Season 1 | Episode 14 | “The Coup” | Aired Feb 24, 2002
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'Alias' nostalgia react: Sydney has the worst family in the world Finally! Will Tippin has really gone Junior Secret Agent on us, and it’s about time. I’ve been dying to see where his investigation into SD-6 would take him, and this week, I got a little (a very little, but still) satisfaction. David McNeil has sent his daughter away to safety and he’s ready to talk. (Although I kind of wonder if he’s on the up-and-up or if he’s really a plant of some kind. Alias has me suspicious of every character.)
But first, he needs Will to break into a computer where he used to work and retrieve a list of everyone who used the software he knew he needed to track when he went to prison. Will sets up a bogus interview with the CEO of the company, then excuses himself to the bathroom, breaks into the conveniently bathroom-adjacent computer lab, and downloads the program from a computer that appears to be running on DOS even though it’s the 21st century.
I worry that Will is maybe being set up for something, but I’m so happy to finally see some real progress in his storyline that I don’t even care. And as a journalist, I have to note how impressed I am by his ability to schedule a sit down with the CEO of a major company so quickly.
What’s Sydney doing while Will is getting his superspy on? She’s partying in Vegas—for work. She and Dixon are on assignment to retrieve a ring (which Dixon gets to win in a high-stakes poker game while posing as a dreadlocked member of the Jamaican government—it’s amazing). This means posing as a Vegas dancer and breaking into some of the most secure computers in the world to manipulate the casino’s facial recognition software.
I think this is my favorite disguise Dixon has worn so far (but it’s not even close to my favorite for Sydney, for whom dressing like a Vegas showgirl is boring). The SD-6 case takes a backseat to Sydney’s personal life this week because Francie and Charlie go to Vegas too, and almost run into Syd when she’s undercover.
This is pretty much all Sydney’s fault for admitting that she was going to Vegas in the first place. She’s supposed to be going for “the bank,” and Francie immediately wants to come along. Sydney should have anticipated this because any time you mention Vegas to anyone who lives in Los Angeles, they want to make a weekend trip out it. Sydney tries to talk Francie into waiting a week so they can all go when she doesn’t have to work, but Francie ends up ignoring this, probably because Sydney works every single weekend; if they waited for a weekend she was actually free, Francie would never, ever go to Vegas again.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t warn Syd, who realizes what’s happening when she spots Francie and Charlie across the casino whilst dressed as a showgirl when she’s supposed to be on a work trip for the bank.
Adding to Sydney’s personal struggles is the fact that, at the beginning of the episode, she runs into a woman who claims to have had an affair with Charlie. Actually, she just claims to have dated him and for it to have ended badly—it’s news to her that their fling was an affair. Sydney was planning to break the very bad news to Francie after her Vegas trip, but when she spots the happy (and very engaged) couple heading into a quickie wedding chapel, she abandons Dixon (temporarily) to go break it up.
She doesn’t tell Francie; she just pulls Charlie aside and threatens to tell if he doesn’t, warning him not to go through with the wedding unless Francie knows the whole truth. While I applaud her saving Francie (whom I love) from a lot of heartbreak, I kind of hate that Sydney left Dixon hanging, even though he technically gave her the okay to do it. After all, the worst-case scenario for Francie is a divorce. The worst-case scenario for Dixon is death.
Charlie stops the wedding, but he doesn’t tell Francie the real reason why, presumably because no one wants to break up on a vacation (oh, and because he’s a coward). So when Sydney tells her the truth post-Vegas, it’s a whole thing, and there’s a lot of screaming and crying (all from Francie, who doesn’t want to believe it’s true). Then, after Charlie admits the truth, there’s a lot of less-screamy crying (also from Francie, who is now heartbroken).
After two weeks with “The Box,” it was refreshing to get away from the hardcore Sydney spying stories and to get a little more personal. If only the personal stories hadn’t been kind of devastating.
Oh, who am I kidding? The devastation was worth it for the chance to see Dixon get the cool disguise for once.
Is Will getting himself into epic trouble? What did you think of the Vegas mission? Discuss in the comments!
