Alias: Year Five

Since I've watched every episode of Alias from the day it first aired, four years (and for me, about two or three houses) ago, I suppose I would be remiss not to say anything about tonight's fifth season premiere.

If you follow the show and haven't seen it yet, go away now. Or, as they more commonly say...

SPOILER ALERT

Truth is, it may not be that much of a spoiler anyway to those who check TVGuide.com or any other TV news web sites. Tonight's big revelation was fairly well trumpeted far and wide, and was sadly ruined for me several weeks ago. Entertainment journalists who write spoilery headlines should be shot.

So... Michael Vaughn is dead. Of course, as Irena Derevko has proven to us quite recently, dead on Alias doesn't necessarily count for much. Still, this seemed pretty definitive, as far as deaths go. (And the fact that the entertainment news circles made so much of it pretty well confirms it.)

I'm really not sure what to make of this development. I was quite enjoying the episode until the fatal encounter, more so than I've enjoyed an episode of Alias in quite some time. But despite all the time I've spent watching the character, the death itself didn't really move me. Maybe it's because it was spoiled for me. I doubt it, though... I can't think of a few other TV shows I've jumped onto late, knowing already of the death of a major character, and I was still moved once I got to view the actual episode in question.

I think it had to do with how cheap and easy his death seemed. We've seen Vaughn get out of far worse scrapes than this. The guy that offed him wasn't even a long-standing villain, it was a new threat appearing for the first time in this episode. And it seems inconceivable that a guy who, from what we were told, had been declared dead two years ago could somehow infiltrate A.P.O. so effortlessly and track down Vaughn. What background check did they wait to run until it was too late that they could have and should have run right from the outset?

In short, our heroes all had to behave phenomenally, colossally stupid in order to bring about the events leading to Vaughn's death. And so really, frankly, I think it might have been better if he'd just died in the car crash. He would have had a more compelling "last mission" in the fourth season finale, and the mystery about his true identity would have been more... well, mysterious to kick off season five.

I suppose we'll see where it all goes this year. I don't expect as much from Alias anymore as I once did. I expect only that this will be the last season.

Still, it was only last month with Six Feet Under that I got to see a show that had withered in years three and four bounce back to have a stellar final batch of episodes. Perhaps Alias can somehow manage to do the same.