Christmas only comes once a year

That’s it? That’s the big climax for season 3? (Of “Alias.” In case anyone reading thought there was a chance I’d be talking about anything else.) I can’t even tell if it warrants a “spoiler” warning, but whatever. It was so important than her evil rival gave her the clue to find it with her […]

That’s it? That’s the big climax for season 3? (Of “Alias.” In case anyone reading thought there was a chance I’d be talking about anything else.)

I can’t even tell if it warrants a “spoiler” warning, but whatever.

It was so important than her evil rival gave her the clue to find it with her dying breath. And so Sydney finds a bunch of a documents that reveal she’s the subject of a top-secret CIA operation. And the operation was led by Jack Bristow. And she looks horrified.

Even though she already found out all of that, like two seasons ago. It was called “Project Christmas.” There was a whole sub-plot about it. She told off her dad and everything. And then conveniently forgot about it and started working with him again like everything was fine. I thought it was weird that she forgave it so quickly, but I figured whatever makes the writers happy, and if they want to drop the story then I’m not going to press it. But now it just seems like nobody involved with the show has any short-term memory.

It’s not as if there wasn’t a metric assload of stuff they could’ve done with the climax. Sloane and Nadia doing something dangerous and evil. Vaughn going through a breakdown. Aunt Katya doing something evil. Lauren’s mom. The Covenant. Some new horrible discovery about Julia Thorne. Sydney discovers yet another sibling, like maybe Vaughn is her brother or Marshall’s baby is actually a spy cousin. But to resurrect a sub-plot that had already been forgotten? Weak.

I’m already somewhat spoiled for season 4, after reading the description on Netflix and wading through the obnoxious crap that is “Television Without Pity” to find out what went on in season 3. So I’ve already heard that they drop the Secret Files stuff pretty quickly and instead give the show another reboot. But I’m not all that excited about it. The DVDs for season 4 aren’t released until mid-October, and then I’ll have to decide whether I want to buy the set or rent them or watch it simultaneously with season 5, or wait until the DVDs for that is released, or what. And the annoying part is that the end of season 3 was such a let-down that I’m not all that anxious either way.

But still: zombies!


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Comments

  1. Rain Avatar

    Exactly: The utter lameness of season 4 is almost saved by the ultimate appearache of zombies, AND the last 5 seconds of the season finale.

    But the majority of that season is just maddening. They basically start the entire show from scratch and only occasionally do the characters have any past-season recall. It kind of reminded my of the dreck that was “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in that most of the episodes were self-containted storylines, and no one would ever say to someone else on the ship, “Hey, remember when you were taken over by the Borg and you tried to kill us all? Man. Good times.”

  2. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Yeah, I’ve read other people saying that the episodes in season 4 were self-contained. On “Buffy” and “X-Files,” my favorite episodes were always the ones that were self-contained and could tell a whole story without getting bogged down in the bigger continuity. But that seems counter to the whole format of “Alias,” which is all about the twists and cliff-hangers.

    But I don’t have a VCR anymore, and I don’t have enough space on my TiVo for enough of season 5 to get caught up with it. I wonder if I can just watch 4 from the zombies onward and then get back into the flow of the new episodes?

  3. Rain Avatar

    Well, i don’t want to spoil anything, but the zombies don’t show up until WAAAAY into season 4, so you wouldn’t be seeing much of the season if you just watched from there on…I’d say that about half of the season was good, and the other half lame, but the thing is sometimes that goodness and lameness appears in the same episode.

    You need to get yourself a bigger TiVo, my friend.