| Alias
The Indicator
original air-date: 11-03-02
Be
Kind, Rewind:
Last episode Jack set up Irina to take the fall for a house
he rigged with explosives and a tearful Sydney told her father
that he'd been right about her mother all along.
Like many
Alias episodes, "The Indicator" weaves together
so many plot threads that if you mosey on into the kitchen
for a snack for five minutes while the episode is on, you
are most likely going to miss a pivotal piece of information
and then curse your stomach for growling for that damn peanut
butter and jelly sandwich.
In short:
This show is sometimes hard to follow because it's so intricate,
but this is also one of the reasons that it is so good. "The
Indicator" is a fine example of this.
A lot
of things happen and are discussed in this episode. Though
it may be hard to figure out what person the main characters
are referring to sometimes (I got really lost when they started
talking about The Triad and the KGB people), this episode
flows nicely and brings together the many story lines without
seeming contrived.
Just when
Syd and Jack start having what might resemble a normal father-daughter
relationship, or as normal as a family of spies can get, another
one of Jack's deep dark secrets is revealed. Once again he
is cast in a less than favorable light.
The beginning
of the episode shows the pair talking in Irina's empty prison
cell. Sydney thanks Jack for saving her life and then loops
her arm through his as they walk out. It was all very touching,
and for once there is no need to inject any sarcasm into this
sentence.
The Bristow
family is so enjoyable to watch because they are so very dysfunctional
and we like them that way. There's a reason The Osbournes
had such high ratings. Therefore, the aforementioned closeness
that Spy Daddy and Daughter were developing just had to be
squashed, and squashed it was.
Working
Jack's secret about what he did to Sydney into one of her
missions for SD-6 worked well and allowed the episode to flow
smoothly. The idea of kids being trained as "next generation
weapons" is messed up all on its own, but conditioning
your own kid to be a spy? A pretty sick and twisted thing
to do, even for Jack. However, it makes for good drama, building
on the already messed up history that this family has.
Exploring
the sordid details of the Bristow family's issues is sometimes
more fun to watch than any of the high speed chases or death
defying escapes that occur on a weekly basis. That's because
the writers have remembered that while this is a show that
floats somewhere between Science Fiction and Fantasy, it is
grounded in reality-based relationships that are truly the
heart and soul of this drama. Sydney has parental problems
and that is something that we can all relate to, except maybe
the whole conditioning thing, but that's just semantics.
Moving
on to characters with last names that don't start with B,
let's talk about Vaughn for a minute. He was supposed to seem
tough and aggressive in this episode, but Michael Vartan failed
to make the Boy Scout seem even a little bit intimidating.
Vaughn
is like a golden retriever: loyal, reliable, trustworthy and
always there when you need a shoulder to cry on. So when Vartan
attempts to make Vaughn seem threatening it just doesn't work.
Vaughn's the good guy and Vartan plays good very well, but
he falters when he tries to stand up to Jack and seems more
like a little kid in over his head than the smooth super spy
he's trying to be.
This might
all be the way the writers intended for Vaughn to come off
in this episode, but, for now, Vartan should stick to playing
the good guy…and if that means that he needs to take
of his shirt once in a while… well, so be it.
"The
Indicator" is a great episode. It has a lot of good stuff
going on; family drama up the whazoo, a Syd/Vaughn embrace
for all you romantics out there, and, of course, our weekly
dosage of espionage. Put it all together, and you get an episode
of Alias that reminds us why we keep coming back for
more every Sunday night.
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