*SPOILER ALERT* I will be mentioning plot points from last night's episode of Alias. If you don't wish to know, do not ready any further!
A door opens. Sydney struts out, platinum blond hair, white nightie, high heels.
I turned to my wife and simply said "Oh, you know she is going to kick someone's butt."
And she did. In the first few minutes she seduces, steals, slams, kicks, hits, flips and hangs from a speeding train over a huge chasm. Yep, sounds like an average day for super spy Sydney Bristow.
In many ways last night's season opener took Alias back to its roots. And this is a good thing. Many agree (myself included) that season three strayed too far from what made Alias fun. And while the double agent bit that was so intriguing in the beginning needed to go away (it simply wouldn't have continued to work for so long), the layers upon layers of deception we witnessed last season became onerous.
After the first few action packed minutes we are transported to 72 hours earlier. Sydney, sprinting through the streets, yelling directions to a man in front of her. They enter a club, make radio contact - which leads to the death of an agent - and she forces the agent she was with to leave alone. A failed mission. An official inquiry into Sydney's behavior and competence. A reassignment to the mail room at Langley. And Sydney quits. She walks away from the CIA.
Vaughn, abusing a punching bag, tells Weiss he is quitting. Weiss informs Vaughn Sydney quit as well. This could be a boring season.
Sydney enters a door in the subway and is greeted by the very CIA director who just dressed her down completely. It was all a front, and she is now in a CIA black ops division with Vaughn, Dixon, and Jack. Enter the world once again of working one job on the surface, playing at saving the world underneath. Her new boss? None other than Arvin Sloane.
And so it begins. Marshall is dragged in, his expertise deemed necessary. And Weiss is left alone at the CIA, thinking all have abandoned, convinced Sydney is now a loan officer.
Twists and turns. It is what Alias is made of. We find out Jack executed Irina. Sydney hates him, won't speak to him, avoids him at all costs. Only to discover he did it because Irina had put a hit on Sydney's life. So to save his daughter he kills her mother. What a happy, dysfunctional family. Now Sydney's half-sister comes into the picture, vowing to kill however ended Irina's life.
I was pleased with the episode. Sloane is one of my favorite characters. He comes across as so sincere, so repentant for all he has done. But I can't buy into that. He still has an agenda. Every scene with him is great. And having him tell Sydney, Dixon, and Jack what to do once again brings back the old days. Irina's demise is unconvincing to me. We certainly don't know the entire story, and even though at the end Sydney says she identified the body, well, we have seen that sort of thing before as well (Francie anyone?). I still hope she comes back into the picture somehow. Nadia could prove to be interesting, allowing Sydney to have some other family to bond with besides psycho-dad. But my biggest disappointment was Nadia's death threat. It seemed that we had one in every episode last season, and I thought we were going to make it through unscathed this time around. Alas, foiled again.
But finally, I have a reason to watch TV on Wednesday night.