TV.com

Alphas Season 1 Episode 11

Original Sin

Favorite

Watched It I've Watched This 11

Next
Episode Previous
Episode

8.6

User Rating

194 votes

Your Rating: 10
Your Rating: 9.5
Your Rating: 9
Your Rating: 8.5
Your Rating: 8
Your Rating: 7.5
Your Rating: 7
Your Rating: 6.5
Your Rating: 6
Your Rating: 5.5
Your Rating: 5
Your Rating: 4.5
Your Rating: 4
Your Rating: 3.5
Your Rating: 3
Your Rating: 2.5
Your Rating: 2
Your Rating: 1.5
Your Rating: 1

Rate Now

EPISODE REVIEWS
By TV.com Users

Write A Review

Episode Summary

EDIT

Free Trial / Subscription

VUDU

Buy

AIRED: 9/26/11

Rosen and his team must choose sides when Red Flag launches a full-out assault on the Department of Defense.

FAN RECAP

Fan Episode Reviews (4)

A great first season finale giving us more background for Dr. Rosen, more information on Red Flag, and numerous moral conundrums.

9.5

By rkoenn, Oct 15, 2011

This episode finished season one with excellence. We find out more about Dr. Rosen and his relationship with alphas and his family. We find out a huge amount of more information on Red Flag, its' makeup, and its' plans for the future. We see a military style attack on a group of Red Flag alphas that has huge moral overtones about society in general. We see a huge amount of raw emotion from the team in reaction to what happens during this attack. We see near the end what Red Flag's plans are for the future. And for a super denouement we see Dr. Rosen testify to a congressional committee about what should be done about alphas and that the testimony is secretly broadcast to the world alerting it to the fact there are alphas in society. This happens without the committee's knowledge but once they are alerted they shut down Rosen's testimony as quickly as possible. This certainly was a fantastic episode with the action, intrigue, and moral situations it portrayed while opening up season two for a most interesting start.moreless
DO YOU AGREE?
2 2

Flag
Share Hide
Great season finale although a bit worring concering the future of the show.

10

By mobilehead, Oct 15, 2011

I must admit that even if "Alphas" looks for me pretty similar to "4400" and to some episodes of the first season of "Fringe" I enjoy watching it. It contains some freshness of the ideas presented. Throughout the whole season there was only one episode that was weak and the show could easily go without it. The rest of ten episodes were great or good what is very difficult to obtain when you are producing a new show. One thing worries me much - the season finale. I don't think that going public idea was good idea. I see that the show is going the path many other shows went in the past and it ended badly for them. I don't want that to happen and I think that writers have some hidden agenda in their plan of action.

I am looking forward to the second season of the show hoping it is going to be at least as enjoyable as the first one.moreless
DO YOU AGREE?
1 1

Flag
Share Hide
To whom does the future belong?

9.5

By Bob_Scrivens, Oct 07, 2011

"Original Sin" was about facing up to mistakes, whether a failed marriage, a ruined father/daughter relationship, or a botched DOD raid. This episode belonged to Dr. Rosen on each of those accounts; the other characters had remarkable things to do, but the core of this episode was a moral dilemma owned by Rosen and carried by actor David Strathairn.

The father/daughter dynamic was well handled. It might seem rather silly and overblown for a young lady to be acting more like a snotty tweener, but Danielle is an Alpha who feels and shares everything; many Alphas show personality defects related to their powers, so the character is actually credible, and well-played. Rosen has to face up to using his daughter's ability instead of mending the marriage himself. Danielle's abilities actually spurred Rosen to research Alphas in the first place. Their bond, while strained, is more intimate and intricate than most on this show, and there's plenty more here to explore in season two.

And then there's The Big Mistake: the DOD raid, which they went ahead with even after realizing that they were set up by Red Flag's militant wing. The result: plenty of action, which was well-directed. And plenty of regret. The team has come to realize that right and wrong is not a simple matter. They are on ONE wrong side; Stanton Parish's Red Flag is ANOTHER wrong side. There is no "right" side as of yet, and the two "wrong" sides try to assume the high ground, but fail in their own way.

On the DOD side, there's Sullivan, with her "the-only-good-mutant-is-a-dead-mutant," "kill-em-all-and-let-God-sort-em-out" attitude. (Which seemed a little more like Clay's bag ... I'm not sure what to make of the blurred distinctions between the two characters.) After the raid, a plain setup replete with fatalities, Sullivan calls it a success. Plainly, she was not about to own a mistake. Government workers, honestly.

On the Red Flag side, there's Stanton Parish. Unusually, he doesn't seem to suffer from the personality defects that plague other Alphas. He says that his brain-body connection is enhanced ... we don't know what this means beyond an apparently huge lifespan, but we can guess that it might make him a dangerous guy to tangle with. Certainly, living for at least 175 years has given him wisdom in his years, and enough time to work out a manifesto and a will to control his possibly limitless future. "The future belongs to people like me," he says. This was not some rosy future he's envisioning, and the phrase was not random (go to YouTube and look up "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" if you don't know what he's getting at). Parish also knows exactly how to tempt Rosen to his cause, and his ploy might have worked if Rosen did not have his wits and his morals.

Rosen realized that both wrong sides value secrecy. In a brilliant move, he took that secrecy away, and the status quo was upset irrevocably. Parish's uncontestedly-owned Red Flagis exposed, and the DOD has its use of shadowy force and facilities at Binghamton put under scrutiny. We don't know what the results will be; certainly, Dr. Rosen will suffer in some way for exposing both sides. This was a good upend-er: everything got more complicated for everyone, and there are opportunities aplenty for repurcussions.

This episode shows how balanced Alphas is: they handle character moments as well as they handle slam-bang action. The two lines intersected with Anna's death. Gary, who just minutes earlier got some good laughs phoning his mom, got to switch to pathos when he found his friend's body. Kudos to Ryan Cartwright's performance. The core cast is believable when they collectively own up to their mistake: They can't keep doing what they're doing.

One thing is certain: Alphas is now its own universe. Previously, we the viewers could assume that we were watching a show set in our world, where these things might be happening in secret. With the secret exposed, the show now takes place in a version of our world, where knowledge of people with abilities has been made public. Will the public even believe that Alphas exist? Will the believers react with fear and paranoia, or fascination and cooperation? Who can say? Just as it was possible to showcase any Alpha talent, now there are many possible reactions by the public. A new dimension has been added. Brave New World, indeed.moreless
DO YOU AGREE?
12 2

Flag
Share Hide
Smashing season finale!

9.5

By GreyMinerva, Oct 07, 2011

I never really liked Heroes. I don't know why - I tried watching it, watched quite a lot of it in fact, but I kept getting depressed by how horribly wrong everything always went for them.

Alphas, on the other hand, I like. And I mean really, really like. Maybe because the characters are more likeable? Maybe because there's teamwork? Maybe because there is - so far - no braineating supervillain? I don't know - I just know that Alphas is just the right mix of procedural and sci-fi for me, with an ensemble cast that just keeps growing on me.

In the season finale, we meet Dr. Rosen's unknown alpha daughter, get ready for an epic showdown between government forces and Red Flags leadership, and watch Dr. Rosen be AWESOME.I have to say, I suspected Daniellenearly from the start. Her appearance was just too fortuitous, especially with her carrying The McGuffin - the big clue to lead our intrepid heroes to the big showdown. Actually, it was the way she just "wandered" into the briefingroom as if totally clueless - the camera lingered on her just a bit much. ;)To find out she's working with Mr. Über-Alpha was no stretch - especially when it became clear that he WANTED Team Awesome to crash the Red Flag party.Anyway: Tragedy struck for supercute couple Gary and Anna, as she died in the takedown of Red Flag. The way Gary went berserk was pretty epic - great opportunity for the actor, who manages to present a pretty annoying character as engaging and heartwarming on a regular basis, but does not get a lot of opportunity for ass-kicking.

And we finally got to lay eyes on Mr. Bad Guy himself, an apparently immortal Alpha with a penchant for secrecy and great plans for the war between regular Homo Sapiens and Homo Superior".But the Crowning Moment of Awesome was definitely Dr. Rosen laying the smack down on the closed Congressional hearing dealing with the alpha problem. Going public was gutsy, glorious and will definitely cause some "complications", as Mr. Parish would put it. :D

Can't wait for season 2 - this season has definitely set the bar high for the rest of the storyline!moreless
DO YOU AGREE?
7 1

Flag
Share Hide

See All Fan Reviews

Cast & Crew: STARS

EDIT

David Strathairn	Dr. Lee Rosen
Ryan Cartwright	Gary Bell
Warren Christie	Cameron Hicks
Azita Ghanizada	Rachel Pirzad
Laura Mennell	Nina Theroux
Malik Yoba	Bill Harken

See All Cast & Crew

Cast & Crew: RECURRING AND GUESTS

EDIT

Valerie Cruz	Kathy Sullivan	Guest Star
Liane Balaban	Anna	Guest Star
Evan Sabba	Isaac Hale	Guest Star
John Pyper-Ferguson	Stanton Parish	Recurring Role
Kathleen Munroe	Danielle Sophia Rosen	Recurring Role

See All Cast & Crew

Watch Online

Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

FILTER BY TYPE

TRIVIA (1)
ADD TRIVIA
- When Anna was introduced in "Rosetta," she was actively working with two Alpha Red Flag terrorists who planned to blow up a pharmaceutical plant. However, here she is presented without explanation or reason as a leading representative of Red Flag's more peaceful branch.
  EDIT SHARE
QUOTES (8)
ADD QUOTES
- Isaac: Don't make me kill you. It makes me tired, and then I get cranky.
  EDIT SHARE
- Bill: Hello, where is everybody? Who's manning the fort?
  Gary: It's not a fort, Bill. That's a bad metaphor. Forts have ramparts and cannons. We have desks and carpets.
  Bill: You sitting in the boss' chair? What, are you in charge now? Where is everybody?
  Gary: Yeah, Bill, I am in charge when no one else is here.
  EDIT SHARE
- Bill: I'm fine. The doctor, uh, said that infarction actually normalized me.
  Gary: Infar...
  Bill: Yeah, so... no more overdrive, no more underdrive. I'm optimal. So the rest was only precautionary.
  Gary: Bill.
  Bill: Yeah.
  Gary: Infarction. Come on.
  Bill: Gary, not now. Listen.
  Gary: Fart.
  Bill: Listen, we've got to focus.
  Gary: I'm being immature.
  EDIT SHARE
- Gary: She's at a no-star hotel. It has one review. "Don't stay here."
  EDIT SHARE
- Rosen: Gary, you spoke with Anna? I expressly told you not to do that.
  Bill: Doc, I told him the same thing, okay? But he's his own man now. Just--just give him a minute.
  Gary: Yeah, yeah, give me a minute. I'm my own man. Thanks, Bill.
  EDIT SHARE
- Gary: No, I'm not coming home tonight, Mom. I.. I can't tell you. but my friends need my help... all of my friends. Yeah, I love you too, Mom. Mom, please, don't cry. Listen, Bill's gonna protect me. He's my partner, he--he's very strong. One time he pushed me over, which was better than taking a bullet. I said don't cry.
  EDIT SHARE
- Gary: Dr. Ro--Dr. Rosen. Dr. Rosen, you should let me go and talk to--you should let me talk to Anna. 'Cause I could get them to surrender. I always get people to do what I want.
  Bill: Yeah, you do that, Gary.
  EDIT SHARE
- Rosen: So what I am advocating, Senator, is not more guns or money or even a bigger prison. I am calling for light. For transparency. An end to secrets. And so I say to all of you here... and to all you watching, Alphas exist. They are among us. They are our friends and our spouses. They are our sons and daughters. They are indeed us, and they are not going away.
  EDIT SHARE
NOTES (1)
ADD NOTES
- International Airdates:
  Canada: September 26, 2011 on SPACE
  EDIT SHARE
ALLUSIONS (1)
ADD ALLUSIONS
- Rosen: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
  Referencing Won't Get Fooled Again (1971), one of the best-known songs of the rock band The Who, which is used as the theme for CSI: Miami.
  EDIT SHARE