In the twenty-first and penultimate episode of the third season of Alias<\/i>, the team stages a rescue of Nadia with mixed results. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Alias<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For nonconsensual drugging<\/b>.<\/p>\n
This finale is gonna fuck me up, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? PROBABLY.<\/p>\n
Vaughn<\/b><\/p>\n
If I squint at this script, I can sort of<\/i> see what the show was attempting in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blood Ties\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by having Vaughn be near-unconscious instead of actually<\/i> confronting Lauren. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a way to set up Vaughn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anger issues\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sort of? Like, since he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get to deal with Lauren while being tortured and drugged, then he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extra<\/i> mad and irresponsible in this episode?<\/p>\n
Except that just highlights how weird it is that Vaughn just believed<\/i> that Lauren had set him free. Was it the drugs? Maybe??? But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s completely skipped over, and thus, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m left feeling like the scene doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite make sense. Here, I do<\/i> understand Vaughn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anger and his reckless behavior, even if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frustrating to watch him risk missions so he can go after Lauren. After so much suffering, the man wants his revenge, but at what cost? Exactly how far is he willing to go? What is<\/i> fascinating about this is that Vaughn, as a character, is stuck somewhere between Sydney and Jack. (Though there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lost opportunity in comparing Vaughn and Dixon, who literally went through this struggle himself, yet he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even really comfort Vaughn. HEY, WRITERS, STOP IGNORING DIXON.) Sydney even directly refers to this, pointing out that Vaughn coached Sydney through her hatred of Sloane while she was a double agent at SD-6. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S THE SAME PATH, OH MY GOD. And look how dependable and caring he was, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all!<\/p>\n
But instead, Vaughn veers more towards Jack Bristow, who views revenge as a calculation, as a means to an end, and who has often pursued it methodically. Vaughn tried<\/i> to deny that he was even capable of that, but lo and behold, what does he do at the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Legacy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? He fulfills the exact path that Jack set before him. He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take Sydney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advice at all, and I am predicting this right now: This is gonna backfire on him. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not! He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotional, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reckless, and he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the ability to detach like Jack does. Lemme remind y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all that Jack has TWICE killed people just to bring them back to life because that is the kind of petty asshole he is. IS VAUGHN CAPABLE OF THIS SAME THING?<\/p>\n
Arvin<\/b><\/p>\n
I really hope that this show isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t setting up Nadia to believe that Arvin was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153protecting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d her. I made fun of that line when I heard it, but the more I think about it as I write this, the more it bothers me. I found it satisfying that, like Sydney, Nadia rejected Arvin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s creepy overtures of fatherhood. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean anything<\/i> unless you strip his actions of all context. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be a good father if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re kidnapping someone to pump them full of mind-altering drugs FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter if he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cares\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for her while doing this, nor does it count that he defies both Sark and Lauren at the last second<\/i>. How is that love? Concern? Fatherly? But in Arvin Sloane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how he negotiates love. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so entirely wrapped up in his own needs that he can actually justify what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done and truly believe that he helped his daughter.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bullshit, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. If Arvin had hid Nadia away from other people so that no one<\/i> could feed her those drugs, I might begin to adjust my perception of him. But this feels like very misguided and ill-conceived act he took out of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Sydney. He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to love someone without a string attached, without an exception, without an ultimatum, without something in it for him<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Jack<\/b><\/p>\n
I also kinda feel like Jack shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be giving free advice to anyone??? Certainly not on issues of ethics or revenge or love or practically any topic except how to kill someone and then revive them as an interrogation technique. (He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s real good at that.) He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pushing Vaughn towards this notion of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153closure,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d most likely because he had none of it himself with Irina. But while he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s off making recommendations about Vaughn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best path, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s SLEEPING WITH KATYA DEREVKO??? That is just… not a good idea? At the same time, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarkably consistent with his characterization, so there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that<\/i>. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see anything coming of, but HERE WE ARE.<\/p>\n
Finale<\/b><\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a lot of threads set up for the finale, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what needs to be resolved at this point:<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m scared for this finale.<\/p>\n
The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Legacy\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 third season of Alias, the team stages a rescue of Nadia with mixed results. 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-6795","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\/6795","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=6795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}