Alias: Brilliant or Running Out of Ideas?
I don't know. There's something to be said for coming up with a season finale so shocking that it creates all sorts of buzz and anticipation. I believe the traditional term for this is cliffhanger, probably so named because the first show to do it had someone hanging onto a cliff for dear life when the season ended, and the name just stuck. Alias last night did manage to create buzz and anticipation, and as always it's not the crazy plot points that matter with this show, it's what they do with the crazy plot points.
I would also like to point out that the last three years have basically ended the same way: There's an evil woman pretending to be good, the "good" guys figure it out just a little too late so they have to scramble to stop the evil woman's plans, the "good" guys defeat the evil woman in the season finale, and there's a final twist at the end that casts everything that came before it into doubt. Last night, however, they came up with the granddaddy of all twists. These writers are just evil. Do they have a wheel in the Alias office with each character's name on it that they spin from time to time to determine who's going to turn into a bad guy? It sure seems like it. I'm going to love seeing how they get themselves out of this one.
So, who was Vaughn/Not Vaughn working for? Why did he go on a search for his father, "Bill Vaughn", this year? How come nobody but Irina Derevko was able to find out about his duplicitous nature? I mean, these are the best spies in the world. You're telling me that nobody knew his name wasn't really Michael Vaughn? There are so dang many things that don't make any sense. I hope the writers can figure this out to my satisfaction. Here are the possibilities I see for next year:
1) At some point, Vaughn was replaced by a deus-ex-helix project Vaughn clone, who planted false evidence to fool Irina Derevko and lied to Sydney about Vaughn's name and planned the whole trip/car crash/etc.
2) Vaughn was working for SD-6 at the beginning? Now that makes no sense.
3) Vaughn will be in a coma for the first half of Season 5, and Sydney will forsake everything else to find out who Vaughn really is. It will come out that the people who planted Vaughn in the CIA crashed into his car to prevent him from telling Sydney who he really is.
Blogger did it again...it erased half my post and won't let me recover it. I'm not going to type it again, but to summarize: Zombies = good, cheesy CGI ball-disbanding water effects = bad.
I would also like to point out that the last three years have basically ended the same way: There's an evil woman pretending to be good, the "good" guys figure it out just a little too late so they have to scramble to stop the evil woman's plans, the "good" guys defeat the evil woman in the season finale, and there's a final twist at the end that casts everything that came before it into doubt. Last night, however, they came up with the granddaddy of all twists. These writers are just evil. Do they have a wheel in the Alias office with each character's name on it that they spin from time to time to determine who's going to turn into a bad guy? It sure seems like it. I'm going to love seeing how they get themselves out of this one.
So, who was Vaughn/Not Vaughn working for? Why did he go on a search for his father, "Bill Vaughn", this year? How come nobody but Irina Derevko was able to find out about his duplicitous nature? I mean, these are the best spies in the world. You're telling me that nobody knew his name wasn't really Michael Vaughn? There are so dang many things that don't make any sense. I hope the writers can figure this out to my satisfaction. Here are the possibilities I see for next year:
1) At some point, Vaughn was replaced by a deus-ex-helix project Vaughn clone, who planted false evidence to fool Irina Derevko and lied to Sydney about Vaughn's name and planned the whole trip/car crash/etc.
2) Vaughn was working for SD-6 at the beginning? Now that makes no sense.
3) Vaughn will be in a coma for the first half of Season 5, and Sydney will forsake everything else to find out who Vaughn really is. It will come out that the people who planted Vaughn in the CIA crashed into his car to prevent him from telling Sydney who he really is.
Blogger did it again...it erased half my post and won't let me recover it. I'm not going to type it again, but to summarize: Zombies = good, cheesy CGI ball-disbanding water effects = bad.
posted by Mike Pape @ 6:24 AM
3 Comments:
At 7:35 AM,
PaintingChef said…
My husband and I were having the same dicussion last night, he thinks that they've just run out of story ideas. He thought that the whole episode last night was some freaky zombie-movie knockoff.
But I thought the twist at the end was fantastic!! Yours are all good suggestions, and all very possible. I have a feeling it'll go all the way back to season 1 with the explanation and I'm very eager to find out what it is.
Alias season finales never fail to leave me with my jaw on the floor. I hope that we don't have to wait until January again to see what on earth is going on.
Found you on Blogexplosion.
At 12:22 PM,
Stormwind said…
I was pretty surprised at the season ender (little surge of adrenoline at the final scene- totally unexpected!). I haven't been watching with any regularity for quite a while because of the continous extreme character shifts of personality. The writers do seem to be interested in lots of bizzare twists and changes and not letting any character ever be who you think they might be- which is an interesting plot twist for a little while, but subverts the audience from being invested in any particular characters beyond Sydney. Surely there ought to be someone she will be able to trust in the world, but apparently the writers think otherwise. Your thoughts on where they might go with this are interesting.
At 12:48 PM,
Mike Pape said…
Hey, thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it very much.
And this Vaughn thing seems like the most extreme example yet of a character personality shift. All of a sudden he's all pensive and feeling guilty about this massive deception he's been perpetrating on Sydney? I'm going to watch next year, if only to see how they explain his first 4 years on the show. And I guess that's mission accomplished for them.
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