kpduty

---As a sidebar, I have problem which I have no problem admitting to: I CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES begin ANYTHING IN THE MIDDLE. Case in point: comics. I have yet to read SANDMAN because I don't own them all, and don't want to find myself lost or stuck in the middle of the story. As Alias is really a soap opera in many respects, I couldn't just sit down one random weekend and expect to know what was going on.---

Getting into Alias was an uphill battle. The first episode SUCKED ASS. I watched it six or seven times, leaving in the middle some times, falling asleep once. The Husband recalled coming home to find the first episode playing in the living room and me taking a bath. It's really...really.....really.........boring. So this memorial day weekend we forced ourselves to sit in front of the TV and watch it because there was nothing else on and it was too early to go anywhere or mow the lawn. And it was still really...really.....really.........boring.

BUT THEN COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE THE ENDING WAS REALLY REALLY AWESOME!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! It was like getting hit upside the head with a lead pipe. And then kicked in the solar plexus with a four inch stilleto. And then next thing we knew it was Tuesday morning and we had to go to work and we'd put behind us 12 hours of Alias. And the only reason we quit was because the cliffhanger didn't really involve anything blowing up. IT'S AWESOME!!!

But I still can't watch it on Sunday nights because we haven't completely caught up yet.

Alias stars Jennifer Garner from Daredevil and 13 going on 30 as Sydney Bristow, a woman way too emotional to be an effective spy. Yeah, she kicks a lot of ass, but then she'll have an existential crisis that jeopardizes the mission or the lives of other agents. Seriously, at least once an episode we were thinking, fuck this killing her because she's a mole--chick is totally going to get someone killed what with her crying all the time. Seriously, that can't be good. She's always going on about I'VE GOT so-and-so's BLOOD ON MY HANDS, like BOO HOO it's your damn job, go deliver pizzas or something. And she's in grad school on top of that for some degree we totally can't figure out, but like writing your doctoral thesis isn't hard enough without having to worry all about your Great Moral Dilemma. Although if she were writing on a new interpretation of Lady MacBeth, totally based on her own experiences, I bet that would kick ass. I'm totally going back to school and writing my disseration..."OUT OUT DAMN SPOT: SYDNEY BRISTOW AS POSTMODERN REINTERPRETATION OF LADY MACBETH." It probably wouldn't be very postmodern, but with that in the title plus my nonironic use of the colon, I'd totally pass.

So in the first boring episode her stick-in-the-mud doctor boyfriend gets killed, and she spends the next three seasons crying about it. It's all her fault he's killed too, which she conveniently forgets when she's completely focused on her Great Moral Dilemma. So she works for what she thinks is a covert black-ops branch of the CIA called SD-6 (which is a total ROBOTECH shout-out) but it turns out that SD-6 is actually an organization fighting against the CIA, started by these renegade dudes from various worldwide intelligence organizations. Or something. And so Sydney goes to work for the actually CIA as a double-agent trying to bring down SD-6. Or something. And her dad's a double-agent too, or maybe a triple agent working for the Russians, or maybe he's just an ordinary guy working for a bank who totally likes to mind fuck his daughter. Or something. But Sydney's got a hottie contact in the CIA and they totally want to have sex which they totally will because the First Law of Speed comes into play. But then she also likes her reporter friend who's getting too close to the truth which for some reason prevents him from shaving regularly.

All of this is incredibly confusing. Everyone in the show has a serious problem with LEAPING TO CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP. I mean, really, they could find a half-eaten hot dog in an alley and come up with the theory that Oscar Meyer is running an illegal drug cartel out of Bogota. It's almost exhilarating, the daring leaps of logic. But shit blows up, and the gadgets guy is funny, and the editing and storytelling are insanely awesome, and the BEST was that the reporter guy found this bug in this chick's car and had it tested and it was transmitting so he spends the episode sneaking off to talk to the bug and beg for the people on the other end to call him. So he's getting drunk with Sydney's roommate, and she's singing into the bug and laughing, and his cell phone rings and this mechanical voice says, "tell her to stop playing with the bug!!!" It was AWESOME!!!

So, yeah, last night the Husband and I both dreamed about Alias. And right now I'm totally jonesing for more. Because when we were forced to stop, Sydney's father was telling her that he wasn't the Russian spy in the family, her angelic dead mother was!!! What does this mean for Sydney and the already strained relationship with her father, seeing as how she was planning on turning him in to the FBI as a traitor? Will she totally sex up that dude from the CIA? What crazy new outfit will she be wearing next? And how the hell can Jennifer Garner sleep at night after telling the world she never works out and is just naturally skinny? OOO, I HATE HER!!!

But Alias is awesome.