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Alias
Reprisal/All the Time in the World
original air-date: 05-22-06
What
can you really say when a show ends?
Sometimes,
there’s a lot to say. With some, you can argue that
they ended too soon (see Angel),
and with others, you can say that they lasted too long (see
The X-Files).
Still, whether a show went out on top (see Buffy)
or rock bottom (see Friends, Will and Grace, etc…),
there is almost always a sense of loss when a show ends.
Though
I became an infrequent fan during this final season of Alias,
I will admit that the feeling did come over me as I watched
the unnecessarily long series finale.
It’s
not so much that I am sad to see the show go. As a fan I
became disappointed by the direction, if you can really
call it that, the show took and only tuned in occasionally,
sometimes due to a lack of interest and others because I
wasn’t sure what night ABC had moved the show to during
any particular week. Even so, I was sad to see a show that
I once considered myself to be devoted to end in a fashion
unfitting of how great this show really was during its first
few seasons.
What
can really be said about the season finale? First off, it
was way too long. “Reprisal” was really a waste
of time and only used as set up for the final hour. So,
expendable character number 2, Tom, died while saving everyone
else at APO before he ever got the chance to hook up with
expendable character number 1, Rachel. Big deal.
Even
if you saw every episode of this season, I have a feeling
that you weren’t invested in these characters at all
and probably could’ve cared less about what happened
to them.
What
was cool about the first hour was seeing Amanda Foreman
back as Carrie. As the concerned wife of kidnapped Marshall,
she brought real warmth and emotion to a lackluster beginning.
So, let’s get down to the meat and
tater tots of the episode. Sloane gets control of a bunch
of nukes and the final piece of the Rambaldi puzzle by having
Kelly take out the Twelve. Where exactly were they trying
to go with the nukes? Why were they even a part of the storyline?
It seemed completely unresolved by the end of the episode
and all we knew was that it was a part of some grand scheme
Sloane had cooked up with Spy Mommy. Whatever.
The flashbacks were another big waste of
time. Why were they needed? We knew all of this stuff about
Sydney already. They weren’t even sappy enough to
bring a tear or two to the eyes of us more sensitive fanboys
and girls.
I suppose that they were meant to remind
us of the strained but loving relationship between Spy Daddy
and Daughter. And, yes, I will admit that seeing Jack dying
while Sydney was telling him to hold on was somewhat moving.
This was because I actually cared about their relationship,
unlike Tom and Rachel’s or Sydney and Vaughn’s…
I will
admit that Jack got a good death. Taking Sloane down with
him so that he would have to spend the rest of his eternal
life in that cave was pretty cool. A little too Raiders
of the Lost Ark for me, but cool nonetheless. Also,
the fact that Nadia’s spirit/ghost/hallucination abandoned
him was a nice little touch, ensuring Sloane would truly
be in his own private hell on earth.
What was decidedly uncool was the death
of Spy Mommy. Irina gets taken out by reaching for the elixir
of life or whatever the hell it was (again, shades of Indy
come to mind), while Sydney tries to save her mother’s
life. It was stupid, it was boring, and it probably cost
ABC a whole lot of money to get Lena Olina for four minutes
of complete crap. Sigh.
So,
what are we left with?
The
future, of course. Sydney and Vaughn have a mostly idyllic
life on a secluded beach with their beautiful daughter and
newborn son, named after the dearly departed Spy Daddy.
Occasionally, they venture back into the land of wigs and
stiletto heels, seemingly for the fun of it all, but their
family is the true focus of their lives.
Just
like mommy, little Isabelle has remarkable spatial reasoning
capabilities, but, fortunately, it doesn’t look like
she’ll follow in Syd’s footsteps. Still, I think
it could set them up nicely for a TV movie. Perhaps they
could call it Spy Kids…wait a minute…
All
in all, I was glad to see the show end. It probably should
have been cancelled a while ago, but they reached the amount
of episodes it takes to get syndicated and in the world
of TV shows, that’s all that really matters.
In all
honesty, though, a show that started out by taking risks
and daring to be different got a decidedly safe ending.
I would have liked to see Sydney go out with more style,
more ass kicking, and more emotion.
However, what’s done is done and we’re
only left with one thing… the DVDs. Thanks fanboys
and girls; it’s been real.
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