Review of Episode 14: I See Dead People
05/10/06
Vaughn: "Sydney and I never went to Cartagena. And
just for the record, you're a terrible kisser."
So I guess Anna Espinosa wasn't the woman on Page 47, after
all.
Not that I mind, because it's almost like revisiting SD-6.
We're back to Sloane as the bad guy. Back to Sydney as the
double agent determined to bring him down. I really haven't
been much into the Anna/Sydney identical cousins thing, but
I love the prospect of Sydney, super double agent, masquerading
as Anna to bring down Prophet Five. What an utterly superior
plot twist.
And Vaughn is finally back! Just as in the previous episode
with Nadia, I was getting that fatalistic "Oh, no, Vaughn's
gonna die" feeling. (Thankfully, I was wrong this time.)
I spent most of the episode wanting to smack him upside the
head, though. Sydney shows up out of the blue, no clinch,
no mad kisses, and he doesn't suspect something's wrong? It's
not like he didn't know what happened to Francie. If he hadn't
known it wasn't Sydney all along, I would have had to throw
something at the television screen.
I just had one problem with that whole scenario. If Vaughn
suspected right away that Sydney wasn't Sydney, why did he
let a strange, dangerous woman masquerading as his lover cut
into his chest with a scalpel? (And was Anna cutting on Vaughn
shuddery or what?) The whole corresponding thirty-year-old
data chip thing was pretty bizarre, sort of like broken pendants
worn by two separated siblings that end up finding each other.
Why Vaughn and Renee? Do all of the people involved with Prophet
Five put chips in their kids? Are there other pairs of chips
out there looking for each other?
Nadia as a ghost was also interesting and strange. Have they
ever done ghosts before on "Alias"? Not that she
was actually a ghost. She was obviously just Sloane, overwhelmed
with guilt, talking to himself. Even though I can't guess
what's going on in his head, Nadia's ghost implies that Sloane
is hanging on to his humanity. He didn't kill Nadia deliberately,
after all. He didn't like seeing Anna as Sydney's double,
and had no desire to see Sydney hurt. (Yes, I know that Sloane
has always professed fondness for Sydney, but still.)
It was only for a minute, but our dear Julian Sark is finally
back, too. Did Sloane just recruit Sark? I sure hope so. I
don't even care what side he's on, just as long as he's back
for the big finish.
Bits and pieces:
-- The list of "special guest stars" made me go
woo-hoo three times: Michael Vartan, Mia Maestro, David Anders.
-- Dan says Anna always underestimated Sydney. In the end,
it cost her her life. Anna underestimated Vaughn, too. When
it came right down to it, as full of wild skills as she was,
Anna just wasn't a good enough actor to pull it off.
-- I wonder what Vaughn is going to find in his father's
secret map room slash Wall of Weird.
-- Sloane has an interesting dynamic with Peyton; she's not
his intellectual equal, and he's already manipulating her.
-- Nadia's funeral had lots of people who loved her and worked
with her, contrasted with Renee's impersonal and rather ugly
autopsy. Poor Renee. By the way, I saw Mia Maestro's eyelid
move while she was in her coffin. Was the editor not on the
ball?
-- Scary truck accident, and it sure looked fatal. Although
I never once thought they'd kill Sydney off at this point.
-- Tom wrote, "Contact made awaiting response."
I think he was decoding a message in the paper. And then he
put a response in the classifieds. Still no resolution on
what Tom is doing. But the fact that he was doing it at work
made me think he's still working for Jack. We shall see.
-- A movie date? Was Rachel hitting on Tom? If he is indeed
evil, her track record isn't very good. She hit on Sark, too.
-- In one of the earlier scenes, Jennifer Garner did a very
good job mimicking Gina Torres.
-- Why didn't Vaughn have a cell phone just for an absolute
emergency?
-- I've seen some real fifteenth century manuscripts. That
was definitely not anything like a fifteenth century manuscript.
Bad prop department, no biscuit.
-- This week's itinerary: Zurich, Geneva, and Hamburg. And
we spent a lot of time in Nepal. (Everyone got there using
Royal Buddha Airlines. I don't know why, but I find that hilarious.)
-- Jack: "Must be genetic. You used to wake up at four
a.m. every day, like clockwork." Sydney: "I'm sorry
about that."
-- Anna: "In this business, it's always the children
who suffer." Funny how that can be applied to so many
characters other than Isabelle: Sydney, Vaughn, Renee, Nadia.
Three spies, mostly for the last ten minutes,
Billie
- Review by Billie Doux
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