Jennifer Garner was used as a poster child and recruiting tool for the real CIA when the show first started. I think it's mentioned in one of the DVD commentaries
Alias
- Thread starter JirinPanthosa
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Anyone who joined a real-life intelligence agency expecting it to be anything like Alias was in for a hell of a disappointment. Most real-life intelligence work is a desk job.
I remembered liking the '80s series Scarecrow and Mrs. King for taking a more realistic approach to intelligence than your typical spy show, focusing more on the office work and bureaucracy, but I've been rewatching it a bit lately and finding that it's got more emphasis on Bond-style spy action than I remembered -- though I guess it has more mundane bureaucratic stuff than other spy shows of the era, which is why that side of it loomed large in my memory. I recall that USA's more recent Covert Affairs also did a decent job portraying espionage work with relative realism, showing that the protagonist's work was normally about information gathering and handling local assets and it was an anomaly when a chase or a gunfight broke out, but I think it shifted more toward action as it went along. (Otherwise it was very much in the same wheelhouse as Alias.)
Sloane is the standout performance.
You're not kidding.
Have you ever read Ian Fleming's Moonraker?
No, not the film - the actual book.
007 is unambiguously described as a "Civil Servant", and spends multiple chapters at his desk smoking.
You're not kidding.
Have you ever read Ian Fleming's Moonraker?
No, not the film - the actual book.
007 is unambiguously described as a "Civil Servant", and spends multiple chapters at his desk smoking.
I don't think it's going to be for you, given your comments. Alias is generally campy, and the pace is always frenetic. Those aren't going to change, and it generally gets weirder.
It gets more and more into mythology, and I think by the end of season one you'll likely know if it's for you as they start to double down on that.
Seasons one and two are the best, then three is okay, four is bad, and five is not too bad. You're in the more golden era now.
Wow....lol
I'll finish Season 1 and see how I feel.
A shame, as Jennifer's wardrobe is absolutely gorgeous in this show.
I'll finish Season 1 and see how I feel.
A shame, as Jennifer's wardrobe is absolutely gorgeous in this show.
One particularly ridiculous scene I remember in Alias (and I enjoyed the show), was when an agent was in pinned down in central Europe, called Sydney back at the agency for help. Syd jumped in the company corporate jet, flew to Europe, and showed up at the scene of the firefight to save her just in time. So, like, the gunfight lasted 10 hours!?!? Or the jet got there in 5 minutes!?!?
Hm. As I mentioned in my blog review, season 4 was my favorite because of the improved writing, even though the revamp that set up the status quo of season 4 was incoherent and nonsensical.
One particularly ridiculous scene I remember in Alias (and I enjoyed the show), was when an agent was in pinned down in central Europe, called Sydney back at the agency for help. Syd jumped in the company corporate jet, flew to Europe, and showed up at the scene of the firefight to save her just in time. So, like, the gunfight lasted 10 hours!?!? Or the jet got there in 5 minutes!?!?
Magic. It has to be fucking magic
engage ludicrous speed!!!!
While I liked both shows, I find that La Femme Nikita has more rewatch value, despite being a lot cruder (and also being a clear predecessor for 24). Alias was a fun adventure romp. LFN was atmospheric-but-dopey as a spy show, but pretty masterful and cutting as a workplace metaphor.And they swear they never traveled more then 50 miles from LA for all those locations. Pretty good.
Oh, and apropos of totally nothing - I was such a fan of that Nikita that I named our Samoyed dog "La Chienne Nikita".
Alias must have been inspiration for some story threads in Scandal as well... although more stretched out in Season 2 and onwards...
P.S. we loved Alias when it started out but agree it was a bummer how they kept retooling it. Season 3 kind of dragged at first but got better. Season 4 seemed to drop the serialized nature entirely for the first half but then ended with a bang. Season 5 was a mixed bag - I think Jennifer was pregnant so they had to make new characters to do the heavy lifting.
- A major character in season 2 finally meets Olivia face to face in the season finale and it turns out he's her Dad. If memory serves, she even had the same line "Daddy?" and then fade to black. And the guy works for the CIA.
- Later on, we become aware that Olivia's mom died when she was 12. Later in season 3 Olivia finds out her mom is actually alive and was up to questionable spy stuff.
- Eventually we find out that Olivia's dad faked her mom's death and moved where she was imprisoned to stop Olivia from finding her.
- Olivia finds her mom. Eventually they have to get her out of prison to help with a CIA job. The mom escapes.
- They even have a "covert spy agency" called B613, just like Alias' SD6
- Later on, we become aware that Olivia's mom died when she was 12. Later in season 3 Olivia finds out her mom is actually alive and was up to questionable spy stuff.
- Eventually we find out that Olivia's dad faked her mom's death and moved where she was imprisoned to stop Olivia from finding her.
- Olivia finds her mom. Eventually they have to get her out of prison to help with a CIA job. The mom escapes.
- They even have a "covert spy agency" called B613, just like Alias' SD6
P.S. we loved Alias when it started out but agree it was a bummer how they kept retooling it. Season 3 kind of dragged at first but got better. Season 4 seemed to drop the serialized nature entirely for the first half but then ended with a bang. Season 5 was a mixed bag - I think Jennifer was pregnant so they had to make new characters to do the heavy lifting.
Or maybe they're just the kind of story tropes that many works of fiction have used. Serial fiction revolves around plot twists and surprises, so it tends to recycle a lot of the same conspiracy and family-secret tropes.
As a rule, whenever two relatively recent works of fiction remind you of each other, it is vastly more likely that they are both independently drawing on similar earlier sources than it is that one is directly inspired by the other.
I actually liked Rachel Nichols as the lead better than Jennifer Garner, and I was disappointed when they ended up delaying the back part of the season until after Garner's maternity leave so they could shift the focus back to her.
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