenient.
The final showdown is in the position determined in previous episodes to be the big, final site of Rimbaldi’s reincarnatey message. Except, as it turns out, they’ve all got it wrong, because Sydney’s sister Nadia lied. Which makes a bit of sense, so I was fine with it — until I realised that they were going to use it as an excuse not to pay up. Expecting some crazy revelations from Rimbaldi? Something crazy and worldshaking to lead into the next season? Nope.
But that seemed alright, because a new and almost as tantalising plotline was dangled before us. Lauren hints at some new, underlying truth behind Sydney’s missing two years. There’s an unexpected betrayal. Jack seems a bit shiftier than normal…
But I’m afraid we’re only treated to a virtual twist. It’s not really there. I feel quite comfortable speaking about the last two minutes of the episode, because they don’t tell you a damn thing! There’s some old secret, written on paper that we see Sydney reading and getting progressively upset about. Jack walks in, looking as ambiguous as ever, and tells her she wasn’t supposed to find out… And then, we go to black.
This, people, is NOT a cliffhanger. It’s the sign leading to the cliff. It’s the mountaineering store where you buy your safety gear on the way to the cliff. After having whole seasons full of cliffhangers, you’d think JJ Abrams would know this. Luckily, there’s always season four to redeem themselves with. But shows so rarely get better in their fourth season…
Interestingly, a look at a summary of the plot at Alias TV.com seems to reveal a lot more about the documents Sydney’s reading. I’d swear that we didn’t get to see all that. Perhaps I’m going mad. Feel free to flame me if I am.
Oh, and one more thing. Isabella Rosellini is in no way attractive. In fact, she looks like a bloke. She’s no replacement for the age-defyingly hot Lena Olin. Don’t anyone over there stop trying Lena’s phone number.
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