Alias: Oh, The Pain

Cher has gone on another Alias kick. I ascribe this to her having a huge girl crush on Jennifer Garner. She simply adores her, and would watch her dust if such a show existed. So I was forced to watch yet another episode tonight, gritting my teeth and praying for death.

Okay. Jennifer Garner is adorable. She has that odd mixture of dorkiness and utter bed-ability. I think her adorability lies with her eyes, which cancel out the fact she has jug bottle ears. So I don't mind staring at her. But Alias is just excruciatingly bad.

Tonight's episode dealt with Sydney (Garner's character)waking up to realize she's been mind controlled for two years. Ten minutes in, I was picking up a book, only looking up when Garner was onscreen. Cher was rapt with attention. I just kept pointing out how terribly directed it was, how dire the script was, and how--with just a modicum of care and intelligence--this show could have completely rocked.

The one thing I always hated with Alias was that travel always took three seconds. Sydney could travel all over the world in six minutes. Who knew the CIA had transmats? I also hated how the terrorists in this episode seemed like refugees from Metal Gear Solid, and couldn't shoot Sydney even with laser targeted machine guns, while she hides behind a chemist's table, where someone thoughtfully left bottles that could explode when Sydney throws them at the Metal Gear solid villians.

The episode ends with Sydney somehow blowing up a car with one shot from a hi-tech gun, which she then throws away. If this was such a good gun, one would think to keep it. What does a gun cost these days, anyway? At this point, Sydney was renegade, so one would think she would be a bit more economical. I mean, it was a decent gun. It blew up cars. She then goes to investigate the bodies of the baddies, and of course, one of them is still alive. It's the main villain, which shows that being evil makes you survive shit. What follows is easily the most terribly directed action scene I've seen this year, with Sydney managing to throw said Bad Guy against a wall, where he sticks himself with his knife--and then dies.

No, I thought. His knife was in his lower abdomen, which wasn't a killing blow. Yes, in time, the infection from feces in his bowels would do him in, but there was no way in hell he would die from a knife there. Blood loss alone would take at least fifteen minutes. But Sydney just leaves him, and drives off in a Ferrari. Where in hell did she get that? And how in the name of fuck did she get back to L.A. in three seconds?

I was in agony. Cher just stared, in rapture.

I swear: my wife would leave me for Jennifer Garner in a heartbeat.