I didn't even know it was created by J. J. Abrams. I'm certainly not a fan of his work - I tried and bailed on his later programs Lost and Heroes - but in some respects, knowing it was an Abrams program meant I was prepared. I knew from experience that while he was pretty good at establishing a mystery (his "mystery box" storytelling engine) he was pretty lousy at following through on those mysteries.
The big "mystery box" of Alias is a Renaissance inventor called Rambaldi who created all sorts of fantastic inventions hundreds of years ago; throughout the series a variety of villains - chief among them, Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) - try to obtain Rambaldi's manuscripts and inventions while Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) attempt to keep them out of his hands. It's the only science fiction material in a program that otherwise was reasonably grounded.
The Rambaldi material drives a lot of episodes across all 5 seasons but since it was J. J. Abrams, I anticipated that there wasn't much point in speculating as to where the Rambaldi plot was headed. Instead, I resolved I would enjoy the ride - take in the Rambaldi plots as just a MacGuffin that keeps the storytelling engine running. I think it helped a lot - I think I enjoyed the series much more than I otherwise would have. Certainly online, it seems that a lot of people complained during the show's original airing that the Rambaldi plots were basically impossible to follow and the least-interesting aspect of the show.
In time, I even grew fond of the Rambaldi stuff. It disappeared for most of season 3 (apparently in response to criticisms from the network) and when it came back in the last half of that season, I was actually happy to see it return - even though it led to maybe the least believeable bit of sci-fi nonsense in the series (where a drug created by Rambaldi caused a character to write out an algebraic equation using "muscle memory").
Alias changed quite a bit from one season to the next and I have thoughts about all of them. Be warned that I am going to spoil a lot...
The series begins with Sydney Bristow as a grad student who confides to her fiancé that she's really a CIA agent. Sydney's superior Arvin Sloane has the fiancé assassinated in retaliation. It's only then that Sydney learns Sloane isn't really with the CIA, he's running a rogue faction called SD6 and most of her fellow agents are likewise deluded into believing they're running CIA missions. Sydney learns her father Jack (Victor Garber) is likewise in SD6 but he's working as a double agent for the CIA. Sydney shares her information with the real CIA and agent Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) becomes her handler; to help bring down SD6, Sydney must work as a double agent.
One very appealing part of the first season is that every episode ended on a cliffhanger. I'm sure that helped bring back viewers during the original airing - it certainly keeps you watching until the end of each episode as during this season the action would always ramp up in the last few minutes, rather than wind down the way other television programs did.
The oddest thing about the series set-up is that Sydney was supposed to be a grad student. She only occasionally appeared on campus during the 1st season and had just a few scenes here and there where her professor would express disapproval with her work. Her studies were supposed represent her real life and what she wanted for herself, but it was almost always out-of-focus in the series. Instead, she was a CIA double agent working with SD6 who, additionally, had given her a cover identity as a bank employee. It was way too much; the bank cover identity was likewise unimportant (she would pay lip service to it as an explanation to her friends as to why she was constantly making international trips). Season 2 dropped the grad student aspect as Sydney declared she'd graduated off-screen, with Vaughn even quipping, "When the hell did you have time to take a class this year?"
Part of Sydney's attempted "normal life" drama also involved her friends, who were not (initially) part of the spy dramas - Will (Bradley Cooper) and Francie (Merrin Dungey). Francie primarily supplied relationship drama with her boyfriend troubles; Will was a reporter who gradually got drawn into the spy drama as he was unwittingly pursuing a story that led him directly to SD6. The season 1 Will plot is very good, as we in the audience possess knowledge Will doesn't and realize how much danger he's placing himself into.
The character of Jack Bristow is difficult to get a reading on at first and that's by design (the original intro would include Sydney referring to him as "a man I barely know - my father"). During the 1st season at times I was left to wonder if he really was a double agent or if he was playing the CIA and SD6 at the same time. As it turns out, what I was slowly picking up on is that Jack is extremely devoted to his daughter and places her wellbeing (or, what he believes to be her wellbeing) above any other considerations. It helped make Jack a stand-out character and throughout the series they'd find good ways to use his love for Sydney resulting in his taking extreme measures.
I knew of actor Ron Rifkin's work only from a season he spent as a recurring character on ER and now that I've seen him as the series' arch-villain Sloane, I wonder why I haven't seen more of Rifkin's work. Even though Sloane began the series by ordering the assassination of Sydney's fiancé, Alias loved to introduce Sloane's sympathetic qualities and continue to suggest that he might be repentant and seek atonement almost all the way to the end of the series. What kept him pretty firmly in the villain camp was that Sloane was pathologically unable to accept personal responsibility; he continually lectured Sydney how "circumstances" had forced his hand, as though he had no agency of his own. He would be an infuriating character in the wrong hands but Rifkin managed the balancing act very well.
I should also note this season had a very good two-parter with guest star Quentin Tarantino as an agent of a third power who broke into SD6 to pilfer their Rambaldi archive. It's a dynamic story inspired by Die Hard that raised the stakes just when the first season really needed it.
This is the year where Sydney's personal life was phased out and not only because she finished grad school off-screen. Francie's new thing this season was running a diner. You'd think the diner would be the new civilian hangout place for Sydney between missions but nope, apparently this was an ABC series, not a WB series. Instead the diner barely ever turned up and Sydney's moments between missions continued to be set in her apartment.
I found Will's 2nd year plot to be a bit disappointing; him being drawn further into the world of espionage was a welcome development because he was such a fish-out-of-water compared to the rest of the cast. But Will spent about half the season drifting by in the background with no particular arc until in the 2nd half he became an unwitting security leak and the series repeatedly dumped terrible things upon him.
The series made a huge change in the season's 12th episode, where the CIA successfully shut down SD6 and their bosses, the Alliance. It's effective - a very abrupt termination of the ongoing plot that does leave the viewer wondering what will happen next. At the same time, what was the point of all the Alliance plots through the first year and a half, beyond giving Sloane something to do? The same episode Sydney and her friends finally went after the Alliance is the episode the Alliance were beaten for good (off-screen, of course).
I guess the premise of Sydney as a double agent couldn't go on forever, but I had been looking forward to seeing how a new wrinkle would develop. The show had been building up the villain Sark (David Anders), who was working for Sydney's mother Irina (Lena Olin) against SD6. Sark seemingly defected to SD6 but Sydney was well aware he wasn't truly loyal to the organization. This created a new dilemma for Sydney - how to maintain her front of supposed loyalty to SD6 when Sark was aware she was really with the CIA and her likewise unable to expose Sark to them. But almost as soon as Sark joined SD6, SD6 went away. Dilemma averted!
The 12th episode is also where Sydney and Vaughn became a couple. There'd certainly been plenty of romantic tension between them, although I was a little taken aback when they stated in that episode that they couldn't be together until SD6 were beaten; then they beat SD6 later that episode and hooked up. That again felt like something that could have been teased out longer.
Still, these are pretty minor quibbles; what made the 12th episode so good is that they stopped the SD6 storyline before it got boring. That there were still plenty of stories left in the premise is only to the series' credit.
I should also make mention of the appearances of Sydney's mother Irina in this season. Irina spent most of the 1st half of the season as a prisoner in CIA custody. The first time Sydney went to see her - and the camera carefully panned around the bars of Irina's cell, showing just subtle glimpses of Irina - I remarked to my wife, "why are they filming her like she's a Jurassic Park dinosaur?" That became my repeated remark every time someone went to see Irina in her cell.
There were some really big guest stars this season that included Faye Dunaway, Rutger Hauer, Ethan Hawke, Christian Slater, David Carradine and Danny Trejo.
This season shouldn't work, but it did. The previous season's cliffhanger ending revealed Sydney had forgotten an entire year of her life. Usually when an ongoing work of fiction performs a massive time-skip it doesn't pan out, but this worked - partly because it left Sydney with a mystery to figure out (and the solution was actually good, despite the show's creator).
The first half of this season where Sydney was constantly befuddled at how her friends' lives had changed and her old relationships had become fraught (other than that of her father - Jack remained reliable as ever) was good character drama and kept the show from getting too comfortable. This is also probably the only season where Sloane was more-or-less one of the good guys.
Some big guest stars this season included Djimon Hounsou, Quentin Tarantino, Vivica A. Fox, Ricky Gervais, David Cronenberg and Isabella Rossellini.
The big addition to the cast this season is Nadia (Mia Maestro), Sidney's half-sister. I liked Nadia but I don't think she really fit the program. Her presence should have resulted in good character drama because she was devoted to her father (Sloane) and her sister (Sydney) and would therefore be torn between them. But the series never pushed Nadia too hard; she was never forced into the sort of moral compromises that Sydney so often had to make. There was a sense that Nadia was too pure and wholesome to do anything wrong; that left her kinda just there. I was interested to see how her dynamic with Jack would pan out (particularly as the season opened with Jack having supposedly murdered Irina) but not much happened there either. She was also set up with Vaughn's friend Weiss (Greg Grunberg) as a romantic interest but they basically remained forever at the same stage - flirtatious but not serious.
Some big guest stars this season included Angela Bassett, Joel Grey, Michael McKean, Isabella Rossellini and Gina Torres.
And this is where the series ended; apparently ABC axed the show mid-season but gave them enough time to wrap up their story. Just about every character of significance came back for the last season, even unimportant characters like Sydney's old professor or Vaughn's boss from the 1st season.
This is the season where Jennifer Garner was pregnant and there were a lot of cast shufflings going on. Three new characters were introduced to replace those who'd left, the newbies being Rachel Gibson (Rachel Nichols), Renne Rienne (Elodie Bouchez) and Thomas Grace (Balthazar Getty). And now -- come on! -- if your real name is Balthazar Getty you have got to get a more dynamic character name than Thomas Grace!
Since Sydney was pregnant in the season 5 opener I assumed the two new female characters (Rachel and Renee) were brought in so that the series would retain strong female leads even if Garner had to miss a few episodes (or at the very least, couldn't perform any stunts for a few episodes). As it turned out, Garner took a 4-month break after giving birth but Alias just took a hiatus on her behalf; when she returned, it was to wrap up the series.
Consequently, Renee's character didn't get too far off the ground. She was set up as a terrific spy and fighter but not a team player. She would disappear for long stretches of time so I don't think audiences were given enough to connect with. Rachel, however, worked out very well; as basically a normal person caught in an espionage plot, I felt Rachel covered Will's season 2 plot more successfully and her backstory as being a CIA agent recruited into a rogue agency gave her obvious parallels to Sydney. Episodes where Sydney would coach Rachel in how to become an undercover agent were pretty good and certainly showed a different side to Sydney.
It all wrapped up with a two-hour finale that I felt was very solid. I enjoyed delving into this program and I'm certainly pleased my wife encouraged me to give it a chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment