"Resurrection"

Written by Jeff Pinkner
Directed by Ken Olin


In which Sydney and Vaughn race to find Lauren and find the key to Rambaldi’s grand design, while Sloane attempts to sway Nadia to his side...

Status Report - Final Analysis







Status Report

For many, this season has been a disappointment, a season filled with plenty of interesting ideas saddled with poor execution and an airing schedule that destroyed any attempt at narrative flow. Unlike the first two seasons, which dealt with Sydney’s relationship to her two dysfunctional SpyParents, this was a season without a purpose, jumping from plot thread to plot thread.

It’s appropriate, then, that the season finale promise answers and resolution without actually providing any. If there was one relationship at the heart of the season, it was the fractured love between Sydney and Vaughn. The problem is that this predominant plot thread was embodied in Lauren Reed, a character that never quite managed to reach the necessary level of intrigue to properly place her as the modern-day Irina.

This episode really drives that weakness home, because the audience is asked to believe that Lauren is having the same life-altering impact on Vaughn that Irina had on Jack. Yet the difference is clear; compare Irina’s characterization in the second season to Lauren’s in the third. Lauren wasn’t the mastermind that Irina has turned out to be. (Indeed, Irina was far more effective as a presence, even remaining off-screen all season!)

Because Lauren was hardly as calculating as Irina, Vaughn’s descent is hard to swallow. Sure, it helps to give Vaughn an edge, and it would have been a good device for driving a wedge between him and Sydney. Perhaps it would have been more convincing if Vaughn had been able to torture Lauren a little longer. Instead, it looks like an act, and the power of the scene is stripped away.

With the culmination of the love triangle coinciding with the search for Rambaldi’s Sphere of Life, one would have hoped that the Rambaldi plot thread would have also come to some measure of resolution. Instead, it is merely window dressing, background filler for the silliness of the relationship woes. Sydney’s struggle with Lauren is a pale reflection of her fight scene with Allison Doren in the second season finale, and it’s insane to think that Lauren would decide to hand Sydney a safety deposit box filled with the truth about the whole ball of wax.

JJ Abrams apparently rewrote the original draft for this episode, which is apparent when one compares the early descriptions of the episode to the final version. It’s also apparent that the original was so bad that little could be done to fix it. It’s hard to believe that Abrams would place Rambaldi so far into the background in favor of Sydney and Vaughn reconciling before his wife is even dead. Nor is it possible to believe that he came up with the idea that Nadia somehow managed to intentionally sabotage the Rambaldi equation so that it still resulted in a logical set of coordinates! And just what the hell is being “resurrected” in this episode, anyway?

However, taking into account the basic failure of the episode as a season finale, there are some elements that weren’t entirely lacking. In particular, the Rambaldi plot thread chugs along at a reasonable pace, even if it should have been resolved at the end of the episode to some degree. Irina’s part in the whole mystery is given a bit more explanation, and the final revelation about Jack looks like an interesting if misleading hook into a more consistent fourth season.

The Rambaldi mythos found itself dragged through the mud this season, with more and more bizarre and inconsistent layers added to Rambaldi’s master plan. There are so many pieces of the puzzle up in the air at this point that it might take the bulk of the fourth season just to start putting them back together. What this series needs, at some point next season, is a short mini-arc dealing specifically with Rambaldi’s grand design, showing all of the various powers figuring out what everything really means.

This doesn’t need to be as dry as it sounds. Ultimately, there are three main groups attempting to gain access to Rambaldi’s design: the Covenant, Sloane, and the CIA. All three have different pieces of the puzzle, and all three have a desire to figure out the endgame before everyone else. So how hard would it be to regain some of the fast-paced insanity of the first and second seasons in the process of writing a few episodes to explain how it all fits together for the audience?

From a storytelling standpoint, it would make sense to place these episodes at the beginning of the fourth season. For one thing, there’s going to be a huge 7-month gap between this episode and the fourth season premiere. While that’s plenty of time for fans to watch all three seasons on DVD, it’s also a good enough reason to recap the important plot points right from the beginning.

Also, placing that recap at the beginning of the fourth season would rectify the massive writing blunder of leaving the Rambaldi plot thread open in every way at the end of this episode. The whole Sphere of Life concept needs to be taken care of right away, and if it is essentially the resurrection of Milo Rambaldi, it would be the perfect starting point for the culmination of several ongoing plot threads. After all, with a shortened season, the writers had better be planning for the possibility that the series will end.

What little material did pertain to the Rambaldi mythos was interesting. As previously theorized (in one of the many aborted lines of reasoning offered in reviews this season!), Rambaldi apparently found a way to contain his consciousness in a vessel of some kind. There are a couple ways of interpreting this. Rambaldi could have found a temporary means of placing himself in stasis, or the liquid used with Nadia to pass on “genetic memory” could have been modified to house Rambaldi’s consciousness as a whole.

Here’s where the pieces seem to fall together. The Covenent interprets Sydney as being Rambaldi’s Chosen One as meaning that her DNA, matched with Rambaldi’s DNA, will produce a child that will represent the “second coming” of Rambaldi himself. Genetically, that’s fine, but what about Rambaldi’s consciousness? Well, this episode seems to answer that question.

If Rambaldi’s consciousness is to be passed on or “injected” into the child created using DNA from Sydney and Rambaldi, then Nadia would make a genetically sound surrogate for Sydney’s child. And if that consciousness is contained with a liquid form, then there’s something already established that fits the description of the Sphere of Life: the “Circumference” from the first season!

Sloane has always appeared to be working his own angle, trying to bring about the time of Rambaldi’s prophecies in his own fashion. But there’s plenty of evidence that Irina has been just as involved, and that her efforts have been largely focused on using her association with Sloane to take control of the Rambaldi design herself.

It would make perfect sense, then, for Irina to be the one in charge of the Covenant. All of the reasons for Sloane to be the logical head of the Covenant also apply to Irina, especially as it pertain to Nadia. The best evidence for this conclusion is Katya’s apparent association with the Covenant, suggested by the fact that Lauren knew Katya was on her side when Katya stabbed Vaughn in the back. One might then assume that Katya is the head of the Covenant, except that can’t be true: Lauren had never actually learned the identity of the Covenant’s leader.

So as it stands at the end of the third season, Sloane continues to use his own resources, culled from the destruction of the Alliance of 12, to pursue his dream of fulfilling the Rambaldi design. Irina, having theoretically created the Covenant following her incarceration after returning to Russia, has been attempting to undermine and co-opt Sloane’s operation from the beginning. That only leaves the final scene completely open to interpretation.

One thing ought to be very clear. Jack Bristow cannot have been aware of the Rambaldi design to the same extent as Sloane or Irina. If he had been, it goes against so much of what has been revealed over the past three seasons that the revelation would completely destroy what consistency and credibility the series has managed to maintain. Jack cannot be the head of the Covenant, for the pure and simple reason that Jack was unaware of Sydney’s whereabouts during her missing two years. Irina clearly knew the truth.

So what could be in those papers? Lauren hinted that it would reveal who was really pulling Sydney’s strings. In the second season, it was revealed that Jack used the Project: Christmas conditioning techniques to make Sydney into the perfect latent special agent. However, the date on the secret documents places Jack’s project in 1975, which is the year Sydney was born. That would pre-date the apparent death of Irina, which suggests that Jack had something in mind for Sydney from the very beginning.

Since Jack was unaware of Irina’s survival, Sloane’s true plans, or Nadia’s existence, as previously revealed, his plans for Sydney couldn’t have been in response to anything related to those events. Also, as previously mentioned, it wouldn’t make sense for Jack to be involved with the overall Rambaldi design, unless it was indirect.

One possibility lies within the fact that the CIA and Project: Black Hole had been attempting to uncover the secrets of Rambaldi for an unknown amount of time. One possible explanation could be that Jack was aware of Sloane’s obsession and considered Rambaldi to be a potential threat to national security. If this were the case, Jack might have been the one to initiate Project: Black Hole, or rather, what would have become the CIA’s Rambaldi-related activities.

This could intersect with his decision to train Sydney to be a secret agent, even without any knowledge of specific Rambaldi prophecies. Jack could have suspected that Sloane was going to become a problem because of his obsession with Rambaldi, and he might have known enough to consider grooming someone to specifically handle the threat at his side. Thus, he conditioned his daughter to become a sleeper agent, to be activated by the CIA when the time came to act against Sloane. All of which would have been thrown into complete turmoil when Sloane, far more aware of the Rambaldi design, understood Sydney’s potential role and brought her into SD-6 without consulting Jack.

The problem with this plot twist is that the writers this season have given the audience the rather unfortunate impression that everything has been made up as they went along. The constant changes to the timeline of events during the missing two years in the first half of the season, the total screw-up regarding the timing of Irina’s second pregnancy in relation to the death of Vaughn’s father and Irina’s apparent death, all combined with a blatant disregard for the established continuity when developing Sloane’s rationale…it paints a picture of sloppy writing and lack of attention to detail.

Now, there’s at least one explanation for all of this: JJ Abrams’ lack of involvement due to his work on “Lost” and the bounty-hunter series that wasn’t optioned. That left things in the hands of writers that had worked well under his leadership, but faltered without proper guidance. Obviously, the writers would point out the deadlines for delivering scripts and what not, but if the fans can keep track of minor details while living lives completely divorced from the series, well, someone hired specifically to work on the show should be able to keep track of it at least as well!

(To make a point…this reviewer has been writing detailed reviews of four series this season, along with a few other series that are no longer running. This takes a few hours a week. The rest of the time is spent working a job, watching kids, and otherwise maintaining a life in the modern world. So out of a month, maybe 10 hours are devoted to “Alias”. And yet, this reviewer managed to take notice of the details when the writers screwed them up. It’s not that hard, people!)

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Some writers and producers are departing “Alias”, to be replaced primarily by writers and producers now available following the cancellation of “Angel”. Anyone familiar with that series is aware of the tight continuity involved, as well as the excellent season arc plotting and characterization. Jeff Bell and Drew Goddard were two of the most reliable writers in the Buffyverse, and “Alias” is damned lucky to have them join the series.

Also, with the series not airing again until January 2005, there’s plenty of time for the new writing staff to develop a strong season arc with as much consistency as possible. That means less of the meandering plot threads and more of the tight, fast-paced drama that made the first two seasons such a joy to behold. It also gives Abrams time to get “Lost” up and running, so that the writing and production staff for that show can take over while he shifts back to “Alias” for a while. (At least, one hopes that will happen!)

It’s astonishing how closely this series follows the same trend as its FOX counterpart, “24”. That series also started with an incredibly popular first season, with a second season that took most of the good start and expanded on it, only to have the third season falter due to creative issues. Both shows also have the blessing and curse that all serialized shows must endure: if the premise of a season doesn’t pass muster, the rest of the season is a constant effort to make up for it.

“24”, however, can just start back at the drawing board next season, since every season is more or less self-contained. “Alias”, on the other hand, has a great deal of baggage left to resolve. There’s the whole Rambaldi mess, the true nature of the Covenant, Jack’s hidden past, and Marshall’s fate. That’s a lot to leave in the audience’s lap for 7 months. But the saving grace is that the fourth season should have a writing staff equal to the challenge.


Final Analysis

Overall, this episode perfectly encapsulated the strengths and weaknesses of the season as a whole. Too much emphasis was placed on the love triangle, though there are plenty of reasons to believe that this plot thread is finally over and done with. The Rambaldi plot thread is more or less lost in the relationship mess, and too many mysteries are left without resolution.

Writing: 0/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 1/4

Final Rating: 5/10




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