kmayes-80640
I love this show. That being said, it has some flaws. You can tell when it went downhill is when J.J. Abrams stopped working on it regularly. Season 1 is great, Season 2 is great, Season 3 was OK, Season 4 not so great, and I'm going to pretend Season 5 didn't happen. I'd have to agree with some of other reviewers on here, it seems like they ended up with a bunch of different writers that lost direction or understanding of what the show was about and where it was supposed to be going. It started out as a spy show with a hint of sci-fi, and ended up the other way around which was just weird. It seems like the only person who really understood the whole Rambaldi thing was JJ. I think that the actors did a good job with what they were given. Watch Season 1-3 if you want to check it out. Its on Netflix as of 8/16.
SnoopyStyle
College student Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is working for SD-6, a secret division within the CIA. Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) is the head and Marcus Dixon (Carl Lumbly) is her partner. Her friends Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper) and Francie Calfo are clueless to her double life. Then it's revealed that SD-6 is a vast criminal conspiracy opposed to the CIA. She gets Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) as her CIA handler. Her estranged father Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) is also a double agent inside to bring down SD-6.This is JJ Abrams' second big hit after Felicity and launches him on his way to being one of the biggest name in Hollywood. It's a simple concept of a hot supermodel 007 Jenny Bond in a secret worldwide spy organization. It's completely unreal fantasy. There is nothing but popcorn fun here. The problem is that as this fantasy universe gets rolling. It made less and less sense. The twists and turns lead to too many blind alleys. It's too serious and eventually, the show collapses under the weight of it's convoluted story. The good thing is that it introduced the world to Jennifer Garner and Bradley Cooper. Now can somebody tell me what happened to Michael Vartan?
Lil Lin
Maybe if I had watched the show weekly instead of on nextflix after the show ended, I might have loved the show and not been incredibly annoyed by all the little holes and the crappy character Jennifer Garner played. I love Garner and i wish i didn't like her less after this but watching her character in this show made me want to scream at her and watch a James Bond movie or tomb raider. Tomb Raider might not have been a spectacular movie but Angelina Jolie was so badasss that I didn't care. I think the acting as a whole was good enough to carry the movie but sadly, i found myself liking the villains more. Vaughn...almost anyone could've played his role. I wanted to slap Sydney after her childish outbursts with Jack, granted it sucked that her fiancée died but her big mouth was to blame for that and she didn't have the maturity to talk to her father before jumping to conclusions every time. Considering shes also a spy, you'd think shed understand why her dad is secretive. I had thought that Sydney was a well trained agent considering she "quickly advanced to field agent" but she was immaturely know it all and hotheaded in her dealings with Vaughn and her father, being wrong every time she thought she knew better. Her disguises were mediocre at best and what is up with that scared look all the time? I guess I was hoping her character would be more bad ass. Instead i feel like Anna Was a cool bad ass CIA agent. I don't want to add too many spoilers so to cut this short...All in All, its an entertaining show if you don't care for accurate and realistic storyline. When i watch a movie or show or read a book, i want it to be so awesome that Im completely fooled. Im not a CIA agent but I certainly hope they aren't like Sydney.
hnt_dnl
When ALIAS premiered in 2001, I just knew something special had been thrust upon the TV viewing audience! The pilot episode was brilliantly constructed. It starts out telling the tale of one Sydney Bristow (played with stunning conviction and depth by the delectable Jennifer Garner!), a 26-year old graduate student, who is engaged and has a circle of close friends (Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey). Her friends think she works part-time at a bank, but it is quickly revealed as Sydney enters the bank one day that she works in a super-secret organization underneath the bank called SD-6, which Sydney thinks is a component of the CIA. Syd's SD-6 partner is Marcus Dixon (played solidly by Carl Lumbly).When she tells her fiancé of her double life, the Director of SD-6, Arvin Sloane (played with slick, easy bravado by Ron Rifkin) has him killed because Sydney violated a major SD-6 protocol. Sydney tries to quit the organization, which she now knows is working with the enemy, not the CIA. In an attempt on her life in a parking garage, she escapes with the help of her father, Jack Bristow (more on him later) who she finds out is also a secret agent with SD-6 and has been most of his life, even when she was a child (she thought he was an airline exec).Jack Bristow is played by Victor Garber and for my money, this is one of the best TV characters ever! Garber's portrayal of Daddy Bristow was ALWAYS spot on, even when the series started to falter in its later years. Jack was smart, slick, gutsy, and 100% lethal! He would not hesitate to do what was necessary to get the job done. Of all the so-called evil geniuses this show threw at the viewer over the years, Jack Bristow, one of the good guys, was scarier than all of them put together! Screw Jack Bauer and 24! Jack BRISTOW was the best secret agent "Jack" running around in the early 00s!Sydney wants to quit, but realizes that to take down SD-6, she must work with the CIA, so she goes to the nearest LA office and meets with a "handler" Michael Vaughn (played solidly by Michael Vartan). Sydney and Vaughn of course had an underlying chemistry and sexual tension that would be stretched out (but not for long!).The first season and a half focused on Sydney working with Vaughn and her father to try to take down SD-6 from within. I say that the first season of ALIAS is one of the top seasons in all of TV history. There were so many twists and turns, exciting episodes, great character interactions (Sydney and Jack didn't exactly get along early on) that made this show highly enjoyable. There was a HUGE twist/cliffhanger at the end of the 1st season that is amongst the best cliffhangers ever! Then in its 2nd season, they introduced Sydney's mother Irina Derevko (played with cold-hearted, close-to-the-vest appeal by Lena Olin), who Sydney and Jack thought had died years ago. Turns out Syd's mom was an enemy agent tasked to seduce, marry, and betray Jack and she faked her death. The 2nd season was a pretty brilliant season as well, but then they took down SD-6 midway through the season in a surprising twist! And this is when the show started to run out of ideas IMHO. They did a cliffhanger at the end of Season 2 that I absolutely hated! And it really ruined the show for me. Then in later seasons, with no SD-6 around, Syd and her friends ended up working directly for the CIA and I found the CIA dynamics less interesting than when she was working indirectly for them to take down SD-6.Stories in the last 3 seasons seemed repetitive. You find yourself asking the same questions over again. Can Syd trust Jack? Can Vaughn prove Irina killed his parents? What is the mystery of Arvin Sloane? Etc., etc., etc. I also disliked that they abandoned Syd's double-life after season 2. Her friends found out who she really was one way or another and that spoiled that great early double (actually triple!) life dynamic of the show. Still, I say that from that first season, Jennifer Garner was flat out robbed of the Lead Actress Emmy! She plain should have won based on her incredible work in that impeccable season. And Victor Garber could have won at least 2 or 3 times (sadly, he kept losing to those WEST WING guys!). Also, special mention should go to Kevin Weisman as the hilarious Marshall. Marshall is ALIAS version of Q from the James Bond series. Marshall's lighthearted moments explaining the gadgets with his fidgety, funky personality ALWAYS made me laugh!Season 3 was essentially ruined for me by Melissa George (who played Vaughn's wife), who was a major character that didn't measure up to the other already established cast. But the absurd 2nd season cliffhanger surprise is what really led to it. There was some interesting stuff in Season 4 which kind of led to renewed interest, but by that point the show was really never the same as it had been it's first 2 brilliant years. Still, one of the better shows in the early 00s, but sadly, overall, not amongst the best!