Sydney sprinted through the traffic, brought to a standstill on a Paris street by her own doing, chasing after a man carrying a very important case � in it was a computer containing valuable information Sydney's organization had sent her to obtain. She knocked civilians out of the way and dodged opening doors as the man fled. Unable to close ground, Sydney leapt atop a car and hopped from one vehicle to another, cutting across the traffic and quickly gaining on her target. When she deemed herself close enough, Sydney launched herself from one vehicle and landed a roundhouse kick to the fleeing man's head. He spun around, hitting the ground unconsciously, and the briefcase landed a dozen feet away. Sydney grabbed it just as one car, miraculously freed from the traffic snarl, sped backwards and stopped beside her. The passenger door opened and her partner, behind the wheel, shouted, "Get in!"

That was a scene from last night's Alias. But it's not that original, or rather, that uncommon. At least not the end of it: how many times have you seen a show/movie wherein one person in a chase is picked up by a friend or partner? Yeah, quite a few. And how many times does the driver yell, "Get in!"?

Exactly: Every one.

Talk about superfulous dialogue. What else is she going to do? She's just made downtown midday traffic in Paris come to a halt and blown the roof off a van while her partner shot the back window of a car out and rendered the passengers inside unconscious, all in broad daylight. She's then seen running through the street, chasing someone who fled from the car, and then beats the crap out of him and steals what he was holding. A car backs up with her partner � a man once her enemy who brought himself over to SD-6's side � for the mission behind the wheel, and the door is flung open. Is she going to refuse? Is her decision making that altered in such a state of excitement? Is the adrenaline rush too much?

Of course, none of these is the case. It's all the writer's fault. Or maybe the director. Maybe they shot the scene and when Sark sped back, screeched to a halt and threw the door open to pick up Sydney, the director watched it and said, "We need something else there. What can break the scene up? How will the audience know what Sydney's supposed to do next? What's Sydney's motivation for getting in the car?" I mean ... COME ON ... as if, in the event this actually could conceivably happen in real life, is someone in Sydney's position going to stand there and think about whether she wants to get in the car with a man once her enemy who has now come to work for her organization.

But even more amusing than that was the holiday greetings from the cast of Alias. You know them: throughout December, we see the actors from our favorite shows posed together like a living Christmas portrait, wearing festive sweaters, offering "warm wishes" and "happy holidays" to us and our families. But for Alias, they picked the most whacked out combination of characters they could muster. Seated on a couch in what looked like the set of Sydney's and Francine's house were Merrin Dungey (Francine), Jennifer Garner and Lena Olin (Irina Derevko, Sydney's lying, cheating, death-faking, KGB-spying mother). Standing behind them were Victor Garber (who built the Titanic � er, who plays Jack Bristow, Sydney's father), Michael Vartan (CIA agent Michael Vaughn) and David Anders (Sark, the aforementioned enemy-turned-suspicious ally of SD-6, which is really the enemy, but only certain characters and clear-headed viewers know). I mean, what thought went into that grouping? I guess most of the humor comes from the characters' makeup. You have two questionable bad guys (Sark and Irina) lumped in there with the two noble double agents (Jack and Sydney) and the CIA handler (Vaughn). And then there's Francine, the most minor of all the characters on the show. Undercover agents, spies and allies have been killed off after just two minutes of screen time and had more importance and involvement in the plot than Francine, who's biggest contributions have been finding a flight stub to Italy in one of Sydney's coats when she said she'd been to Seattle or somewhere American, and getting suspicious (just last night) of Sydney's and Will's shutting up whenever she walked into the room.

Ah yes, Will. "Willage Idiot." Even Will � the nosy reporter who ran into trouble and nearly got himself killed for asking too many of the wrong questions but then did uncover the secret of SD-6 and Sydney's secret, only to be set up as a drug addict by the CIA to cover his tracks and save his life, but now he can't get a job and has started doing research for the CIA and now is taking the psychological test in order to be more of an agent ��he would've made more sense on the couch. He or Marshall, the tech nerd at SD-6. And ��hello? � what about Ron Rifkin, who plays Sloane? I mean, if they're mixing the good and the bad characters, why not go with the important and recognizable ones? It may be possible that people who've watched Alias from the beginning have never even seen Francine simply because they just happened to come back late from the kitchen or bathroom after a commercial break.

So yeah, happy holidays from the whacked-out spy gang on Alias.

But that was just the end of my weekend. Saturday morning, Casey and I made it to Silver Spring in four hours and proceeded to spend the afternoon eating cookies and playing games and looking through old photographs at the gathering of mom's college pals and their families. Fourteen of us this year, including the first time all five children have made the annual bake-off since 1993, my senior year of high school. Mom and three of her college friends have remained in remarkably close contact, baking cookies every December since their senior year 30 years ago and spending Memorial Day weekends on Cape Cod for the last 20. I am the oldest of the five kids, the last of whom is now in his next-to-last year of college.

Casey and I left Silver Spring around 9:30 ��after the 14 of us downed four-and-a-half pizzas and watched Trading Spaces, which the parents had never seen and got a kick out of ("he's painting the countertop?!. We went to the Froggy Bottom pub near Georgetown and met up with her Bucknell friends as well as my pal Matt two of his acquaintances. After the bar, Casey and I followed Matt back to his Capitol Hill apartment to sleep.

Yesterday, on a sunny and rather warm day in the capital, we walked to Union Station for lunch at the Capital City Brewery. Before heading home, Casey and I drove out to the FDR Memorial along the Tidal Basin and strolled through it. I like Washington, D.C., as a city. It can be relatively easy to drive through if you keep calm and don't get worried about diagonal streets and getting lost in bad neighborhoods. We made it from Matt's to the Basin with little trouble and I found my way back to 395 and then 95 later with ease. During our walk to lunch, we passed the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Hart Senate Office Building (the one shut down for so long because of the anthrax scare). I'm always a little in awe walking past the buildings, knowing their historical and governmental importance. On the way to the Basin, we drove down Independence Ave., passing the Smithsonian museums along the southern edge of the Mall. It was nice to be able to spend a little time actually in D.C. before leaving.

We even made it home in less than four hours, and that was from the southern edge of the city; whereas on the way in it took us longer just to get to a northern suburb in the rain. While a fun two days, it was a little tiring, and now I've got to make it through this Monday, the end of which I won't know until someone says, "OK, Dan, you're good to go now." And I've still got Christmas presents to figure out, let alone buy.