Tonight is a two-hour dose of Alias, the first and second of the six episodes that remain to the cancelled series. Over the past two (or three?) increasingly awful seasons, my enthusiasm for the show, at one point formidable, has waned. The last straw was last season's finale, which had most of the cast parachuting into a giant red ball in order to re-enact 28 Days Later. I ignored most of this season, although I've heard that it has sucked slightly less than the few that preceded it.
I am, however, almost inappropriately excited about tonight's two hours. In part, I may be looking forward to a reprieve from the increasingly intellectually taxing Veronica Mars and Lost. In part, though, I'm actually looking forward to the resolution of the cliffhanger on which we left the show last October or something. When last we left off, a very pregnant Sydney (Jennifer Garner) had been kidnapped and interrogated by an unknown enemy, who wanted information supposedly confided in Sydney by her late (although probably really alive) fiance, Vaughn (Michael Vartan). After hallucinating her face off, Sydney lied to her captors, then escaped, only to discover that she's on an oil tanker in the middle of the ocean and it looks like the only other person on the ship is evil, awesome Kelly Peyton (Amy Acker). Oh, and we know, although Sydney does not, that the mastermind of this whole kidnapping/MacGuffin-finding plot is her mother, Irina Derevko (Lena Olin). Meanwhile, Sydney's father, Jack (Victor Garber), and a random French friend (Élodie Bouchez), tortured and killed some other random guy (Patrick Bauchau) in a lovely Paris apartment. If I remember correctly, they cut off his ear. (I'm guessing that tonight's episode won't revisit that business, but I wanted to mention it because Patrick Bauchau and lovely Paris apartments are cool.)
It's possible, also, that my enthusiasm for tonight's Alias is a result of a decent episode of Gilmore Girls. Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote and directed, so it's no surprise that it was good. The real MVP, though, was Emily Kuroda, who plays Mrs. Kim. Kuroda always does a nice job of selling and underplaying Mrs Kim. She has, over the past six seasons, gradually turned a caricature into one of the most relatable characters in Stars Hollow. Last night Kuroda had three really great scenes to play and she nailed them.
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