In the ninth episode of the second season of Alias, Sydney and Jack must trust Irina to help them escape a botched mission. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Alias.
Trigger Warning: For discussion of racism, specifically brownface.
Let’s start with the negative because… LORD.
Disguises
So… were people calling this shit out when Alias was airing? I never entertain the misconception that people in fandom had no problem with shit when it was unfolding in real time. There’s this ridiculous notion that people have only now noticed racism or misogyny or homophobia, that these are modern inventions, that there was some golden age of television or books or film where nothing was “problematic†or bigoted. I understand that there’s obviously a different dynamic at hand when you’re watching an older show or reading an older book through a modern lens.
Still, I suspect someone had to have called foul about this show’s third attempt to make the white characters look non-white. I wouldn’t like this in any context I can think of, yet I can’t deny that it’s made worse because the show is so deliberately white already. The only two black characters are barely seen anymore in this season. I feel like Dixon has been absent more times than we’ve seen him, and Francie didn’t even speak in her appearance here. Non-white bodies exist for exoticism or shock value. They’re rarely given names or speaking lines, and in this two-parter, one of them is murdered so that we understand how bad the PRF is. (Did we need that? No.) Thus, when these characters are made up to look vaguely brown, it feels like a slap in the face. The show can’t seem to write convincing and meaningful non-white characters, but these three white characters can be dressed up in this terrible brownface. (This is largely a moot point because the real issue is so much worse, but: THEIR BROWNFACE ISN’T EVEN GOOD. They all still looked like white people wearing brownface! There’s no way people believed they were native citizens!)
I suspect this is not the last time we’re going to see this, y’all.
Escape
Once “Passage, Part II†got away from this embarrassing misstep, I did find myself enjoying the conclusion to this two-parter a great deal. Look, stick a bunch of people who have major issues with one another in a high-stress scenario, let all their emotional baggage spill out dramatically, and I AM ABSOLUTELY HERE FOR IT. This episode delivers on all fronts, including Vaughn getting approval to extract Sydney and her mother and father himself. WHICH IS A VERY ROMANTIC DEMONSTRATION, I MIGHT ADD. But the root of the tension here is still the difficult act of trusting Irina.
Look, it’s so hard to do. Like I said in the last review, the best I can offer is worrying. I would love to be able to throw myself into accepting the growing relationship between Irina and Sydney, but it’s a test of my cynicism. “Passage†moves me a little closer to believing Irina and believing that she turned herself in to begin the process of redeeming herself. At the same time, the pieces fit so well, and it makes me suspicious. Her old KGB boss just happened to be at this facility? She just had to shoot Sydney in the shoulder in the season opener in order to convince someone that she would betray her daughter? Either she’s telling the truth or this is all a cover for her real purpose, and I know simplifying it to a binary isn’t smart. BUT I DON’T SEE A MIDDLE GROUND WITH HER. I really don’t!
I suppose what makes this harder is that her emotional responses towards Sydney and Jack feel so real. That bit where Jack and Irina reminisced over the burnt toaster was genuine… or at least I think it was. I can’t quite tell! The problem is that it’s hard to enjoy any of this knowing just how badly Irina deceived everyone in her life. Even that little bit of nostalgia is colored by the reality that shortly after that memory, Irina faked her death and abandoned her family, leaving them distraught and destroyed.
So maybe she’s really back. Maybe she’s really trying. But when you’ve been abandoned before, it’s hard not to fear that same thing all over again.
The video for “Passage, Part II†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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