resh from her knock-down, furniture-busting battle with the impostor who has murdered her roommate Francine, CIA agent Sydney Bristow (Garner) wakes up in an alley on the other side of the world, phones home and discovers that she's been missing and presumed dead for two years.
In her time gone, her life has fallen apart. Her everyday friends are either dead or in witness protection. Her partner and lover, Vaughn (Vartan), has married. Her father, Jack (Garber), has spent the past year in solitary confinement for treason. Her nemesis, the evil Sloane (Ron Rifkin), has brokered an immunity deal and is now a beloved philanthropist of worldwide renown. In perhaps the greatest indication that her world has turned upside down, the hopeless, stammering tech geek Marshall (Weisman) is somehow facing fatherhood.
Sydney arranges a release for her father, who reveals that he had already been aware of her survival. He shows her a surveillance videotape of Sydney, in a blond wig, visiting a Russian diplomat. Sydney is horrified to see herself cold-bloodedly assassinate the man. All evidence points to Sydney being brainwashed and performing acts of terror and assassination for a new international conspiracy known as the Covenant. The CIA doesn't know yet. If they find out before Sydney can confirm that she's no longer under Covenant influence, she will likely be imprisoned as a terrorist for the rest of her life. The problem is, how can she run her own separate investigation while working for the CIA at the same time? Can she trust Sloane, the man she hates most in all the world, when she needs him for an ally? And can she avoid tension working with Lauren (Melissa George), the NSA officer married to the man she still loves?
Meanwhile, the continuing mystery of the Rambaldi artifacts, super-scientific weaponry created by a contemporary of Leonardo Da Vinci, continues to deepen. Sydney discovers that the artifacts are keyed to her very DNA. An aunt she never met, Katya Derevko (Isabella Rossellini), arrives in time to offer key information. (There's also a previously unsuspected half-sister waiting in the wings.) Sloane provides yet another startling revelation about Sydney's past. Sydney deals with enemies on all sides. A key CIA associate is revealed as a Covenant mole. Marshall toys with haiku and heavy metal and gets to go on another mission. And, as the season fades, further Rambaldi plans turn up in a most disturbing place. ...
The plot thickens and thickens
Season three of the science-fictional espionage drama suffers from the previous utter destruction of Sydney Bristow's personal life; watching her juggle jet-setting covert ops and interaction with her refreshingly conventional friends had been one of the major charms of the show, and is sorely missed now that attrition has left her with no life outside the Agency. Show creator J.J. Abrams has since acknowledged that the show lost something when the soft sitcom aspects were jettisoned, and promised that they'll be returning in season four.
An even greater blow is the departure of recurring player Lena Olin, who enlivened the second season as Sydney's international-terrorist mom, Irina. Sydney's strange, complicated relationship with Irina, whose maternal and homicidal instincts seemed equally dominant, were also a major plus; alas, Olin refused to return to the show for contractual reasons and took the vitally important Irina with her. Rossellini's Auntie Katya may be a compelling character in her own right but cannot be sufficient replacement in dramatic terms: After all, who's bound to leave Sydney more conflicted, the loving mom who disappeared when she was a little girl or the aunt she didn't meet until well into adulthood?
The parade of distinguished guest stars continues this season. In addition to Rossellini (whose casting is the basis of an amusing anecdote in the DVD extras), they include Djimon Hounsou, Ricky Gervais of the sitcom The Office (who is also very funny in his DVD interview), Vivica Fox, a world-weary Griffin Dunne and reappearances by David Carradine and Quentin Tarantino (not the first time they've been recently seen in the same place). Peggy Lipton, from The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks, proves still capable of playing femme fatale. Best of all is a multipart appearance by film director David Cronenberg, as the sublimely eccentric dream researcher Sydney consults to unlock clues hidden in her subconscious. Cronenberg, who has acted a number of times before, plays weird almost as well as he directs it, and is uncomfortably funny here.
Melissa George, who plays Lauren, hails from a charming short-lived series called Thieves, which deserved better. She is both sexy and dangerous here.
The DVD set is filled with extras. In addition to the usual blooper reel (with the usual unfunny shots of actors making silly faces after they blow lines and a glimpse of Vartan falling down the stairs), there are behind-the-scenes documentaries, a DVD-ROM scriptscanner feature and a number of episode commentary tracks featuring J.J. Abrams, with cast and crew. The most fascinating of the documentaries is an extended look at the trickery the show uses to fake all those exotic worldwide locations, when in truth production rarely leaves Los Angeles.
The most delightful of the commentary tracks belongs to the first episode, "The Two." Instead of involving anybody connected with the actual creation of the show, it features Erin Dailey, a viewer who pens snarky recaps of the show for the Web site Television Without Pity, and Jennifer Wong, another fan who watches the show at home with her husband and cats and won this forum in a contest. It turns to be a wildly successful experiment. The two women turn out to be way funnier and more incisive than some of the actors we've heard inarticulately mumbling about shows and movies they were actually around to make, and only butt heads (briefly) once.
The most unusual extra is an animated vignette, "The Tribunal," which purports to show a chapter from Sydney's missing two years. The animation is jerky, but the story has energy; my chief complaint is that the bad guy, who's doomed from frame one, emerges as far more sympathetic than Sydney herself.
