TV Review: ALPHAS – Season 1 – “Original Sin”

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Contributing Writer

Posted: September 28th, 2011 / 09:55 AM

Stars: David Strathairn, Ryan Cartwright, Warren Christie, Warren Christie, Azita Ghanizada, Laura Mennell, Malik Yoba, Valerie Cruz, John Pyper-Ferguson, Kathleen Munroe, Liane Balaban
Writers: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe & Zak Penn & Michael Karnow, story by Zak Penn & Michael Karnow, series created by Zak Penn & Michael Karnow
Director: Nick Copus
Network: Syfy, Mondays @ 10 PM
Airdate: September 26, 2011

HEROES left this until the very end of the series while TRUE BLOOD started here. ALPHAS has left it until the end of Season 1, but with Season 2 already set, “Original Sin” sets the stage for big changes next year. Dr. Rosen (David Strathairn), with some help from the technologically-gifted Gary (Ryan Cartwright) alerts the public to the existence of Alphas among us.

As the episode opens, Rosen’s team of Alphas is being pressured by Sullivan (Valerie Cruz) to find more operatives of Red Flag, the Alpha group that is deemed a terrorist organization. Rosen et al are tracking a killer who has targeted a drug-addicted young Alpha woman, Danielle (Kathleen Munroe), and her boyfriend. The killer murders the boyfriend and escapes, as does Danielle – who is Rosen’s estranged daughter, with the ability to make others feel whatever she wants them to just by touching her.

Gary tracks Danielle to a dilapidated motel. The father/daughter reunion between Rosen and Danielle in strained, but they at least begin talking to one another after the killer finds them and almost eradicates them. They are saved when the killer is shot by an unseen gunman. At Alpha headquarters, Rachel (Azita Ghanizada) detects that the “ruby necklace” that Danielle stole is actually a portable computer drive containing the manifesto of one Stanton Parish (John Pyper-Ferguson), an Alpha whom Bill (Malik Yoba) was warned about several episodes back. Parish’s manifesto is very popular with Red Flag – it’s all about the coming clash between Alphas and normal humans. Parish is believed to have died in the ‘70s, but the team discovers that not only is he alive, but he’s been around for centuries without aging.

The hard drive indicates there will be a Red Flag meeting the following morning. Rosen and his Alpha team show up, and so does a government tactical team. Listening to the chatter inside and making the others privy to it, Gary finds that this group of Red Flag people aren’t plotting violence. Instead, they are arguing about the best way to “come out” to the general public. Rosen realizes that all the signs point to Parish having set up not only the meaning, but the government response so that he can continue to operate in the shadows. Rosen tries to get Sullivan to call off the raid, but Sullivan determinedly views everyone in Red Flag as a terrorist. The raid gets violent. Everyone on the team winds up getting shot at by friendly fire, and Gary finds the corpse of his brilliant friend Anna (Liane Balaban) after the bullets have stopped.

At home, Rosen apologizes to Danielle for having manipulated her when she was a child so that she’d comfort her mother and desensitize her to Rosen’s preoccupation with work. Rosen asks Danielle to touch him, so he can know what she feels. Danielle finally obliges, and Rosen is stunned and moved beyond words.

Taking a nighttime swim in his pool, Rosen is confronted by Parish, who wants Rosen to help him keep the existence of Alphas a secret. Parish believes this serves both of them well.

Even though Rosen and all of his team are appalled by the shootout, the government is so happy that they’ve invited Rosen to address Congress. He can now have all the money and personnel he wants, including more Alphas.Gary uses his ability to patch Rosen’s microphone into every communication device inNorth America. When Rosen makes his speech, he reveals the existence of Alphas and makes a plea for tolerance.

Watching this (like the rest of the population), Parish is taken aback by Rosen’s choice. Danielle, who turns out to be linked to Parish, tells her Alpha friend that she had warned him this would happen.

“Original Sin” is packed with incident, action and character study, so much so that it’s sometimes hard to savor moments, as they fly by so quickly. The episode focuses most strongly on Strathairn’s Rosen. The actor never makes a false move; we can feel the weight of every decision and every mistake pressing down on Rosen so fully that his climactic rebellion makes absolute sense. The other main character who gets a lot of focus here is Cartwright’s Gary. Cartwright is always true to Gary’s autism at the same time that he makes the character often deliberately very funny and, as here, quite affecting. We’ve come to like Balaban’s unique Anna and Cartwright, in his tight portrayal of grief, lets us share Gary’s pain at her loss.

The staging of the raid on the Red Flag meeting by director Nick Copus is bigger, longer and more intense than most, if not all, of the action seen so far on ALPHAS. It progresses beat by beat until we feel ourselves enmeshed in not just another “and here’s a burst of gunfire that will move the plot forward,” but in the chaos, confusion and terror that such a situation would realistically create.

There are any number of real-world allegories that can be seen with Rosen, someone who is sympathetic to a minority without being a member of that minority himself, deciding to speak for that minority, some of whom want him to use his authority to do so and some of whom passionately do not. It makes sense both logically and dramatically as a season finale and promises big changes when ALPHAS returns next year. It also proves once again that ALPHAS is a series that deserves its renewal.