In the twenty-first and penultimate episode of the first season of Alias<\/i>, this is too much for any one person to handle. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Alias<\/i>.<\/p>\n
HELP ME, HOW IS THERE STILL ANOTHER EPISODE THIS SEASON.<\/p>\n
Dixon<\/b><\/p>\n
This is a masterwork in suspense, and the more I think about all the elements at play here, the more impressed I am. This required a slow burn, except… well, except for Dixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plot, NONE OF IT HAS BEEN SLOW. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like the only example of a season-long slow burn punctuated by LOTS OF RAPID BURNING ALONG THE WAY.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot that crushed my heart here, first of all, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rendezvous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has brought us to a precipice with Dixon. And I know<\/i> that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gonna break my heart, too, perhaps more so than anything else here. Dixon adores Sydney, and unlike Will, he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d her. He works alongside her almost every day. He sees her work ethic, her morals, her loyalty. And now, after LITERALLY FIGHTING HER while she is in a (racist) disguise, the facade is starting to crumble.<\/p>\n
Doubt is a powerful<\/i> thing, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. What \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rendezvous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d offers us is the chance to watch Dixon begin to question what he knows of the person he thought<\/i> he knew all these years. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve wanted Dixon to know the truth for a while, but now that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening? Oh god, I wish Sydney could have told him herself! This is the WORST way for him to go about it! But he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deny that twinge of recognition he felt fighting Sydney at the opening of the episode; he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore that Sydney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arm is hurt in the same place; he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t discard the fact that she is OPENLY LYING to his face.<\/p>\n
This is gonna hurt a lot<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Emily<\/b><\/p>\n
I was glad Vaughn provided the means for the text itself to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, I get that this is very sad, but maybe we shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be feeling great Sloane.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I also can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deny that while he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the series\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main antagonist, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way<\/i> more interesting because of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rendezvous.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Certainly, I enjoy hissing or booing when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on screen. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to hate, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s generally made easier whenever he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being weird or gross to Sydney. But Emily is, as far as I can tell, a truly innocent party in all of this. Sloane is part of a life where people are collateral, leverage, or obstacles, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no room for ambiguity there. Unfortunately for him, that also<\/i> applies to his wife. She broke SD-6 policy, and policy requires containment. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s through Sloane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deceptive work that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s able to gain the Alliance\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s favor, thus granting her an exception. But what an exception that is! We won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t assassinate you for knowing what your husband does, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only because we control the hospital you will die in very shortly. EVERYONE WINS, right?<\/p>\n
And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the type of brutality that is normal<\/i> for the SD-6 and the Alliance, but which seems heinous to… well, ALL OF US. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s with this understanding that the writers find a way to dig the knife in just<\/i> a little bit deeper. I honestly cannot think of an example of a cancer remission<\/i> reveal being the WORST thing that can happen, but here we are! The very thing Sloane worked for is now his curse because Emily might not die. Which means SD-6 will have<\/i> to kill her. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel bad for Sloane\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat scene where he expressed regret for having Danny killed was particularly gross and angering. He deserves to suffer, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not fair that Emily<\/i> is the collateral damage. So what the hell is Sloane going to do? Defy the Alliance? Does he actually<\/i> care more about another human being over his work?<\/p>\n
Will<\/b><\/p>\n
But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s be real<\/i>, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. NOTHING IN THIS EPISODE IS A GREATER SOURCE OF TENSION AND STRESS THAN WILL TIPPIN. I am still<\/i> reeling from just how far this episode escalated this story line. I got used to the fake-out, the near miss, the many ways in which Will was kept away from knowing the truth. Even here, once we learned that Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whistleblower was having him meet in Paris, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d learn the truth about Sydney. Even after he was outside: didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it would happen. Even after he was in the same room as her: nope.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons this plot hits so hard is that once Sydney reveals herself to Will, there is no slowing down. We are shown that this is exactly<\/i> as big of a deal as we thought it was. Will witnesses Sydney in action\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand what glorious action that is\u00e2\u20ac\u201das she saves him life from the people who have been stringing him along this entire time. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, Khasinau<\/i> was behind the calls to Will! I KNEW WE COULDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T TRUST THEM. And it makes a certain bit of sense: why not take down SD-6\u00e2\u20ac\u201cKhasinau\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main competitor at this point\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthrough legal<\/i> means? Plus, using Will adds a bit of cruelty to it all, right?<\/p>\n
And yet, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a deeper meaning to this all. I adored that this was how Sydney got to explore her own isolation from her friends and the fear she had that Will would reject her. I mean, who could blame him? Once Sydney exposed her true identity to him, Will started to piece together all the inconsistencies in Sydney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life. The constant trips. The injuries. The secrets<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all given a new context, and he had<\/i> to have realized how much she had lied to him. So I get that she was terrified of this. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy in any sense to have to build a life that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s constructed on a secret. (Which, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll allow a tiny bit of projection, is something I understand as someone who lived in the closet until I was 18.)<\/p>\n
However, Sydney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fears, while realistic, are unnecessary, and WOW, I WAS READY TO BAWL<\/i> WHEN WILL TOLD HER THAT HE UNDERSTOOD. He offered her empathy! He tried to understand just how hard and complicated her life had been, and he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> chew her out once for lying!!! HOLY SHIT, I WAS SO EMOTIONAL DURING THAT SCENE?!?!?! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly<\/i> what Sydney needed, sooooooo… yeah. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna be pissed<\/i> if Sark really killed Will at the end of this episode. Also, could a nice thing happen??? Please?<\/p>\n
Who am I kidding? The finale is next. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ALREADY freaked out.<\/p>\n
The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rendezvous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the twenty-first and penultimate episode of the first season of Alias, this is too much for any one person to handle. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Alias.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[681],"tags":[682],"class_list":["post-6739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alias","tag-mark-watches-alias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}