Review of Episode 6: Nocturne
2/9/2005
Sydney: "The Count. You've got to be kidding me."
The preview did not do this episode justice. It wasn't the
silly episode
about faux vampires that I was dreading; it was Sydney's deepest
fears
manifesting as drug-induced hallucinations. Yes, the hallucinations
were
just a device to tell the story they wanted to tell. But it
worked, didn't
it?
How can Sydney love and trust Jack, while believing that
Jack killed her
mother? (Although I'm starting to think Jack didn't kill Irina;
there's
something else going on. But I digress.) Jack and Sydney have
such a
difficult, complex relationship filled with secrets and betrayal.
Interesting that she has a similar relationship with her lover;
those
hallucination scenes showed that subconsciously, Sydney expects
both Jack and Vaughn to hurt her, betray her. And who could
blame her?
The only real plot problem I had was that Sydney's behavior
early on should have alerted Jack and Vaughn. They're closest
to her, after all. But it was Dixon and Nadia who knew that
something was wrong, and Dixon was the only one who actually
tried to keep Sydney out of the field. Nadia should have told
on Sydney... but as we learned during her psych eval in "The
Awful Truth," Nadia is loyal to her coworkers and doesn't
tend to run to authority.
As wonderful as Jennifer Garner was in the paranoia scenes
with Jack and Vaughn, Carl Lumbly gets the gold star this
week for Dixon's final scene with Sloane. What a marvelous,
satisfying scene that was. I loved the way Dixon derisively
called Sloane "Arvin," and told him he'd be watching
and waiting. Wow.
Sloane's motivations are an enigma. Is he planning to eventually
punish
them all for betraying him and SD-6? Or does he truly love
his daughter
Nadia, the way he loved Emily? Is he trying to make amends
and do good? It's possible that Ron Rifkin himself doesn't
know which way his incredibly toxic character is going to
jump, in which case he handled that scene perfectly.
This week's Most Obvious Symbolism was the final scene
Bits and pieces:
-- Weiss is seducing Nadia with humor! "She almost said
yes. You saw that, right? This close..." I am so enjoying
Weiss and Nadia. Keep it coming, please.
-- Nadia appears to be strongly feminist, and into gender-inclusive
language: ("Girl stuff?" "People stuff.")
She did the same thing during her
psych eval. Maybe that's one reason why I like her so much:
she's fragile
and strong at the same time. Like Sydney, to some extent.
-- They gave Vartan another opportunity to do a hockey scene.
All I could
think of was that it was too bad hockey is a sport requiring
lots of
clothing. Why isn't Vartan into swimming, for instance? :)
-- There was finally a mention of Marshall's wife, so I guess
he's still
married to Carrie.
-- Nocturne, according to my paperback Oxford American Dictionary,
is
defined as a "dreamy piece of music." Appropriate.
-- Two grossout scenes this week: the closet blood gushing,
and the Hannibal brain scene. Thankfully, the guy was dead.
The second time, anyway.
-- One of the shots of LA made it appear to be in a blue
haze. I live here,
so let me tell you that it's usually brown, not blue.
-- I'm no expert on accents, but the Count sounded Russian,
not Romanian.
-- Sydney bit Vaughn. Did Vaughn take some of the antidote,
too? Plus,
that drug "permanently alters your brain." I assume
they cured Sydney in
time?
-- A little sexy repartee about Sydney's bite marks: Sydney:
"You think it's
sexy, don't you?" Vaughn: "Only if I'd done it."
-- Vaughn: "You took the bullets out." Jack: "It
seemed a reasonable
precaution." It certainly was, since Sydney took out
both Vaughn and Jack
hand-to-hand.
-- This week's itinerary: Amsterdam (and the Universiteit
of), Bucharest,
Prague, and a very creepy secret closet.
-- This week's hot look: The little black cape, curls, and
that weird thing
Jennifer had on her head. It was almost a sexy Bo-Peep costume,
wasn't it?
As much as I'm enjoying the new tone of the series, I feel
like I'm waiting
for the real story to begin. "Alias" doesn't seem
as "Alias"-like this
season. Does that make sense?
Three for the episode, and five for the Dixon/Sloane scene.
Which makes
four out of five stars,
Billie
- Review by Billie Doux
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