Better living through my uterus

Main Entry: agent
Pronunciation: 'A-j&nt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin agent-, agens, from Latin, present participle of agere to drive, lead, act, do; akin to Old Norse aka to travel in a vehicle, Greek agein to drive, lead
1 : one that acts or exerts power
2 a : something that produces or is capable of producing an effect : an active or efficient cause b : a chemically, physically, or biologically active principle
3 : a means or instrument by which a guiding intelligence achieves a result
4 : one who is authorized to act for or in the place of another: as a : a representative, emissary, or official of a government b : one engaged in undercover activities (as espionage) : SPY c: a business representative (as of an athlete or entertainer)

From webster.com

I'm a big fan of Alias. Yes, Alias was the show about the English lit grad student who worked as a kick-ass spy and wore crazy wigs. In later years it was about a woman who took her strong liberal arts education and didn't follow the expected path for somebody with a Master's in English lit. Instead of working as an adjunct at a community college and getting drunk often to cope with the insanity of it all, she defeated nefarious terrorist organizations run by Europeans hell bent on fulfilling the mysterious and coded prophecies of Milo Rambaldi, or just achieving world domination.

Of course if there was any really scary torturing and murder that needed to be done by somebody who is never shown to have a conscious, they left it to characters with a little darker skin pigment. This, by the way, wasn't why I was a fan. It was why I was a conflicted fan. Anyway, as the series came to a close this year my conflict rose up again as Sydney dealt with her Mommy issues by ... becoming a Mommy.

Now, I'm not against parenthood as a concept. I'm all for other people choosing to breed and raise good citizens, it means I don't have to. But Alias went beyond all that. It set up a dichotomy, you can either work in the dangerous world at large or you can be a fulfilled and responsible parent. You can't be both. There isn't room for both.

Sydney Bristow, the heroine of this show, is often compared to her mother, Irina. While she was studying lit, she thought she was following in her mother's footsteps through her education and financing her education through her job as a super-spy. However, it was the other way around. Mommy wasn't a teacher who died in a tragic car crash, like Sydney was always told. Irina was a deadly enemy super-spy who's alias was teaching, but really she married Sydney's father to steal secrets from him. And the car crash was just her extraction. Even one of the Rambaldi prophecies was misinterpreted so that they believed Sydney as the chosen one about to wreak havoc, when it was really Irina. Sydney was the "good" female super-spy, and Irina was the "bad" one.

As the series came to a close, and this is where people might want to stop reading if they want to remain unspoiled, Irina came back to steal another Rambaldi artifact and to help Sydney give birth to her daughter at the same time -- Irina is a good multi-tasker. But not good enough. Before she leaves Sydney with her newborn daughter, Irina tells her that when Irina held her the first time she knew she could not be a mother and an agent. In the last episodes she goes on to plot to murder millions of people in an overwrought plot to obtain power -- agency if you will -- for herself. The only thing she has ever really wanted. This obsession with power -- with maintaining her identity as an agent -- leads her to physically turn away from her daughter and life and towards the symbol of power and death. And the prophecy was about Sydney afterall, but not in the way it was first interpreted.

The ending of the last episode featured as flash-forward where our heroine has taken her mother's words and actions to heart. She is no longer an agent -- going so far as to remove herself from the world at large -- and she resists being pulled back. Instead she is a mother, and is happy, happy, happy.

Now, we can make the argument that the fathers in the show also can't balance being an agent and being a parent either. Jack Bristow always seemed to be an awkwardly earnest parent, and Sloane actually murdered his own daughter because she got in the way of his pursuit of the Rambaldi prophecies -- the location of his agency. However the weakling geek Marshall, who needed to be protected and saved for the longest time, has grown up to pump out virile boy sperm four times. He doesn't seem to be giving up his agency -- he is just adding to his identity by saving the world and being a father (of boys no less) -- even though we can only assume he has continued his work. And Sydney's old partner, Agent Dixon, struggled with finding balance between his two identities as father and agent but went on to become a deputy director ... again.

We can try to see the emphasis on parenthood as a positive movement within the series. There was always an aura of ridiculousness and excess to their missions and exploits. By maintaining that the really important work is not in the world, but in the home as parents, it emphasizes the importance of raising good citizens who won't try to take over the world. However, I'm left with the feeling that like Harry over at crookedtimber in the Alias world being an Agent and working in the world at large is the frivolous distraction from our real work, which is pumping out babies.

When Rachel is in deep cover in some nameless place somewhere she is denying -- or at least delaying -- her true calling, which is being a mother. Rachel has already been coded ambiguously, comments about Rachel not competing her evil friend for men and long lingering looks at Sydney while wearing shared pajamas made many a fan wonder if she was a lesbian. Until she slept with Sark. But that only proves that she's interested in men, not men exclusively. Especially cute, secretly evil men.

So I'm left wondering if this show, which featured a woman who was sensitive and driven, ultimately portrays women as being happiest when they are barefoot and pregnant. Working in the world as being as frivolous as spending my evenings doing jello-shots out of people's navels. Why does there have to be a choice between being in the world and being in the home? And why can't being in the world be good enough?