The team is back on fine form here in a funny and interesting season-opener commentary.

Apparently this episode went through several changes which J.J talks about, as well as the reasons behind them.

we get some brief insight into the FX-work and the stunt people used and they gush over their new HQ and the fact that it has movable panels that offers them some flexibility.

Ken Olin once again starts making fun of Jennifer Garner's mom which I approve of because it's funny and it makes for some continuity from previous commentaries.

The second part of the APO-commentary unfortunately loses some steam after the excellent first part. This commentary is very unfocused and the group alternates between laughing and snickering amongst themselves and sitting silent just watching the episode.

Things get worse when Jennifer Garner leaves and is hardly worth listening to after that.

We have a very subdued commentary-track here. You get the usual explanations about what location was used to portray what screen-location and some gushing over the characters and actors. Not much here that hasn't been covered in previous Alias-commentaries.

The most interesting stuff they touch upon is probably about the mandate they got from the network to modify the show to draw new viewers. They also expand upon their ideas about the episode, and it is a well thought-out episode, we get some nice character moments and it's quite emotional. Plus it has some wicked freezing effects. Not a very captivating commentary though.

I guess it's inevitable that a certain amount of repetition starts to set in at this point in a series-commentary, but it's starting to affect the listening experience negatively. This isn't a bad commentary but there's so much that's already been covered in previous outings, and for the most part it's the less than thrilling revelations about how great everyone is on the team and the like that wasn't all that entertaining to listen to the first time(s).

There are some good bits here though. The dark nature of the episode lends itself to some good commentary, they talk about the decision to make a horror-type episode and how that came about as a result of the networks new mandates. They also talk about how the network wanted to simplify things in the series because they were afraid people wouldn't comprehend what was happening but they preferred to keep things vague and trust the audiences intelligence.

If it had just been a bit tighter and focused on the production of the episode it would've been a much better commentary.