I will have to disagree.
By condensed do you mean the code could be implemented better? Or do you think there are too many useless methods?
Just some things I have noticedl
Backbones Controller/History beats most jQuery plugins and generally Backbone.js will still be smaller then the plugins for example jQuery BBQ or Baluptons implementation.
The Backbone.sync method forces you to route all ajax calls through one gateway which means you have no code redundancy.
Backbone is built to work along side of underscore.js which is also super light weight. Also very fast at manipulating the DOM and includes a default templating system which works great.