Prophet Five Review

Prophet Five – Those Things I Knew

My season 4 reviews were restricted by my need to find a recurring theme in the plot of each episode and analyse how the theme and each part of that theme impacted the episode [not that any of you care] but I feel the need for restriction no longer.
As attempted in my finale review I have decided just to write freely on my feelings of the episode.

To start with if you haven’t actually seen the episode and don’t want to spoil it I would stop reading, just in case you see something you don’t want to.

Unfortunately, like a lot of the Alias fans out there – I came into the episode expecting to be mourning the loss of my favourite Alias character, no wait one of my favourite characters on television ever. When I first read about it I was almost crying at the though of losing my precious Vaughn, the man that I had loved for 4 years was finally to leave, just when they [i.e. Sydney and Vaughn] seemed to be happy.
At every point in the episode I was praying that it was all hearsay and that he wouldn’t actually bite the dust and at every turn I was squealing and hiding in my seat in the suspense.
Knowing about the impending doom that would befall my television addiction almost ruined the episode for me, one I must say wasn’t bad looking back, although it was far from my favourite, for more reasons than the apparent departure of Vaughn.
One thing I must compliment the writers on is their flawless resolution to the “My name’s not Vaughn” revelation. They could have easily taken the “Vaughn’s a baddie and always has been” road in which I would lose faith in TV all together [even though they pretty much did it by killing him] but they actually tied up the story in a way that made perfect sense, and Vaughn to me will always be Vaughn.
One thing I do think altered the episode was the fact that another character besides Sydney or Vaughn was rarely used. Among them they did have some screen time but only enough to keep the story together on their end and enough to stop them from being left out completely.
As expected, Sloane is looking for a way to save Nadia from the disease that he helped manufacture and apparently it’s gonna be his motivation for a part of the season. I think that if this hadn’t been an element in the episode I would have been disappointed in the writing, but thankfully it was included.
Another thing I came into the episode knowing was that they were writing in a pregnancy and the way it was told was certainly funny as well as suiting to the story. When they were talking about it in the car, I personally was excited at the idea of a Sydney/Vaughn baby but distraught that Vaughn might not be there to see it L
The second that Vaughn stepped out of that car alone, after their discussion I knew that it was the end. The suspense of the scene began to tear me apart and then the car came speeding and the train and…. I don’t want to think about it, I’m mourning. The pure brutality of the CIA/FBI/NSA/some other 3 letter abbreviation dudey [I think, unless I was hallucination] was gut wrenching and to me seemed to be a complete mystery for now. I’m pretty sure we’ll learn about more to why in future.
The final thing I came into the episode expecting was that the odds of a season after this one are small. At first I was upset of the concept of no more Alias but if I have to face a Vaughn-less existence then I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy to see it over, not in a good riddance way but in a it’s time to end sense.
I took me a bit to realise that there was more to come after Vaughn got shot, I thought that was the episode end and frankly I would have been happier if it was, everything that followed was hollow, sad, useless and just what I hate about TV. I watched the best thing that ever happened to TV die, just after they named their child and he told Sydney he loved her – how corny :P and it only added to the sadness…

I don’t know where my obsession with Alias lies now, I guess that’s all to be discovered with the episodes to come.