Category: Alias

Okay, I’m 11 episodes in, and I’ve got the next two DVDs sitting there waiting for me so I can’t write too long. But I’ve had cases where friends have gotten into series on DVD long after I’d lost interest in them, and it was always neat hearing their take on the show. It was like being able to watch the show again, from the start, without having to do something as exhausting as sit and watch television.

So here’s my take on the show so far, divided up into the bad like the evil SD-6, and the good like Sydney’s ever-loyal friend Francie:

• Bad: The wormy, nerdy “Q” guy, Marshall. Yeah, it’s a spy show, so you’ve got to explain the gadgets. But the whole schtick doesn’t work on any level, as comic relief or otherwise. It’s annoying, not endearing.
• Good: Victor Garber as the dad. He’s got the toughest part to play, I think, and on a show this over-the-top, he could’ve come across as really lame, either two-dimensional bad guy, or over-sympathetic killer-with-a-heart-of-gold. He just sells it.

• Bad: The surfeit of twists and subplots. I get that the show’s supposed to be fantastic, escapist, action television, but it’s veering around so much that it never gets to linger on anything of significance. Maybe that’s an aspect of watching it all at once instead of having to wait a week between episodes, though.
• Good: Stuff really happens, in every episode. I’m used to series that introduce subplots that never get resolved until the end of the season if that soon; it’s cool to see a show that isn’t afraid it’s going to run out of ideas. If someone makes a threat, they’re going to do something about it within the next two hours. If you get hint of a deep dark secret, you’re not going to have to wait long to find out what it is. There are at least two cliffhangers per episode!

• Bad: The annoying reporter friend. He’s just a tool, and he deserves to die.
• Good: Jennifer Garner really is pretty hot.

All right, back to it. I’m in the middle of a meeting at CIA headquarters in which we just learned the identity of the assassin who killed Agent Vaughn’s father!

Hot on the heels of my groundbreaking review of Jurassic Park, a scoop about this hot new television programme called “The Alias!”

All right, I avoided this show for as long as I could, partly because I had a feeling it would get me all sucked in, partly because I was working too much to watch much television, and partly because Jennifer Garner always struck me as nothing more than a slightly softer version of Hilary Swank, who gives me the heebie-jeebies something fierce.

But then I heard about the zombies, and everybody knows I’ve got a soft spot for zombies. [pause for obligatory brain joke] So I’m three episodes into it, and this is what escapist television is all about. Double, triple, and quadruple agents; ancient scrolls and prophecies; the basements and boiler rooms of exotic locales all around the world; TV-friendly techno music; duplicitous dads and soap opera drama — I am, of course, hooked. Plus the episodes I’m watching have Gina Torres, who rocks as hard as can be reasonably expected; and Carl Lumbly, who does the voice of J’onn J’onnz on “Justice League Unlimited,” which has got to count for something.

I’m still curious to see when, exactly, the show starts to go south. I’ve seen a couple of posts on Google and elsewhere lamenting that it’s already gone bad what with the “stupid zombies,” which of course baffles me, as I can’t imagine how zombies would do anything other than make a show better. These series inevitably let me down; I learned my lessons from “The X-Files” and “24” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and I won’t let myself get too close. But for now, I’m enjoying the edge-of-your-seat adventures of plucky grad student Sidney Bristow and her string of steely-eyed unshaven young love interests.

And then after that, I’ve heard mention of a television series about the criminal underworld called “Mr. Soprano” or some such that could shape up to be something big. You heard it here first!