Alias Season 2 Review

I don't care about Rimbaldi.

This Da Vinci guy is boring, and I don't care if they ever find his secrets. If I were watching in real time, maybe I would be bothered by the lack of answers. But as far as I'm concerned, Rimbaldi is just something for awesome villains like Ron Rifkin and Lena Olin to chase. And honestly, if Rimbaldi weren't there they might be chasing vaguely Middle Eastern guys and stoking post-9/11 Islamophobia. I'm good with fake Da Vinci.

This is all to say that I don't think that when it comes to the future of the show, I;m not worried about Rimbaldi. What I'm worried about is Sydney's friends.

Sydney is such a repressed, guarded and lonely character. And Alias uses that to great effect. Anytime the show wants to ratchet up the stakes, it simply threatens her relationship with one of the very few people she holds dear. This is why the Francie twist is so great. Francie was not only Syd's best friend, she was the only person in her life not involved with spycraft. And then she was killed and replaced by an evil imposter! And it's not just Francie. Basically all of Alias' best storylines involve threatening one of Sydney's relationships: with her fiance, her father, her mother, her boss, Emily, the "mother she chose," her partner, and her best friends. The cliffhanger in the finale is so effective because it threatens her relationship with Vaughn, who has been her rock throughout the series

But Sydney is running out of people! Will and Emily are dead. And Mom is out of commission for the time being. This was a great season of television. But the show's options for raising the stakes going forward may prove limited. I worry that they'll lean on the Rimbaldi stuff. And that's not why I love the show! I love lonely Sydney and her relationships with the precious few people she holds dear. That's the beating heart that makes all the spy missions in skimpy outfits tick.