Season 4

Alias, Season 4

Back when I was in high school, you couldn't find a bigger Smashing Pumpkins fan. I'm not sure quite what it was, but something about the songs from Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness connected with me. I got my first Pumpkins album for my 15th birthday (M.C.I.S.), which happened to coincide with the start of 9th grade. Most people that know me know that 9th grade was one of the most difficult school years of my life - emotionally and academically - but I'm not going to spend time discussing that, other than to say that Mellon Collie was my one emotional outlet during that time. It was something I was able to fall back on during the bad days. Then, at Christmas I got Siamese Dream. Together, those three discs accounted for 75% of the play time in my CD player. I identified with those songs. Those albums were a part of me. There wasn't a single song that I couldn't connect with on a deep, emotional level. I loved those albums that much.
Then, in 1998, the Pumpkins (minus Jimmy Chamberlain) released Adore. It arrived with a huge first single (Ava Adore) and a ton of expectations. I remember my first listening. "Hmm, it's a little different, a little darker, a little quieter, a little calmer, but still, it's the Pumpkins... I think?" For the longest time I listened to that album, convinced that it was just as good as the previous two, just in a different way. A couple years later I finally had to admit the truth - Adore sucked. There isn't a single great song on the album. There are a couple really good songs (Ava Adore and Perfect were the two big singles), a couple that are my personal favorites (Annie Dog and The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete), and everything else should have been left for a c-sides album. In 2000 they released their next (and final (official)) album, and somewhat redeemed themselves, but ultimately they never again achieved the level of Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie.
What's interesting (to me) about that experience was how I was able to enjoy the poor Adore and mediocre Machina because of how great the previous two albums were. Even today I'll admit that I will get a better listening experience from Machina than the casual, non-super-fan simply because anything Pumpkins is incredibly positively anchored... but that doesn't mean Machina is a good album.

On that note, I finished the fourth season of Alias last Thursday night.

I was introduced to Alias during my senior year at Caltech. We (being my housemates and I)started watching the first season off of good reviews and recommendations, and quickly went through that, blazed through the second season, and ultimately caught to the third season as it was being aired on TV. Alias is an amazingly addictive show. Seasons 1 and 2 wove and amazing number of plots and subplots throughout two years worth of shows. Season 3 took the series in a new direction, and although it wasn't quite up to the standards of seasons 1 and 2, it was still great. Then came season 4 - quite possibly the greatest disappointment in the history of television.

What was wrong with season 4? Well, quite simply, everything. I'm not just talking about the story, or the character development, or the dialog. Everything was wrong with this last season.

• There wasn't a main plot that drove the entire season. Most episodes were self-contained, and the ones that weren't were only two or three episodes long. Even the build to the finale was only four episodes long.
• The character development was horrible. At best a character wouldn't get any worse. Who got worse? Sloan. In seasons 1 and 2 Sloan was the biggest bad-ass on the planet. Dude was straight evil, and would stop at nothing to get what he wanted... and yet was willing to give it all up out of love for his wife. Season 4 turned Sloan into a pansy. Dude does not simply decide to go from being willing to inject weird green shit into his daughter to being all loving and kind. What's worse is that Nadia forgave him for all of that. "Just don't do it again, k?" No. Sloan was a strong person. He had a goal, a path for his life. He was the sort of person whose drive you could respect even if you didn't agree with his end-game... and they completely ruined him.
• The show got predictable. First five minutes: Sloan tells the team that some bad guys are doing something bad, so Sydney, Jack, Vaughn, Dixon, and Nadia are given their assignment to take them down. Second five minutes: Token character development, be it Sydney-Vaughn, Sydney-Jack, Sydney-Nadia, Weiss-Nadia, Sloan-Jack, Sloan-Sydney, etc. During this time, family relationships (my mother, my father, my sister, my daughter) must be referred to, in exactly those terms, no less than 47 times. Next 15 minutes: Go to meet the bad guys, start the op, fighting ensues, something goes wrong, whatever are we going to do? Next 10 minutes: Miraculously the team finds a way to save the day, and everything is happy. Final 5 minutes: Further character development (get the family terms up to 94), maybe throw out a few hints about future plot developments.
  So what was missing, specifically? The characters never had any real decisions to make, no tests to pass. Example from season 2: Vaughn gets some weird disease that he'll die from in 3 days. Sydney attempts to retrieve the cure (test 1), but unfortunately gets caught by Sark (who runs the facility that holds the cure) and is told she will only get the cure if she gives Sloan to Sark for the purpose of killing him. Sydney is conflicted because even though she hates Sloan she feels that killing him is ethically wrong (test 2). Ultimately she decides Vaughn's life is worth more and works a plan that ultimately gives Sloan to Sark. Though happy to have Vaughn alive and well, she feels bad for leading Sloan to his death. Then she comes into work the next day to find Sloan alive and well... and with Sark as his new partner in crime. What a twist! What makes this all that more ridiculous is when you watch through the entire season again and view all Sloan-Sark decisions and Sydney-Jack manipulations were engineered by Irena Derevko. Dance puppets, dance!!! Ridiculous. And season 4 had none of this. No tests of character. No plot twists. No strategic alliances or back-stabbing. No cliffhangers at the end of each episode. None of it.
• The Rambaldi story was dumped. Yeah, there was that bit red ball at the end of the season. That was kinda cool, but it fell short of how it was all built up over the first three seasons. Rambaldi was Sloan's driving force. Rambaldi prophecized Irena and her kids. Alias isn't a show about the CIA. It's about Rambaldi. Sloan scrapped the alliance in season 2 (and jacked $100 mil from them in the process) so that he could be free to pursue Rambaldi. Season 4 ruined the Rambaldi aspect of Alias.
• All of the little things that were once done so well weren't present. This includes, but is not limited to: The choice of popular music to reinforce the mood of the scene; The clever presentation of stories (ex: Swapping between an op being performed and the earlier meeting describing the plan and the op tech that will be used, effectively narrating an otherwise dialog-less scene); Starting an episode in some crazy situation, then cutting to "72 hours earlier." All of that attention to detail made the show great. Not in season 4.

So where does this leave me for Season 5? Simple - I'm not going to watch it. At least, not watch it as the episodes are broadcast. Maybe when it comes out on DVD I'll rent it and go through it over a weekend or something. But quite simply, Alias season 4 was a waste of my time. I stuck with it because the previous three seasons were so good, and I kept hoping that it would get better. Unfortunately, it never did. All I can do now is watch season 1, 2, and 3 and think about what could have been.