ied to a chair after being captured by bad guys, secret agent Sydney Bristow (Garner) is introduced to the mysterious sinister figure known as "The Man," whose international terrorist organization has bedeviled her for most of a year. Her first words to this criminal mastermind are an appalled, horrified "Mom?"
Sydney's life was already complicated before this point. As established in the show's first season, she was the CIA's double agent inside another international ring of bad guys known as SD-6, run by a schemer known as Arvin Sloane (Rifkin). Her own father, Jack Bristow (Garber), was
another double agent inside SD-6. Somehow, before this moment, she'd been able to live a semblance of a normal life, sharing confidences with her cheerfully unsuspecting sitcom friends Will and Francine (Merrin Dungey), but Will is about to pay a life-altering price for learning about SD-6, and Francine's day is also coming. And then there are the serious family issues that
always arise when Dad works for the CIA and your mom, long thought dead, is in actuality an internationally wanted fugitive trained by the Soviet KGB.
But all this is complicated still further by a worldwide skullduggery prompted by revelations inside the paper of a 16th-century sage named Milo Rambaldi. Was Rambaldi a time traveler? A supergenius? Or something else?
Season two of the cult spy favorite offers the same labyrinthine plotting, outrageous fashion statements and maddening cliffhangers as season one. It also ratchets up the stakes by firmly establishing the Bristows as what may be the most dysfunctional family group ever to appear on weekly television.
Lena Olin, who joins the cast as Irina, and whose resemblance to Garner makes her an excellent choice, makes the most of the ambiguous smile she shows her estranged husband and daughter throughout the season. Is it sinister and predatory, as it seems in some scenes? Is it contemptuous, as it seems in others? Or just affectionate, as it seems at other times? Is she
pursuing her own secret agenda? Or is she genuinely attempting some kind of reconciliation?
Rambaldi ramps up the tension
The answer seems to be "none of the above" and "all of the above" simultaneously, which is precisely what makes her character so dangerous. Olin is excellent at selling the charm and emotional manipulation Irina uses to patiently ease her way back into her daughter's resistant heart, and a
large part of this season's compelling power comes from the persistent uncertainty, on the part of just about everybody else, whether she's a misunderstood professional with genuine feelings for her daughter, or instead a murderous stone-cold sociopath as irredeemable as her betrayed
(and vengeful) "widower" Jack insists.
It's a familiar dynamic on this series, one that also defined the villainous spymaster Sloane. Sloane is a cold bastard willing to sacrifice the lives of his friends and co-workers for a moment's advantage, and his wide spectrum of contradictory motivations does include romantic love. He's a murderous, hateful S.O.B. But he's also human, and for all his willingness to kill Sydney if necessary, he also seems to bear a fatherly affection for her. He's as complicated as villains get.
The fantastic element of the show, which justifies its coverage on a science-fiction site, remains the continued mystery over the Rambaldi artifacts, a collection of inexplicably advanced technology hidden throughout the world centuries ago by a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci.
Rambaldi's doings include prophecies, genetically engineered plagues and heat projectors capable of raining fiery death upon fixed locations; it's fascination with this conundrum, which continues to unfold throughout the second season, that has led Sloane on what he describes as a
"30-year quest," and which reaches its most bizarre extreme with the discovery of a man whose DNA sequences were predicted by Rambaldi and whose chest harbors something other than a conventional human heart.
Other season highlights include guest appearances by Faye Dunaway, Rutger Hauer, Christian Slater and David Carradine; much more screen time for the babbling tech geek Marshall (Weisman), who not only gets to go on a memorable first mission but also gets his first love interest; and the continuing troubles of Will Tippen, whose biggest mistake in life seems to have been having Sydney for a friend.
The season's best episode, "Phase One," is a killer. Originally aired well outside of its timeslot, because of the Super Bowl, "Phase One" begins with an elaborate central fight sequence
that features a lingerie-clad Jennifer Garner fighting thugs aboard a plummeting jumbo jet (a juxtaposition that takes too much space to explain here, but which, trust us, makes an acceptable amount of sense in context). It proceeds to a major narrative turning point that completely overturns the show's basic assumptions. And it ends, in a shocking scene featuring a character who up to that point had precious little to do, with a fadeout that would have made a dandy summer cliffhanger.
As it happens, "Phase One" aired midseason. And the real season cliffhanger, which overturned the apple cart yet again, was still to come.
The six-disc set includes the usual deleted scenes that don't add all that much; bloopers that are fitfully funny; chatty episode commentaries by the cast; a collection of TV previews; and audio-only radio interviews with Garner, Weisman, Abrams and Garber, conducted by KROQ personalities who are almost as fanatic about the show as some reviewers.
