Alias and Lost…
Okay, last week had the distinction of having the season finale of Lost and the series finale of Alias. Lost will have been dissected to death on the internets by now, so I’ll let that one go. Basically I liked the finale, but damnit they created far more questions than they answered. Grrrr…. Anyway, on to Alias.
Alias, for the uninitiated, was a spy drama featuring Jennifer Garner. It followed her and a bunch of other people in their covert spy operations. In the first season they thought they were working for the CIA but were really working for a multinational crime syndicate. In subsequent seasons they did end up working for the CIA, and then a super-secret section of the CIA. I know, it seems hokey already.
That’s because it kind of was. Garner would don all sorts of wigs and skin-tight dresses on various missions and that was all kind of fun. You ended up with some pretty good villains in Sark, and Anna, and even Sloane. But the thing that made it interesting to me was the whole Rimbaldi mythos. In the story-line Rimbaldi was an inventor who lived some 500 years ago. He predicted many things that would come to pass, and over the course of the series his inventions served as many of the plot points. It all kind of culminated in the final episode.
That’s one of the reasons I think the finale sucked. They tried to wrap up the whole Rimbaldi mythos and really wrap up the series and they put WAY too much into the ending. If you still have it on your TiVo, stop here, cause there are major spoilers ahead. Here are the reasons the Alias finale (well final couple episodes actually) sucked:
- First off, the re-emergence of agent Vaughn. Okay, Vaughn had been killed off earlier in the series. And killed VERY convincingly. They basically emptied a machine-gun clip into him. No one could survive that. But there he was anyway. The story-line said that they faked his death and had him hiding away in Tibet for his recovery. Come on…
- The new international crime group, Prophet 5. Basically, the creators needed a new bad guy, so they created Prophet 5. P5 was a group of 12 incredibly wealthy and powerful people who had been basically running things all over the globe for years. There had been no mention earlier in the series, they just kind of showed up. And what was the significance of the name Prophet5 when there were twelve members?
- Then, they had a lackey go in with what was supposed to be a Rimbaldi artifact, and she pulled out a machine gun and killed all 12 and their bodyguards. I’m sorry, if you have a worldwide organization running everything, no one could have gotten so close to them, and definitely not with a sub-machine gun.
- Also, when they found evidence of P5, it was in a bunker underneath a jewelry store. Basically they went in, knocked out the clerks, went into the basement and knocked out a wall and there it was. That’s fine and well, but they continued to have people show up there and hang out there. Do you think the jewelry store clerks were like, “Oh yeah, the other spies are down in the basement, go on down” There was no mention of them closing off the area or anything. And since they are super-secret, it just seemed too much for broad daylight.
- The secondary characters. I know I missed a season, but the guy who blew himself up and the girl he was kind of connecting with were totally useless to me for the story-line. They added nothing and didn’t need to be there AT ALL.
- The way that both Sloane and Sidney’s mother Irina acted at the end. One of the things that made them both such good villains were the fact that they seemed to have just a little bit of compassion for Sidney and seemed somewhat human. Granted, they needed to be hated for the ending to feel right I guess, but any human component to either of them vanished. They both became nothing but cold-blooded killers. Sloane really showed no remorse when his daughter died, and Irina tried to kill HER own daughter without hesitation or remorse.
- And at the end Irina climbed over the glass trying to get the Rimbaldi artifact, and of course she broke threw and fell and died. She knew that Sloane had found the place where immortality could be found, so why didn’t she get off the glass, finish killing Syd and then get the sphere later when it was easier. Climbing for it like that was stupid, especially for an evil criminal mastermind.
- Then there was the “Rose.” Once of the Rimbaldi clues had Syd finding a rose in the prison. So down in the lower levels she comes to what seems like a forgotten corner with a little shrine with candles and drawings and such and finds an old man with a Rose tattoo. It wasn’t really a cell, it seemed like a long lost corner of the prison. But the Rose still said that they needed to hurry because the guards would come around soon. Well if the guards came around any previous times, they would have found and cleared out the shrine. And is that where the Rose lived?, or was he in a different cell and made it down there? Was he too immortal? Because he said that Rimbaldi had told him about Sydney. So the guy had to be like 500 years old. It was all very convoluted and didn’t make sense.
- Come to think of it, if Rimbaldi had discovered a way to become immortal, why didn’t he use it on himself? Or are they saving that for the movie?
- And they obviously set it up for a sequel series or a movie if they ever wanted to. They left a good villain Sark, Sydney has a daughter who is just like her, and the normal folks are still around. It was too neat and tidy at the end. It basically said, he, we want to make sure that YOU KNOW THERE CAN BE MORE!!! Gah…
- About the only good thing was Jack blowing himself up with Sloane so Sloane would be trapped for all eternity under the rubble. Basically Sloane had become immortal, and this way, he would suffer forever. At least until someone else dug him up… because lord knows nobody would notice the camp and bunch of trucks outside in the archeological site and try digging it up. It was also a cozy way to make it that Sloane can come back whenever…
So all in all, there was just too much to make it suck. Sorry Chris, I cannot believe you thought it was awesome…
May 30, 2006 @ 10:22 am
DUDE!! That’s a call-out if I’ve ever heard one….
How else would they have ended it? The ratings were always abysmal. It was kind of hokey at times, but it’s all a little far-fetched so what do you expect?
Vaughn – I’ll give you that one! The dude was capped by Prophet5 – how could they fake being offed by the enemy? But remember, nobody dies on Alias. Jack placed a bullet between Irina’s eyes and she’s still here. It must have been her DNA clone…
Prophet5/12 – Remember the flashback where Syd told her dad she was working for Credit Dauphine and they have 12 branches? Wonder if that was the relationship? But I don’t think she was a lackey. She was fairly high up in the order if they trusted her with Sloane’s custody.
P5 Bunker – There was no jewelry store there 30 years ago. But yeah, the bunker was definitely a hokey part.
Secondaries – Tom and Rachel didn’t come into play at all in Season 4 – just this season. Rachel was to P5 as Sydney was to SD-6. She thought she was working for the good guys. I forget how they picked Tom up…
Sloane and Irina were cold-blooded all along. Sure they had some feelings for Sydney, but they were depicted as they should have been – hated villains who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. It seems as if they had different quests. Sloane wanted the immortality (though in Season 4 we see him adamant that there’s more to it than just immortality) and Irina wanted the “Horizon” (the artifiact on the glass).
The Rose – freaky, but like I said at my blog – very Indiana Jonesish. I didn’t specifically mention The Rose, but he was like the knight guarding the grail!!
I knew going into it that they would all live happily ever after. Though I was expecting Jack to be there and seeing it end with Syd and Vaughn getting married in Santa Barbara. I don’t know what else they could have done to wrap it up better. They could have at least extended it 2 more episodes to build all of the back stories up more and end them completely.
I stand by my guns (with an addendum). It was awesome (for how they decided to end it) though it could have been better.
May 30, 2006 @ 11:37 am
Ok, boys, I gotta tell ya, I was both excited AND disappointed by the ending. I was glad they pretty well tied up all the lose ends, but this whole last season felt like a “hurry up and finish it”.
Vaughn : I actually figured he’d come back when they “killed” him off. Something about the way Jack and Sydney looked at each other when he was lying in the hospital bed. It just seemed like there was something going on with them. No surprise to me.
Rachel and Tom: again, they’re the “hurry up” part, needing the characters to fill in essentially since Syndey and Vaughn weren’t able to perform at the time. Pointless filler, but necessary to keep the show running while Jennifer/Sydey had the baby.
The whole Prophet5 thing was stupid from the beginning. It felt like an intermediate piece to wait for Jennifer/Sydney to have the baby and get on with things…which it probably was.
Rimbaldi – Do we know that wasn’t him in the cell? I agree with you, Grey, I was rather disappointed by the whole ending there. Of course, I don’t really know what I was expecting
The whole notion of this guy was a bit silly.
Poor Sloane, talking to his dead daughter. That part was just dumb. Very dumb.
Shocked! Totally shocked when Jack blew him and Sloane up!! WOW! That was one of the best parts for me. Totally unexpected, yet so Jack.
Overall, I liked they tied things up, just wish some parts could’ve been less hokey.
May 31, 2006 @ 2:48 am
I *think* P2 was the name of a ultra-secret masonic lodge in Italy, where “Gods Banker” was a member.
This was the chap later found hanging underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, with bricks in his suit pocket. “Suicide”.. ah-ha…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/1862598.stm
Perhaps might explain the link to P5.. ?
—* Bill
April 15, 2014 @ 9:10 pm
Wake up, guys, ALIAS was not a reality show! You can pick holes in literally ANY fiction-based tv show. Or, you can just enjoy it for what it is. Or, you can try to show everybody how superior your intelligence is, in order to boost your ego. If you watched the show as long as you apparently did, there was obviously something you liked about it.