Still good over a illusory TV character’s genocide from years ago? Having difficulty vouchsafing go of that one part of your favorite series? Grieving a gone-too-soon show? We are, too — so any Wednesday, EW staffers will compensate reverence to something in a TV universe they’re still not over. This week, Kelly Connolly remembers an iconic line from a deteriorate 2 culmination of Alias.
Alias, as Buster Bluth knew, was a uncover about a spy. For 5 seasons, J.J. Abrams’ sci-fi-adjacent, make-you-fall-off-your-couch espionage disturb float rose and fell on a knowledge of one CIA agent: Jennifer Garner’s Sydney Bristow. And a uncover was never some-more retaining than when Sydney’s life was dismantled by a spoonful of coffee ice cream.
If it seemed like a grounds of Alias kept simplifying, that’s since it did. Sydney’s triple life (grad school; operative as a double representative for a CIA; progressing her cover during SD-6, a bend of an general crime ring populated by employees who believed they were doing black ops for a CIA) became a double life when SD-6 was broken median by deteriorate 2. She got her master’s grade dual episodes later, and a dishonesty seemed officious manageable: All she had to do was view and distortion to her friends about it.
But there are some complications, Alias knew, that make life easier, and as she mislaid a relations that helped her come adult for air, Sydney was submerged in a disfigured underworld. By a deteriorate 2 finale, her best crony Francie (Merrin Dungey) had been transposed by an matching double. Their ashamed contributor friend, Will (Bradley Cooper), who’d been dating Francie, put a pieces together and left Sydney a voicemail, though his partner rewarded his oddity by stabbing him and withdrawal him for passed in a bathtub.
After a prolonged day of globe-trotting, Sydney staid on a cot with “Francie,” digging into a pint of ice cream as she listened to a messages on her cell. A raging Will whispered that Francie was a double. Sydney’s countenance hardly shifted. She offering her crony a spoonful of ice cream, her crony accepted, and Sydney immune herself to “change out of these clothes.”
And then, as Sydney grabbed a gun from underneath her bed, Alt-Francie seemed in her doorway, aiming her possess weapon: “I only remembered — Francie doesn’t like coffee ice cream.”
Has there ever been a improved line? Of anything?
Hear this: If Alias had aired in a opposite amicable media climate, “Francie doesn’t like coffee ice cream” would have been 2003’s “Not great, Bob.” This line should have been a “You know nothing, Jon Snow” of a early millennium. It’s concept in a specificity. It invokes ice cream and carries a sniff of articulate about yourself in a third person. It has never unsuccessful me.
But this line is also Alias banishment on all cylinders, weaving musical impression beats into a many vast view business. Alias was a uncover about a view in a clarity that it was about how a chairman could be a spy. The whip-quick twists came with a tellurian cost; inversely, a bland took on heightened significance. Because Sydney knew her roommate’s ambience in ice cream, she gave herself an additional 60 seconds to ready to take her down — in a brutal, drawn-out quarrel that was also a series’ best.
With all out in a open, Sydney looked adult during Alt-Francie. “No, she doesn’t,” she replied. Allison, a lady wearing Francie’s face, kept Francie in benefaction moving in a approach an actor would a character. Sydney kept Francie in benefaction moving since Francie was her friend. Sydney Bristow was tangible by, infrequently exploited for, and eventually successful since of her empathy. Far from a James Bond indication of removed superspies who recharge on flings, Alias built a story around a lady who cared, displaying a womanlike protagonist who kicked donkey and was still authorised to cry about it later.
Two years later, though that’s another story.