In the thirteenth episode of the fourth season of Alias, Marshall and Sydney must work two stressful heists together. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Alias.Â
Help??? WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS AN OKAY THING TO MAKE ME GO THROUGH?
Look, I don’t want to say that there’s zero character development here in “Tuesday.†We get a glimpse into Marshall’s life with Carrie and their son, and it makes for a compelling parallel to some of the emotional complications from the first season. Marshall has to lie to someone he loves about what he does for a living. AND IT’S SOMEONE WHO WOULD EASILY UNDERSTAND, AND YET HE CAN’T. On top of all of this, there’s a wonderful plot thread of Sydney and Vaughn deciding to go dancing. Which is!!! Too emotional!!! And made the whole first half of “Tuesday†a billion times more stressful!!! Y’all, I’m so happy that they’re actually seeing one another again.Â
But this episode isn’t about those things. Oh, they play a part in the journey that the audience is taken on, but this is mostly a non-stop stress fest. It is—as I would say for a story like this—an Experience. AND IT IS NOT AN OKAY EXPERIENCE. “Tuesday†drops the audience into the deep end of HELL. BECAUSE SYDNEY IS BURIED ALIVE IN CUBA RIGHT AS THE HQ OF APO IS ATTACKED AND LOCKED DOWN. It is a ridiculously unfair situation, and Jennifer Garner unsurprisingly knocks it out of the park with her performance here. It’s raw, terrifying, and upsetting, and I’m certain that’s one of the reasons this affected me as much as it did. It’s not like I expected the show to kill off Sydney, you know? That was never on the table.
And yet, this still was so fucked up. It’s not that I believed the threat so much as I believed the characters’ responses to it. Look, on a very basic level, I just can’t deal with Jennifer Garner crying? It just does something to my heart, and it is deeply unfair, but this is the world that I live in. However, I wasn’t ready for how the rest of the team behaved in response to this. There was something unsettling in the image of Jack watching that temperature satellite footage, for example, just as there was sorrow in Vaughn’s face as he began to fear the worst. (Obligatory complaint time: I get why the show had to have the hard drive explode inside APO; it was a necessary element of the plot that kept everyone but Marshall away. However, sidelining Dixon during this just felt non-sensical by the time the final scene rolled around. He totally could have had a more meaningful role in this!)Â
It was a delight getting to see Marshall in the field, though, especially since it added some levity to an episode that WAS NOT FINE at all. I admired that the comedy was interwoven with the suspense, though. Granted, there wasn’t much comedy in Marshall trying to find Sydney and resuscitate her, but once they decide to follow up on the original mission that Sydney was on? I am still reeling from just how far Marshall has to go in this episode. The escalation is what made this as funny and as unbearable as it was. Y’all, HE ACCIDENTALLY KILLED HIS TARGET?!?!?!?! This is not even remotely something I was prepared to witness? AND THEN HE HAD TO DO HORRIBLE THINGS WITH THE DEAD MAN’S EYES? Y’all know I can’t do eye stuff, so this was both hilarious and revolting, so… bravo. Bravo, Alias, for managing to capture so many different emotions in a single story. Again, this might not be significant in advancing the larger plot of season four, but I had a blast.
The video for “Tuesday†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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