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Alias
Countdown
original air-date: 04-27-03
Be
Kind. Rewind: It's been a month since the last new episode,
so here's a little refresher. Diane and Dixon finally made
up and were starting over again. Sloane learned that Dixon
killed Emily. The CIA rescued Caplan. Sloane had Evil!Francie
kill Diane.
Okay,
how many times are they gonna use the flash forward-flash
back thing at the beginning of an episode? Because this time,
it was entirely unnecessary. They wanted to make us wonder:
Would Dixon blow everyone to Timbuktu? Would Vaughn take him
out before he had the chance? Fortunately, the suspense wasn't
that hard to survive.
So, we
flashback to 72 hours before Dixon is about to go postal and
take everyone down with him, and we see friends and family
gathered after Diane's funeral. Vaughn catches Dixon popping
some pills, but Syd tells him it was probably aspirin…uh
huh. Sure.
It was
kind of cool to see Amanda Foreman (who played Megan on JJ
Abrams "Felicity") sans heavy eyeliner and strange
clothing as NSA agent Carrie Bowman. She was extremely likeable
and cute and almost as flighty as Marshall, who she happens
to want to take out for Sushi. My brother's conclusion: she
must be a plant of some sort that is trying to get to Marshall
and learn all he knows!
Well,
plant or not, she had the best line of the night. She asks
Marshall if he's gay, because all the cute guys she meets
seem to be playing for the other team and then she says, "I'm
not stupid. I mean, I'm in MENSA."
He reassures
her that he's not gay and promises not to tell anyone that
she was crying over a Joni Mitchell song. They were genuinely
cute together, unlike some couples in this episode, but we'll
get to that in a bit.
Carl
Lumbly, who always does a fantastic job playing Dixon, did
an exceptional job in this episode, even though he was given
a lame suicide attempt scene reminiscent of It's a Wonderful
Life and a line about equating a squeaky tree branch to
a baby crying. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that
one.
The entire
flash back/flash forward thing was not only annoying, but
also kind of cheap because it was a complete fake out.
"I
cut the primer cord," says Dixon after the bomb he was
holding was supposed to go off. "I'm not that desperate."
He might not be, but the writers of this episode must have
been if they felt they had to employ this over-used technique
to keep people watching.
The Ramboldi
stuff was, as usual, kind of cool and really confusing. We
learned that this Porteo Di Regno guy's heart is some kind
of machine that could be a weapon of mass destruction and
that a monk named Conrad (played by David Carradine of "Kung
Fu") was the one that got Sloane started on this whole
Ramboldi kick thirty years ago. Who knew monks could be evil?
This episode
had no Irina, no Will, and no Evil!Francie, which was a big
disappointment Instead, the writers chose to focus on Sydney
and Vaughn. I'm sorry, but Spy Girl and her Boy Scout have
become too sweet and their relationship is giving me cavities.
They fight, they make up. She lies about knowing that Dixon
switched his drug test results and then confesses to Vaughn
at the end of the episode, which was probably one of the worst
conclusions to an episode that this show has ever had. Syd
and Vaughn eating ice cream together and then walking off
holding hands while a cheesy love song plays in the background
as an ending? Lame. The lamest actually.
I was
kind of hoping that someone would get shot or they'd cut to
something else before the hour was over, but this, unfortunately,
was not the case. In short, the ending was sappy and sentimental
and not at all the cliffhanger that we expect from this show
every week.
This episode
wasn't bad, but it wasn't very good either. And did anyone
else think that the swordfighting scene was nothing more than
an excuse for Jennifer Garner to use some of those sword wielding
skills that she learned while shooting Daredevil?
Really
though, where were Syd and Dixon's guns? Hopefully next week's
two-hour season finale will be ten times better than this
installment was.
Oh yeah.
My brother was convinced that Syd would have to get in the
ring and wrestle before they'd let her and Dixon see Vargas,
much like the bull riding scene in "Endgame." Thankfully,
the TV gods spared us from that scene.
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