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CHUD.com
January 23, 2003
STUFF YOU SHOULD WATCH: ALIAS
By Dave Davis
A CHUD Editorial
SPOILERS!
I’ll be honest, I don’t watch a lot of television. I despise advertisements, and the spate of torturous sitcoms and IQ-lowering voyeurism disguised as “reality shows” only reduces my general regard for humanoids. When I find something I consider worthwhile, I stick to it like glue. And when I have the Tivo cull from the airwaves, it tends to be the better-written action-dramas like The Shield and 24 or genre-related stuff like Buffy, Farscape (RIP) and Smallville.
And Alias.
Apparently someone else out in Hollywoodland like the ABC show as well, judging by some of the upcoming guest stars:
Rutger Hauer. Ethan Hawke. Christian Slater.
And who knows who else they’ve got up their sleeve.
The show, from Felicity creator J.J. Abrams, has already featured appearances from the likes of actress Amy Irving, actor-director Peter Berg (currently behind the camera on Helldorado with The Rock™) and obscure filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, not to mention familiar genre faces like Phantasm Tall Man Angus Scrimm. And this season, sexy elders Lena Olin and Faye Dunaway have helped and hounded the regular cast.
Unfairly dismissed by some as a simple La Femme Nikita knock-off, Alias is admittedly a bit Byzantine to the neophyte. The short(er) version of the plot:
Sexy spychick Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is a grad student and agent for SD-6, a secret division of the CIA where she discovers her estranged father (Victor Garber) also works. She is told to keep her covert espionage life from her friends and when she confides in her fiancé, SD-6 has him eliminated as a security threat. When she discovers that SD-6 is in fact part of an expansive hydra-like cabal of international villainy, she goes to the CIA in hopes of taking it down. Under the auspice of hunky CIA “handler” Vaughn (Michael Vartan), Sydney becomes a globetrotting double agent and is given “countermissions” to misinform and ultimately dismantle SD-6. Along with her father, also revealed as a CIA double agent, she must prevent the artifacts of a prescient 15th-century inventor named Rambaldi from falling into SD-6 hands while keeping her true nature from her partner Dixon (Carl Lumbly) and her oily boss Sloane (Ron Rifkin).
Hmm. That actually does seem fairly intimidating, and it just scratches the surface. Toss in a hypnotic mélange of gadgets, espionage, gun-battles, unrequited love, costumes, hand-to-hand combat, apocalyptic prophecies, exotic locales, a handful of competing intelligence agencies, friends ensnared in the web of intrigue, and more twists and swerves than a Six Flags theme park, and you’ll find that while Alias is occasionally boggling, it’s certainly never boring. The writing is deft and Stormbringer-sharp, and the acting is top-notch: lithe Garner is protean as the multilingual asskicking mistress of disguise, Garber effortlessly sways between stolid composure and roaring intensity, and Rifkin is the perfect villain, despicable with the infrequent glimpse of humanity.
But because of its serial approach and complex plots, Alias probably doesn’t have the audience it deserves -- and in my unsolicited opinion it's too good to slink away as a casualty of low ratings. If ABC had played their cards right, they would have released the first season on DVD before season two began airing (as Fox did with 24) to bring potential new viewers up to speed. This opportunity missed, the show will reportedly veer towards more viewer-friendly “compartmentalized” episodes, starting with the upcoming post-Super Bowl show.
Good time to start tuning in to find out if I’m right.
© CHUD.com 2003
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