In the third episode of the fourth season of Alias<\/i>, THIS WAS TOO STRESSFUL, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. Intrigued? then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Alias<\/i>.<\/p>\n
This was a lot??? WHO ALLOWED THIS???\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As I said on video, I was delighted by how straightforward this episode felt. It is a thriller from beginning to end, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a convincing one, too. I JUST HATED MARTIN AND EVERY WORD OF HIS WAS TERRIFYING. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why this felt so stressful to watch. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I doubted Sydney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s abilities. The tension comes from knowledge<\/i>: At what point was Martin going to figure out that Sydney was not who she said she was? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what is teased to us throughout the episode, and very early into this mission, it was clear that we should<\/i> fear Martin, a wife-killing creep who could have easily made Sydney his next target even before<\/i> the CIA raid went belly-up.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an obvious terror to watching \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Awful Truth,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one rooted in this notion of the unknown. As a heist story, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s effective and brutal, especially since I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even care about the VALTA, the object they were trying to locate and destroy the whole time. No, I cared about the people<\/i> within this episode far more than the goal. It was just a means to an end! AND THAT END IS SO, SO FUCKED UP.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But before I get there\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I really do want to talk about The Thing more than anything else\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chat about how season four really does mirror the first. BUT IT DOESN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T REPEAT IT. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important! It allows casual viewers a way into the show, yet I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel insulted as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153long-term\u00e2\u20ac\u009d viewer. There are still tons of plots to be resolved from past seasons! However, the creation of APO brings us back to a form of purity as the show simplifies itself down to its roots. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about the struggles of a team of secretive operatives who must navigate a challenging job. I saw a direct parallel to season one in Weiss, for example, since the entire team had been publicly removed from the CIA except<\/i> for him. Thus, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now the outsider, the person everyone else has to lie to.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Thus, I was impressed that the writers didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep up this charade beyond the first three episodes. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen this specific drama unfold before, so this gave me a sense that the writers knew it couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t last that long. Plus, it was such<\/i> a great moment to have Sydney wake up and see Weiss sitting across from her. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S GREAT STORYTELLING. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more tension; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an emotional component to the scene that otherwise wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be there; and now, Weiss has a more natural way into APO. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S SO GREAT.<\/p>\n Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just get to the big issue in this episode though, the one the title refers to. As a story, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Awful Truth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is mainly the thriller, which isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a problem. Yet it has one hell of an ending, one that I did not see coming DESPITE IT BEING HINTED AT THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME. What is most astounding\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor at least what sticks out to me more than anything else\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis the fact that Nadia isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even Jack\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter, and yet he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153protects\u00e2\u20ac\u009d her in exactly<\/i> the same way he has historically protected Sydney. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insidious, of course, to see how methodically he manipulates her out of some misguided, fucked up sense of duty. He organizes that whole psych test so that Nadia will believe that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ready for the fake intel that Jack feeds her. Thus, she never questions why it is so convenient that Martin is her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s killer, and JACK KNEW SHE WOULD REACT THIS WAY. He pushed her to the edge, and she willing leapt into this trap, and it is no<\/i> surprise that Sydney is furious about it. SHE WAS VICTIM TO JACK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S MANIPULATIONS SO MANY TIMES BEFORE.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, aside from this being ethically\/morally gross, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a terrible idea<\/i>. Which is actually quite in character for Jack, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s be real, since he loves bad ideas. And he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made so much progress with Sydney, too! But in the end, Jack goes with his instincts. He follows what he knows, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a secretive asshole that this<\/i> makes sense to him, despite that every time he tried to keep secrets from others in the past, it has literally always backfired on him and been worse than if he had told the truth<\/b>. Believe me, Nadia is gonna find out the truth, and it will not<\/i> be pretty. I just hope that Sydney is the one who gets to tell her, you know?<\/p>\n The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Awful Truth\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 third episode of the fourth season of Alias, THIS WAS TOO STRESSFUL, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. 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-6809","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\/6809","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=6809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}