After last week’s Rambaldilicious episode (which ended in a cliff-hanger), I had high hopes for this episode. Returning to the trend of good old Alias fun – espionage, fancy costumes, high stakes and the mysterious inventor from the sixteenth century. Alas, it was not meant to be. Rambaldi was nowhere in sight, the spy-game didn’t go anywhere until half way through the episode and Sydney (Jennifer Garner) barely even left the office and her dealings with Sloane (Ron Rifkin) were a just a short rehash of various other tongue-lashings. What’s more, ‘Marvin Sloane’ (Joel Grey) was also missing in action.

The first thing shouted at the screen was “What happened in Chile?!” After a heart pumping adventure in “Another Mister Sloane” I was at least expecting a half-decent continuation. It didn’t happen. Instead, the entire APO team went back to the office to work on stopping some more international terrorism with futuristic weapons (apart from Weiss – Greg Grunberg – who pretty much seemed to be the office gopher for the thirty seconds he appeared in the episode).

At first glance, a pretty big disappointment by all accounts. But what turned the episode around however was finally seeing Dixon (Carl Lumbly) back in the field. With Vaughn (Michael Vartan) as his wingman, the operation looked more like a training exercise – the CIA veteran training the Rookie. Given the fact that Vaughn has been with the agency for far longer than Marcus, it was an interesting notion. There was a strong rapport between the two agents, particularly as Vaughn exclaims “I would have had him…” only to receive the almost sarcastic response of “I know.” Of particular note is Dixon’s undercover fun which was a little reminiscent of Syd’s incident in “A Missing Link” during her encounter with Simon Walker (Justin Theroux).

Jack’s (Victor Garber) illness played an interesting part of the episode, particularly in the ‘discovery’ of the small implant in his hand. I must confess, watching Garber picking at his hand in such an OCD manner wearing the expression of a determined two-year old was a little on the funny side. Particularly that he is in the intelligence business. And with Michael McKean as his Doctor, there was no way the situation could be taken seriously. I swear, the man is a comedy genius so why he chose such a grim role in Alias is an interesting question. If you’ve seen him in either The X-Files (as Morris Fletcher) or Smallville (the infamous Perry White) then you will know exactly what I mean.

But as I said, by the half way point everything had turned around – the lacklustre mission suddenly became that much more interesting, Jack’s slowly developing illness took a personal turn and Nadia’s (Mia Maestro) emotional association with Sophia Vargas (Sonia Braga) helped bring the episode up to the Alias standard. But perhaps in a true geeky nit-picking fashion, I must ask the question why wasn’t Nadia more shocked when Sophia phoned her on her mobile phone (‘how did she get her number?’ we might wonder) or when she announced she would be arriving in L.A. (‘how did she know Nadia lived in L.A?’ we could also ask).

The biggest thing in the episode was the announcement of Elena’s shifty doings over the last decade by spying on the spies. Seventeen episodes in, finally some concrete disclosure of Jack and Sloane’s dealings have been made. But if that wasn’t enough, J.R. Orci threw in the revelation of who Elena actually is. The identity of the last Derevko sister has been speculated over heavily in the last few weeks (click here for details) and as it turns out, that speculation was justified…and correct. While the episode managed to hit the Alias benchmark, it fell-short of the Orci standard. Orci, who has given us episodes such as “Truth Takes Time” (which is in my opinion perhaps the best episode of Alias so far) and “Prelude” usually manages to provide an amazing balance between action, suspense and intregue - where was it in "A Clean Conscience"? And why was it so slow to manifest?

But there is still hope. The events of this episode was far from resolved leaving more questions than answers leaving an overall impression that this is just the calm before the storm. With a little bit of luck, the next episode will build upon them and bring this episode up a few notches. Then again, if the continuation of the last episode is any indication, I might be left shouting at the screen once again next week.