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Alias
Breaking Point
original air-date: 11-23-03
Be
Kind. Rewind: Lauren found out Syd's murderous secret
and Vaughn helped SpyGirl escape to Rome where the NCS took
her into custody.
Main characters
are the foundation upon which television shows are built.
Even so-called ensemble dramas such as ER have a standout
character that is the glue that holds the show together. And
while the Alias world does seem to revolve around Sydney,
this episode showed us that the rest of the cast is up to
the challenge of shouldering the weight of the show.
True,
Sydney wasn't absent for the entire episode and the plot was
driven by her capture, but the best parts occurred when she
wasn't onscreen.
I said
it in my last review and I'll say it again: Put Victor Garber
and Michael Vartan together and good things happen. While
scrambling to save Sydney might seem like a very serious task,
the writers managed to make it funny by having Spy Daddy and
Boy Scout banter a bit. The best line of the evening had to
be when Jack told Vaughn that he was smarter than he looked,
causing this viewer to crack up for a good five minutes.
Throwing
Sloane into the mix was even more brilliant, and allowed Ron
Rifkin to make his hateful character appear almost likeable.
Even Jack and Vaughn showed some concern for Arvin when he
was shot and didn't take the chance that they had to kill
the man that caused them both a lot of pain and suffering.
Perhaps Agents Bristow and Vaughn are going soft, but it seems
more than likely that this is the start of a set up for some
big betrayal that will come later on when Sloane goes over
to the dark side again.
Speaking
of characters that seemed almost likeable, Lauren nearly managed
to redeem herself in this episode from being whiny and insufferable
these last few weeks. Standing up to the loathsome Lindsey
and then becoming a part of the effort to extract Sydney from
NSC custody showed us that Ms. Reed is not completely without
feeling even in matters that don't directly involve her husband.
Her entire
involvement in the plan just reaffirms my belief that if they
put wifey out in the field and let her be a real spy who has
an agenda that doesn't involve protecting Vaughn or brining
his ex to justice, she might not be so very despised and could
possibly grow as a character.
You can't talk about Alias without at least acknowledging
Sydney's scenes, no matter how boring they were. Yes, there
was action and horrible things that SpyGirl had to endure, but
they seemed to drag on forever. The only worthwhile thing that
we learned from watching them was that the NSC wants some kind
of coordinates, found in Syd's alter ego's apartment, decoded.
Throwing in the creepy guy from Identity as her cellblock
mate didn't help matters all that much either, and it was easy
to tell that he was a plant.
The true
test of any show is to see how well it performs when things
are shaken up a bit. Sydney will always be the focus of things
on Alias, but this episode shows that the rest of the
cast and their characters are just as much a part of what
makes this drama great as Ms. Garner's Agent Bristow.
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