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Dear JJ Abrams: Bite me. Sincerely, Did I Mention The Bite Me?
Dear Michael Vartan: Now that you're free to go anywhere and do anything, call me! You'd love Charleston in the winter. I promise. I'm in the book. Byeeeee! Yours in a heartbeat, Erin.
Dear Alias Viewers: I just want you to know that I would most likely still watch this show even if I weren't getting paid to, but I cannot promise you that I wouldn't be doing my taxes during it or, you know, waxing my dog or something. And I might have the Zeppelin box set blaring at top volume on my headphones. As the DVD extras from LOTR: Return of the King play on my flat-panel desktop screen. BUT I WOULD STILL BE WATCHING ALIAS. Maybe. If I were really, really drunk. And possibly in a coma. With one eye propped open with double-sided sticky tape. Sincerely, Your Irritated Recapper.
Previously on Alias: Lena Olin dropped by long enough to make us all, whether we're straight or gay, male or female, want to make out with her; Clifford the Big Red Ball harmlessly dropped down on a fictional Russian city; Nadia got big red eyeballs and became evil and then her daddy shot her; Vaughn proposed to Sydney and they ran off to Santa Barbara, only to have Vaughn inform his beloved that his name wasn't actually Vaughn, so she might want to wait on sending out those wedding invitations. Then, WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM, a car came out of nowhere and sideswiped them, leaving us all to scratch our heads and go, "Uh, the fuck?" for most of the summer. Except for that part of the summer where everyone freaked out that Michael Vartan was leaving the show. During that part, we all just drank heavily and thought of bunnies.
We pick up precisely where we left off, with Vaughn spilling the name situation. It should be noted that this scene looks quite a bit different than the scene they shot at the end of last season. Namely because Garner's usually chiseled jaw has been softened by some lovely little baby hormones. Oh, and her boobs are ginormous. Also, the scenery running alongside the car is different too. I burned my TiVo in effigy at the end of last season, though, so I don't have the final episode to compare this against. It just looks�wrong. Thankfully, I am distracted by the beauty of Michael Vartan. God, he's pretty. I am going to miss the pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty. So, SLAM! And we're suddenly in Season Five. The car is wrecked off the road, right to a�cornfield? I haven't lived in California since I was ten, but I'm fairly certain that the road to Santa Barbara doesn't fly by any farms. In fact, according to my atlas, Highway 101 runs right along the coast. Oh, this doesn't bode well for the rest of the season; the opening scene takes place to a cornfield because�Syd needs to get away and a cornfield is the best solution? I think it would do all of us a favor if I started drinking now and just didn't stop until May.
“ He flies off with Vaughn in the back, and Syd wanders into the Cornfield of Convenience to see if there's a baseball diamond and a few old ghostly players to play some ball with. ”
When the smoke clears, Vaughn has a few cuts on his head and Syd is entirely unharmed except for a little cut above her right eyebrow. Because THAT makes about as much sense as the damn cornfield. Syd wakes up, slowly looks at her boyfriend, says, "Vaughn?" and then passes out. Seconds later, she's awakened by beeps and voices and it would appear that EMTs have shown up to the Cornfield of Convenience in order to take care of them. Vaughn's out of the car already on a gurney and Syd's calling after him. An EMT tells her they're going to take care of her. Well, if by "take care of" you mean "pull out the biggest damn syringe I've ever seen and attempt to fill it with liquid the color of lemon-lime Gatorade." Syd sees the EMT filling the syringe because he actually TURNS toward her in order to fill it, because he's not only a bad guy, he's a DUMB BAD GUY. Proving my point, the EMT says, again, RIGHT IN FRONT OF SYD, "The girl's alive. We'll take care of her." Lord. This is about as bad as the opener of Season Three when Syd's all bunged up in the hospital bed and Dix and Weiss decide they need to discuss super-secret information and can't do it in front of her and then they go outside the room, stop in front of a window, turn TOWARD Syd and then GO AHEAD AND DISCUSS THE INFO. All I'm saying is, if I were a bad guy about to stick a super-spy like Syd in the arm with some knockout drugs, I'd make damn sure I didn't telegraph that info to her right before I was going to do it.
Syd wises up quickly and before the EMT can stick her, she slams his hand down so that he administers the dosage to his right thigh instead of her right arm. Jennifer Garner and the Cardigan of Baby Concealage run off in an attempt at escape, but she kind of dumbly runs right into the fake ambulance and the fake EMTs all start shooting at her, like, way to keep her ALIVE, dudes. Syd runs off to the Cornfield of Convenience with fake EMTs chasing after her. Chase, chase, chase, shoot, shoot, shoot, violins, violins, violins. Yes, it's just about that interesting. Syd disturbs what looks like a flock of white doves, even though it really should be crows, which, did a band of one-armed kindergarteners write this episode or what, and whatever, this tips off the fake EMTers and they run after her and somehow she makes it to the edge of the cornfield undetected and she sneaks up on a couple of them and takes 'em out with a few shots. Nice. I can see we're not going with the "Sydney doesn't shoot people, they fall on their guns" mode of storytelling this season. Thank God.
So, Syd gets to the edge of the Cornfield of Convenience and sees her honey being carted onto a genuine Black Helicopter of the Men in Black variety. She gets a good look at the pilot, who happens to be David Marshall Grant from one of the best shows-you-love-to-hate, thirtysomething. He flies off with Vaughn in the back, and Syd wanders into the Cornfield of Convenience to see if there's a baseball diamond and a few old ghostly players to play some ball with.
“ 'You don't know me very well,' says Sydney. You can say that again. Also? Good thing that bar was there to hide your big belly or else we'd think you were pregnant or something. ”
Syd starts to cry, holding his hand as he tires. She tells him to close his eyes and she'll be right there. "Syd," he says, "I love you." "I love you too," she says, kissing him on the lips and then on the forehead. She goes to the window. And Vaughn crashes. As Jack watches outside, the doctors go to work on Vaughn and rush Syd out of the room and all I can say is that if this is a fake death, it's a damn good one. The doctors work on Vaughn as Sydney watches and we slam to black.
When we return, Vaughn is flat out on the hospital bed and Sarah McLachlan's singing about dirty little secrets and really, it's never a good sign when Sarah McLachlan's singing because her songs go really, really well with death. Two rather impersonal doctors enter and throw the blanket up over Vaughn's face and pull him out of the room. Syd just looks floored. Vaughn's body passes by Jack. He has almost no expression. Syd walks up to him and grimaces; she doesn't look nearly as wrecked as I thought she'd be. But I guess when you've discovered one fianc dead in your bathtub, watching another one die of heart failure as a result of billions of bullets doesn't really faze you much, huh?
At the funeral, everyone looks stone-faced. Jack, Dix, Marshall, and Weiss are among the pallbearers and they carry Vaughn's body out to the hearse. Syd stands on the steps, looking every inch the grieving widow. I have to admit to a couple of well-dropped tears during this second viewing, mostly due to that bitch McLachlan. Stop singing about angels and drinking, dammit! As Syd watches the remaining men in her life place Vaughn's casket in the hearse, she gets a look on her face that I can only call "steely resolve." Jack turns back and looks at his daughter and recognizes that look. Because damned if it isn't his own standard steely expression looking right back at him.
London. 4 Months Later. lodie Bouchez, looking even weirder than usual in a big red fright wig, is tending bar in a seedy pub. Syd enters, wearing a wig that's possibly even uglier than lodie's. Syd parks it at the bar and lodie asks what she needs. "You're a hard person to find," says Syd. "But if I can do it, so can they." lodie says she has no idea what Syd's talking about. "I know who you are, Renee," says Sydney. lodie's reaching for her hidden gun when Sydney says that this is about Michael Vaughn. "You're Sydney," says lodie. "You should have walked away." "You don't know me very well," says Sydney. You can say that again. Also? Good thing that bar was there to hide your big belly or else we'd think you were pregnant or something.
week on Alias: Syd goes on a bad guy hunt and takes out her pregnancy hormones on DMG.