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Alias
The Road Home
original air-date: 03-16-05
Be
Kind. Rewind: Last time we found out that Jack and
Sloane are working together on some secret project, which,
of course, can only lead to bad things.
In “The
Road Home” we are introduced to Sam, an American working
as a busboy in an Austrian club while on a student visa.
There’s nothing all that remarkable about Sam. He’s
ordinary looking, seems nice enough, but there isn’t
anything all that terribly interesting about him. The character
of Sam is sort of a metaphor for this week’s entire
episode. If you met Sam and someone asked you to give your
opinion of him, you’d probably say something along
the lines of “eh.” And, after watching the episode,
my opinion of it can be described in much the same way;
it leaves you with an “eh” sort of feeling.
The whole Sam
storyline was kind of weak and seemed like an excuse to
keep Sydney from finding out what her father was up to.
Sam and his mundane existence, not to mention his desire
for adventure, was basically meant to serve as a foil for
Syd and her fast-paced life as a spy, but this move didn’t
really give the viewers any new insights into Spy Girl other
than that she doesn’t mind her job all that much,
probably because all of her friends and family work with
her.
Also,
like the previous episode, this installment seems decidedly
disjointed mainly because it seems like the subplot involving
Vaughn was haphazardly thrown instead of being connected
to the other storylines. This is not to say that they shouldn’t
have included this information. The entire idea that Vaughn’s
father might not have been as saintly as we originally thought
is an interesting twist and one that will, no doubt, be
connected to the show’s bigger picture in some way.
The
problem right now is, that we can’t see where this
fits right now and it gives us the feeling that this plot
thread is sort of floating in the background while all of
this other stuff is going on. Although it was worth throwing
this part in just to hear Weiss remark, “No, the Sox
winning the series, that’s impossible” to Vaughn
saying that it’s not impossible that his father might
be alive and kicking.
Obviously,
Sasha was the man that had contracted the organization in
Austria to take the device and fit it to the weapon, thus
connecting Jack and Syd’s stories in this episode.
The thing that is not so clear is this whole betrayal issue.
What did Jack do? Who did he betray? Why is he contending
that he was the one that was actually betrayed?
As usual,
we aren’t offered any answers and we have to have
faith that these questions will be answered at a later time.
However, they aren’t interesting enough for us to
be all that hungry for the next episode to arrive so we
can find out what happened. I mean Jack is involved in some
sort of betrayal…what else is new?
So instead
of repeating my feeling about this being an “eh”
kind of episode, I will say this in closing: "The Road
Home" wasn’t a bad episode, but it wasn’t
a great one either. It was just kind of there. Like if I
saw Sam in a bar, I probably wouldn’t notice him and
if by chance I did, I might smile and nod, but I don’t
think I would give him a second glance, just like I won’t
give this episode another hour of my time when it repeats.
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