THE WORKING TITLE OF THIS REVIEW WAS SOMETHING LIKE "IF I WERE J.J. EXCEPT I DIDN'T THINK ALIAS FANS WERE MORONS". BUT SINCE I LIKE ALL MY ALIAS HEADERS TO HAVE THE SAME FORMAT, IT GOT SCRAPPED. ONE OTHER THING, UNTIL THE SHOW GETS GOOD LIKE IT USED TO BE, ALL OF MY ALIAS REVIEWS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD WILL BE EXTREMELY LONG, BECAUSE I FEEL THE NEED TO REWRITE THE DIALOGUE THE WAY IT SHOULD PLAY OUT. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE LENGTH, I SUGGEST YOU SCAN. OR DON'T READ IT. I DON'T CARE. I'M WRITING FOR MYSELF, NOT FOR THE READERS. I'M CHANGING MY NAME TO J.J. AND JUST WRITING WHATEVER PLEASES ME. BECAUSE I DON'T CARE WHAT THE FANS THINK! here we go.
dear j.j. abrams,
i have just watched the worst episode of alias EVER, and i have some questions for you. before i go on with my questions, let me just clarify. when i say that this was the worst episode of alias EVER, i do mean EVER. even worse than 1.19 SNOWMAN, the last 5 minutes of 2.22 THE TELLING, 3.4 A MISSING LINK, 3.5 REPERCUSSIONS and 3.9 CONSCIOUS (save that part where sydney punched evil lauren in the face). here are my questions. do you hate me? do you hate vaughn? do you hate sydney? do you hate jack? do you love lauren? do you hate sark (you must, you let that evil woman defile him)? do you think your viewers are morons? will you please put us out of our misery and stop jerking us around?
also, i read the article in issue #3 of alias magazine where you said that sometimes you realize that you've made a horrible mistake with a plotline (i.e., vaughn having an EVIL wife, vaughn's character practically being sidelined this whole season while you make us stomach episodes of lauren after lauren after lauren -puke, dixon being entirely ignored the first few eps of this season, etc.). anyway, you say you have to play those horrible plotlines out because you can't just drop them (though you didn't have any trouble just forgetting that anna espinosa existed midway through season 1). you've got to find a way to dig yourself out of them (or something like that, i'm paraphrasing, i don't have the issue in front of me). i'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one; j.j., if i've learned anything from soap operas, it is that even the lamest of twists can save a show from an incredibly bad plot, and the fans will ultimately accept and appreciate this lame twist because we will realize that you did it to save us from the vomitously wretched storyline you had been trying to feed us. for example, in 3.13 AFTER SIX, you send evil lauren with vaughn to that vertigo-inducing cliff that he and syd were suspended on. a la sylvester stallone in "cliffhanger", vaughn tries to save a frantic EVIL lauren who has sadly lost her footing and is holding on to life only by her grasp of vaughn's hand. vaughn thinks he can save her, but to his half-chagrin, EVIL lauren slips out of her glove and plunges to her doom. ta-da! problem solved. vaughn and syd can reunite after a VERY SHORT grieving process, and the NSC and CIA have been rid of two bad apples in one season. though i'm guessing you'd do something crazy like have vaughn go back to alice.
if you don't mind my working from home in arizona and participating in writers' meetings by teleconference and sending my fabulous scripts in via email, you have my permission to begin courting me to become an alias writer. excellent benefits and an inflated salary are preferred. i am a CPA and have exceptional spreadsheet skills, which could help in running statistics on the number of fans you could NOT alienate by getting a clue.
one more thing, please keep that michael giacchino and whoever is picking out the tunes that accompany the eps. the music does rock.
one more other thing, would you please go ahead and reveal who EVIL lauren is? is she sloane's daughter? i thought so.
love always,
sarahk
p.s. thanks for letting vaughn be in this ep. for more than 5 minutes, but please, next time, no more long kisses with his evil wh--- wife. oh, and when our characters get shot, we know they just happened to be wearing the mithril on this mission (except dixon that one time) (and sloane that other time, but who cares?) (and will that one time, but it was a tranq dart) (and weiss that one time, but he was shot in the neck) (and sark that -- oh, nevermind. we're the CIA. we can't ever wound or even capture sark, except when sydney's not around) (and jack that one time) (and sydney that one time when her mother shot her) (and francie those several times, but bullets don't hurt francie). wait, i think i missed my own point. oh well.
on with the episode, painful as it was...
so the ep starts w/ vaughn sitting up in the middle of the night beside the bed that he shares with his EVIL wife. he's playing with the watch that his father gave him, which we will remember stopped the day he met sydney, because his dad said you could set your heart by that watch. awwwwwwwwwwwwww. nice memories. gonna need them to sustain us during this badly written episode. anyway, evil lauren -- let's abbreviate. larvin, we'll call her. so larvin gets a phone call, so she wakes up and poor vaughn has to stomach having a conversation with larvin when he was thinking about sydney. now. unlike the bad robot, i will not pull the lame-o make-you-watch-it-all-over-again trick later on, so i'll tell you what boring thing is happening on the other end now. larvin's getting a call from sark, who wants her to sabotage the next cia mission that they're going to meet about in the morning. um, j.j., i'll always be going on this assumption. k?
ok, so at the cia, dixon preps the team. some new terrorist organization has a next generation plasma bomb, and they're going to ship it to europe. so vaughn and sydney are going to break into yet another digital storage facility to find out where the plasma bomb was shipped. oh, and during this whole thing, marshall is just the proudest new papa. he's showing off mitchell any chance he gets. there's a cute moment when syd informs him that his tie's on backwards. marshall's not sleeping much. he's so much fun. i love geeks. and larvin's sitting there in the room, looking evil and taking mental notes. she's always looking around suspiciously thinking stuff like, "i wonder if anyone can tell i forgot the deodorant today," "i hope nobody realizes i know i picked the wrong cia guy to seduce; i should have gone after marshall," stuff like that.
ok, so dixon tells them all that they think they've got a mole at the cia. uh, ya think? way to go, dixon. good deduction. and jack's going to start investigating, with the help of reverend weiss and larvin. but larvin says, "sorry, jack. i've got to work for the covenant tonight sabotaging the cia's mission. maybe tomorrow, i can interrogate some innocent folks." jack's cool with that.
after the meeting, syd chases down larvin to confront her about larvin telling her to stay away from vaughn. syd tells larvin, "listen, you demon. how 'bout YOU stay away from your husband." ok, i guess that's not really what she said. it was something more to the effect of "i won't apologize for having a history with vaughn. so if you've got marriage problems due to your evilness, you take it up with vaughn and not me." plants the seed of larvin's and vaughn's next fight. woohoo.
at the same time, vaughn and brother weiss are talking. this conversation goes the same way most vaughn / pastor weiss conversations go. "hey, what's up?" "huh? oh, nothing. nothing's wrong. i love larvin, not sydney. everything's great in the world of vaughn." "hey, come on man. it's me, preacher man weiss. hey, did you hear i performed a geek wedding last week? anyway, hey, it's me, your friend brother weiss. what's wrong?" "my evil wife forgot that yesterday was the anniversary of my dad's death. oh, and i found the watch he gave me that i can set my heart by. it made me think of sydney and how much i love her and miss her. and it reminded me that it's TIME to find out that larvin is a commie traitor. and how much i enjoyed in episode 3.9 the part where my true love sydney CLOCKED larvin in the face. that was awesome." "oh, ok. well, if you want me to take care of that problem for you, just let me know. i'm getting my own bounty hunter show, so i'm learning all about how to kill people w/ guns, unlike at the cia of j.j.'s world, where we only use tranq darts and karate." "thanks, man. i'll let you know. you're a true friend."
so then we have dr. gullible -- er, barnett -- on the phone w/ arvin, larvin's dad. so sloane tells her that it would be a crime to dine alone in zurich. yeah, i agree, especially since we've wasted our american tax dollars sending you over to meet with a man who doesn't deserve to be alive, much less breathing free air. you might as well get some free food out of this and stash your per diem. she says no, but since we saw last week's previews, i'm thinking she changes her mind.
vaughn and his true love sydney go on their digital storage facility mission posing as astronomers, and i must comment on the costuming here. vaughn is dressed like a spy, suit & tie. btw, i think spies should generally wear something that is more comfortable for running. i'll bet vaughn rips a lot of armanis and gets a lot of blisters from those fancy shoes he's always chasing bad guys in. sydney is wearing the same hair and glasses she wore when she broke into FAPSI (sp?) headquarters in season 2. and an incredibly short skirt. ok, there's a funny line here where she's telling the storage facility guy "don't worry, because the alien invasion is still months away." LOL. so syd and vaughn get into the system and relay the access to marshall, who starts doing his thing while rambling on about mitchell and how he would love to work side by side with his spawn someday. cute. anyway, marshall discovers that someone is in the system with them. the covenant has beat them to the facility and has sabotaged them with a virus. i'm on pins and needles wondering who could be doing such a thing. so, as we find out during episode 3.14 BLOWBACK: EPISODE II, larvin and sarky-pooh got to the storage facility first, killed a security guard, unleashed the computer virus, and gave the vault manager an ugly task -- kill the two people that are going to walk out of that door. WHAT A TRAITOROUS WH---!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what? oh. we already knew that. moving on.
so the vault manager tries to kill syd & vaughn, because larvin's hiding behind a wall w/ a gun pointed at him. so syd & vaughn get away and run out to their FORD F-150 in the parking garage. then, a FORD ad ensues, as syd and vaughn are in a FORD F-150 chasing larvin & sarky-pooh in a FORD MUSTANG. at the end of the FORD ad, larvin and sarky have outmuscled a NON-FORD and gotten away, and true loves sydney and vaughn have outmuscled some NON-FORD cars with their FORD F-150, and we all know that the only reason the FORD MUSTANG won the FORD ad was because it had a headstart over the F-150. otherwise, vaughn and sydney would have to have been in a NON-FORD in order for the chase scene to be realistic. well. after that scene -- excuse me, those 2 scenes -- i think i'm going to go out and buy a FORD. oh wait. already own one. that ad must have worked.
after the FORD ad, larvin is totally turned on by sarky-pooh's crazy elusive driving, and they DO IT. gross. now she has defiled my vaughn as well as my secret bad-guy crush sark. j.j., what are you doing to me? btw, i do NOT find crazy driving to be a turn-on.
back at the ranch, mitchell's dad tells syd that they got 63% of their info, and he needs 12 hours to come up with the missing pieces. syd tells him they don't have that kind of time, and she and her true love vaughn leave him to it. she asks vaughn, "are you ok, love of my life?" he says, "i am now that i'm standing here with you and larvin is nowhere around, baby." she says, "were you upset because you're married to that EVIL commie traitor larvin, or because yesterday was the anniversary of your father's death?" "wow, how did you remember that?" "well, i DO work with the commie traitor. how could i forget?" "not that. doesn't take a rocket scientist to keep that one in mind. though i'm sure rocket scientists are aware of the EVILNESS of larvin, too. no, i meant, how did you remember about my dad?" "because you're my soulmate, vaughn. and i love you and remember everything you ever told me." "oh, i love you too syd. wish reverend weiss would kill my commie traitor EVIL wife, and we could be together. but instead, i'll just say that you're so sweet to remember the day that your mom killed my dad." "no problem, my love." then they are interrupted by EVIL larvin calling vaughn to say she's been delayed because she's DOING IT with julian sark. "oh, ok, hon, see you when you get home. have a nice flight." the best part of the phone call is when larvin tells vaughn that she loves him, and vaughn just says "you too" because sydney's standing by secretly eavesdropping on their conversation.
ok. so. dr. barnett says she'll dine with larvin's dad arvin "for professional reasons" only. she is so enthralled by his transformation from evil spy to humanitarian, so she wants to pick his martian brain for information that she can use in writing her next psychology book. she says, "really? 8 pages of blank parchment in the rambaldi device? and then just one little word? peace? do you think i'm as stupid as j.j. thinks this show's viewers are?" then she asks about the secret that he hinted at last week that he wants to manipulate her with. he shows his evil martian teeth and gets all angry and evil. may i just insert here that ron rifkin is such an amazing actor. i just can't stand arvin, and i believe that he is EVIL TO THE CORE because of the fabulous job done by rifkin. he can turn the cruelty on soooooooooo quickly and make you quake in fear. you rock, ron. so anyway, barnett gets all upset and says this was a mistake -- DUH -- and walks out. in EPISODE II, we find out that sloane goes and fetches her and apologizes for letting her see his evil martian side. he then tells her the big fat secret. "irina derevko and i had a one-night stand many years ago. emily and jack never knew, because jack was so blinded by irina's awesome arm muscles that he didn't catch on to LOTS of things way back then. and emily, well, she was too busy planting flowers in her magical garden to notice." "are you trying to hoodwink the viewers into thinking that you're sydney's father, arvin? are you sure? and are you sure emily never knew? because she sure wasn't happy to see irina when they met 20 years later on the airplane." "well, i never asked jack to do a paternity test or anything like that, since that might have tipped him off, but i think that sydney gets her strength from me, her weasel wuss father." "oh! well! thanks for telling me the truth about that arvin! let's go ahead and have that dinner after all."
so syd and her true love vaughn go to this boat that marshall has determined is housing the plasma bomb. they tranq-dart some people into submission and go searching for the bomb. two people wearing ski masks start shooting at syd & vaughn, and we know that these 2 people are sark and larvin. anyway, vaughn is shot multiple times and falls to the ground, and syd drags him behind a closed door to give him mouth to mouth. um, i've got a question. why don't the evil robbers in ski masks ever go for the head? i'm just wondering, because it seems like that would serve their evil purposes better than just shooting at the bullet-proof mithril. now, unlike some of the vartan hos (whom i truly respect for their website as well as their ability to turn away and avert their eyes from the trainwreck that is larvin, which i have thus far not been able to do), i really do want vaughn to stick around. i guess i'm just holding out hope that he's going to pull his head out of ... the sand and become my hero again. especially since my other beautiful hero, will, is in witness protection.
anyway, EPISODE I ends there, and later in EPISODE II, we discover the shocking fact that michael was wearing his vest. whew! had me worried there, j.j.! so vaughn forgets that he's been shot and chases off after larvin while sydney finds the plasma charge. vaughn draws his gun on her and says, "listen you evil commie traitor who tricked me into marrying you! take off your mask! do it! now!" and larvin finally, after a delay of approximately 12 minutes, starts to take off the mask. and then sark starts yelling at vaughn just as larvin is about to reveal who she is. sark has sydney cornered and has a gun on her. sydney's yelling, "no, vaughn! don't listen to him! he'll never shoot me, because i'm the star of the show and had the prettiest dress at the oscars! so whatever he tells you to do, don't, baby! i love you! we'll find each other! we always do!" and sark finally says, "if you love her, you'll drop your gun so your evil commie traitor wife can see that you only love one woman, and her name ain't larvin!" and vaughn looks at larvin, then looks at his true love sydney and drops his gun. sydney jumps up and breaks away from sark while shouting "woohoo! i knew it! i knew it! i love you too, baby!! let's go to santa barbara!" and since vaughn is distracted by sydney jumping around, larvin is able to sucker-punch him and knock him to the ground. so sydney goes after larvin, and vaughn goes after sark, who now has the bomb. sark engages the bomb for 1 minute and gives to vaughn, who disengages it. whew. that was a close one. and i think larvin gets away from syd.
then larvin gives vaughn a long kiss at a bar later. "what was that for?" he asks. "it's because i know that you love sydney more than me, so i want to torture you even further by making you kiss me. oh, btw, i DID IT with sark. hope you don't mind. and sorry about punching you earlier." "not at all, sweetie. whatever makes you happy."
the end. THANKFULLY!!
oh, so tonight i heard words i never thought i'd hear again after a new alias. "all new alias next sunday on abc". WOW, ABC! OUR 3:00 TALK IN THE PARKING LOT MUST HAVE WORKED!
next week, the ep.'s called FACADE, and sydney's gonna have to save vaughn from a suicide bomber or something like that.
ciao!
1)concerning issue-where's will,alison,& i for one want IRINAIRINAIRINA back!2)is it vomitously wretched or wretchedly vomitous?3)i would rather not watch previews(ep.1)during the show(ep.2).4)in your negotiations w/j.j., ask for(demand)a job for spidade.5)sad to say,bullets do hurt francie,but not alison.6)mole? they need to hire bill murray,huh? or was that a gopher?7)i wish syd would PUNCH the CLOCK in the FACE with her HANDS tied behind her back.is that CRYSTAL clear?8)i think barnett has a thing for larvin's dad & is curiously obsessive or obsessively curious & will eventually defect!9)i love FORD's,but hey,at least make it a 2504x4! 10)yeah!rock on ron!great acting!11)once again,i have to say ep.1 was better than ep.2. just wish i'd seen ep.2 first.
Posted by: spydaddy | Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 07:41 PM
1) will is in witness protection. alison is hiding under sark's bed. i'm sure she's not happy about him DOING IT with larvin. i want IRINAIRINAIRINA back, too, spidade, but i'm telling you, her name is now katya. and you need to get over her and move on. 2) both. you pick. 3) get your own blog, write your own review, and you can leave out the previews. 4) ok, i will. would you like to be my gopher? 5) ah. you are correct. i meant to say bullets do not hurt EVIL francie (aka alison). 6) well, i can have j.j. hire you to be my gopher, and let's just forget about bill murray's moles. 7) i do not condone violence toward clocks. only evil commie traitor wives. (but i did like your clock puns.) 8) i think you're on to something, spidade. and since i've read the spoilers at the safehouse, i think strongly that you might be right. plus, did you see the way she was dressed for dinner? she was screaming "available". 9) i think you missed the point of my ranting about the SHAMELESS "subliminal" advertising. 10) ghostwit. 11) you confuse me, but whatever. i would have preferred a whole episode, instead of 2 of the same.
Posted by: sarahk | Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 10:57 PM