In the thirteenth episode of the second season of Alias, the show goes for broke, and in the process, I am broken. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Alias.
Trigger Warning: For talk of torture and racism.
Maybe the remainder of this show is fake? Maybe I’m supposed to think that there are more episodes but that’s not the case, and y’all have helped to orchestrate an incredibly complex prank? BECAUSE THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY THIS SHOW JUST RESOLVED 90% OF ITS EXISTING STORYLINES IN A SINGLE EPISODE. I DID NOT JUST WATCH THAT, OKAY. OKAY.
The Heist
I admire when I watch an episode of a show that, in hindsight, starts off at such a different place from where it ends. The opening of “Phase One†still felt like a normal episode of Alias, even if we don’t normally start in the midst of a heist. Plus, the incredible imagery of Sydney as a lingerie-clad dominatrix, approaching the camera while AC/DC’s “Back in Black†roared in the background, seemed to set a pretty clear tone. The entire opening scene was RIDICULOUS, and we had better be ready for it to ruin all our lives. Indeed, watching the show catch up to that moment was satisfying, and I figured that this was a further attempt to push season two’s arc towards a cliffhanger in the finale.
See, that arc felt obvious: they were moving to a confrontation with Arvin and the Alliance as a whole. If they could gather more intel on how all the SD cells worked, the CIA team could prepare themselves for a sweeping takeover. Except that’s not what “Phase One†set up. IT’S WHAT IT EXECUTED.
Geiger
I suppose I should have realized that Arvin Sloane wasn’t just going to return home to Los Angeles, leaving his wife behind, and pretend like nothing had happened. Still, the appearance of a new leader of SD-6 shocked the hell out of me. Even before his true machinations were revealed, I could tell that Sloane had greatly affected the lives of everyone at SD-6 just by not showing up. The main issue here is that he’s an obstacle. Jack and Sydney had spent the last two years or so getting close as possible to Arvin Sloane, manipulating him into thinking they were loyal to him. Thus, the CIA’s mission becomes infinitely more difficult when Geiger arrives. They have to start all over with him, and I assumed that this is what we’d see for the remainder of the season. Geiger suspected something strange was happening at SD-6, and his presence would act as an antagonistic force for the CIA. IT SEEMED SO OBVIOUS.
Rutger Hauer is convincingly creepy here, and it’s the odd confidence he wears that makes his character so unnerving. He comes into SD-6, believing that Sloane was a traitor, and then he goes about dismantling the confidences of EVERYONE. And he doesn’t care! That’s what he wants. He wants these people to be out of their comfort zone, he wants them to be uncomfortable, and he wants to root out the traitors and hypocrites, and THEN HE JUST CASUALLY ELECTROCUTES JACK BECAUSE IT’S NO BIG DEAL AT ALL TO HIM.
Impossible
In the midst of all of this, Vaughn takes a huge risk: he tells Sydney exactly how he feels, and he makes it clear that the only thing stopping him from truly making a move is the Alliance. That’s the main thing that has kept them apart, so yes, it was like yet another knife had been thrust deeper in when Jack remarked to Sydney that there probably wouldn’t be an end to this any time soon. But the back-and-forth nature of the relationship between Vaughn and Sydney has genuinely felt like something that wouldn’t be explored until the end of the show. It’s the classic romantic tension trope, though this time it’s applied to CIA agents who can’t be seen together because it will most certainly blow their cover. (Which nearly happened once ALREADY. OH MY GOD, HOW WAS THAT JUST A FEW EPISODES AGO.) But “Phase One†moves forward both with this pairing and the sudden Francie/Will pairing, too. Which wasn’t impossible once I thought about it. The two of them spend a lot of time together, and they had gotten a lot closer since Will was “disgraced†at the start of the season.
More on that in a second. The point being that like literally everything else here, the show escalated this plot way quicker than I expected. And why not? If the Alliance has truly been destroyed, as the final scene seems to confirm, then there’s no reason Vaughn can’t be with Sydney. I’m sure that there are some logistics to work out—like the unfortunate existence of his GIRLFRIEND, and I’m sure Kendall will be pissed—but THIS COULD ACTUALLY WORK?
The Truth
Y’all know that I live for scenes where characters are introduced to the truth of the world. While you usually find these in speculative fiction or fantasy narratives, Alias has managed to build a convincing thread of tension in Dixon, who proudly works to protect his country, all while ignorant to the fact that he’s actually doing the exact opposite. But like the Vaughn/Sydney relationship, I didn’t expect that this would happen for a while. We’d gotten close to it early this season, but I figured (again!) that we were looking at a season two finale twist to deal with Dixon.
I appreciate that the scene where Sydney does tell Dixon the truth is so difficult. There’s no joy; there’s no relief. It felt like pure horror. It was agonizing watching that man’s face as Sydney tried to tell him the truth about SD-6. Truthfully, we were watching a destruction. An entire world fell apart for Dixon, slowly at first—I don’t think he truly believed her at first, though he certainly had suspicions—and then all at once. THAT PHONE CALL TO HIS WIFE WAS UNFAIR. EVIL. COMPLETELY GUT-WRENCHING.
The Puppetmaster
So, there’s a detail here I don’t yet understand: how long had Arvin Sloane known that Jack and Sydney were double agents? His keystrokes betrayed that he had attempted to warn others that the Bristows were double agents, but given his big reveal, I have to wonder if he set up Gieger to fail from the beginning. It seems that Sark is the only one who could have provided Sloane with the truth, and once he did, Sloane set up the entire Alliance to be taken down by the CIA. It’s such a nefarious plan because it allows him to be with Emily without worry. The organization that would have killed him is now gone, right? So when did he decide that the Alliance was not worth it anymore? When did the planning for Phase One begin, and how long has he been manipulating everyone?
I WAS SO FUCKED UP BY THIS REVEAL.
Two
So, I gotta call foul here first before I discuss this further. Alias is incredibly white, and so it feels suspect that the first major character to be killed off is a black woman. Not only that, but a black woman who just found success, who just expressed some sort of physical/romantic interest in another person, who has largely existed in the background up until this point. Her death also means that she never got to learn the truth of Will and Sydney. It’s a goddamn tragedy, and even if the actress now gets to stick around, it doesn’t get rid of the sting of Francie’s murder. Nice things happened to a black woman, and then she was immediately killed off. BOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Well, she was also killed off by herself. I literally do not know how to deal with one shred of this because… WHAT THE FUCK. Is Francie a twin??? HOW IS THERE ANOTHER OF HER???? WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!
The video for “Phase One†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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