Funny recap of
Alias from
A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago:
Bob Balaban taps USC lit student Sydney Bristow to be his super-special weapon for the CIA's black-ops SD6 division, because the best way to find a tireless worker with infinite focus, superlative athletic chops, and loads of free time is to raid the grad schools. Syd spills the beans to her fake-French fiance, who gets killed for security reasons. Balaban will do the same for Syd if she doesn't get out of bed and back to the ass-kicking, so her dad outs SD6 as a pro-terror syndicate and himself as a CIA/SD6 double-agent and SD6 truancy officer. Syd Run Lolas through the CIA front door and enlists with the legit agency, not realizing that the "6" in SD6 indicates that there may be some other SDs out there.
Syd's colleagues at real CIA include a real French love interest, Vaughn, (not to be confused with the fake French fiance) and Seth Rogen. Her colleagues at fake CIA include by-the-book Dixon and hobbit Marshall, both of whom will later join her at real CIA.
Syd roundhouse kicks her way into the control rooms of a loosely-organized network of terrorist nightclub operators, where she copies discs containing the plans, the lists, the passwords, and perhaps bootlegged copies of "Dude, Where's My Car." Each week Syd defeats what she believes to be the greatest danger known to mankind. Because it's the CIA, or the fake CIA, each week she learns that last week's greatest danger is, in fact, the second-greatest danger, right behind this week's greatest danger. For exactly one and a half years, she kills exactly zero people. Incompetent spy.
Bob Balaban is obsessed with a 13th-century prophet/Leonardo wannabe named Milo Ventimiglia. He invented a magical way of painting a globe red. Syd's part-time job is to steal pages from Milo's collected works so that Balaban can make himself a red globe and rule the world. In discharging her duties, Syd discovers that (a) Milo drew a really good picture of her; and (b) she is the Key Master. She also meets an atelier who hints that Milo is still alive, but JJ Abrams later forgot about this so it didn't happen. Or did it?
For a year, roommate Frenchie and deadbeat Will fail to notice that Syd's bank job requires her to be out of the house for several days a week and that she always returns with three broken legs. Frenchie has a boyfriend who sings, or maybe that was on Ally McBeal. Will has a smoking-hot intern who leaves for The L Word. They congregate in Central Perk behind a sepia-toned camera filter before being killed, replaced by an identical but evil twin who is killed (or is she?), or put into witness protection. Frenchie doesn't like Rocky Road ice cream. Or does she?
On approximately SuperBowl Sunday, Syd's lingerie jumps out of a plane as Bob Balaban takes down the SD network. Syd kills somebody in the basement, thus ending her pacifist period.
Syd's mom, who was previously dead, is in fact not dead, but bad. Later, she is captured, good, and escaped. Still later, she is bad, and dead. Still even later, she is alive, bad, and captured. Yet even still more later, she is good, and escaped. Do I need to tell you that she is now perhaps bad? Or is she? Also, she killed Vaughn's dad, who actually may not be dead, but who in fact may be dead. It's not entirely clear. And she has a whole separate ass-kicking family, including erstwhile Skinemax stalwart Sonia Braga, severe-haircutted Isabella Rossellini, and current bombshell-with-a-porn-name Mia Maestro. That's right, a Russian family entirely played by Swedish, Brazilian, Italian, and Argentinian women. Oh, the betrayal. Which reminds me, Balaban is secretly bad, then openly bad, then through-and-through good but bad-curious (this is his World Health Organization/research into Milo juice phase, if you're scoring at home), then meets the Enlightened Master and drops the whole bad thing completely, then has a bad relapse, then is in jail, then is good and in charge of the CIA, then is bad in the service of saving his daughter (Mia Maestro), then is remorseful, then cuts exactly the same deal to be bad again to help his daughter (except with the sister of the first person with whom he dealt) but reneges. Or does he?
I forgot to mention that some kid named Sark, after the famous Cutty, is exactly like Syd except (a) male; and (b) bad. They are made for each other. He gets beaten up and jailed a lot, but has a pretty healthy attitude about it.
Syd falls asleep and wakes up two years later, with Vaughn married to an unaccountably English-accented blonde. She is a double agent, and is killed. Or is she? Syd discovers that she is a "Project Christmas" kid, meaning that whenever somebody says "Queen of Diamonds," she assassinates the President. Then JJ changes his mind, and this didn't happen. Or did it? Syd gets engaged to Vaughn, who reveals that he's a double agent and then is killed in a car accident. Or is he? He's not, because he is later killed by the bad guys. Or is he? An unwitting bad-guy analyst who conveniently wears the same wig size as now-pregnant Syd jumps the fence and kicks ass with slightly less enthusiasm but more va-voom than Syd. She also has a love interest, Agent Liev Schreiber. And now Mama's back.
TallyPrincipal spies: 13 (Syd, Balaban, Jack, Dixon, Marshall, Seth Rogen, Vaughn, Irina, Lauren, Nadia, Rachel, Liev, Sark)
Spies who have not been double-agents or worked for both sides: 3 (Seth Rogen, Nadia, Liev)
Conclusion: internal controls insufficient. Or are they?
