Alias

[Starbreaker]

I was trying to find another show to watch during the Olympics because everything I normally watch except for Lost is on hiatus. I'm a huge fan of JJ Abrams and his work on Lost and Fringe, so I thought I would give Alias a try. I assumed it was something that I could watch an episode a night just to waste time while I was doing homework or something. I never saw an episode of the show while it was on the air, and have never even seen it on cable.

I'm hooked. I didn't realize practically every episode ends on a cliffhanger (so far). Very good stuff. Any other fans out there?

 

[stonester1]

I'm an Abrams whore (cept for Felicity) and I love a good spy show, so yeah, count me in.

 

[aelius]

I just bought them of DVD.
I loved the show when it was on. A cool "hall of mirrors" style spy show with a dash of sci fi thrown in for good measure. And if you have just started I won't spoil you on the radical twists and turns coming your way. All I can say is hold on for your life.
On a production note, I was also pleased at the fight choreography. Normally a show would have slim Jennifer Garner throwing big guys around. But here she punches, kicks and occasionally throws, but if any of these big guys get a good grip on her they muscle her right down. It's nice to see a show take that into account. Lighter people can beat the crap out of bigger people with skill, but mass and strength have a quality all their own.

 

[captcalhoun]

love it. mean to rewatch it, but atm my sister's borrowed S1 and 2 of my boxsets...

 

[Truth_Seeker]

Definitely the best spy show ever created!

It also has a lot of Sci-Fi elements in it!

 

[selina]

I loved it during the first seasons, but IMHO there was a drop in quality in season 4 and 5.

 

[John Clark]

I enjoyed it. It's not always the best show, but it usually was fun to watch

 

[crouteru]

Seasons 1-3 were fantastic, 4 had it's moments and by 5 I was loosing interest and faith in the series to properly wrap up the plot threads of the show (and it didn't).

 

[Mr Light]

Season 1 and 2 are great but after that it takes a real nose dive in quality.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, adding my assessments to the list: I thought the first season and a half were the best, but by the mid-second season the original format was feeling repetitive and increasingly strained credibility. I think it was the right thing to do to end that phase of the series, but what they replaced it with didn't work very well. I wasn't too fond of the rest of season 2 or seasons 3 and 4. However, I felt the show became fun again in season 5, regaining a sense of humor, and I liked the addition of Rachel Nichols to the cast. It never regained the quality of the first year, but it was a refreshing improvement over the previous two and a half seasons.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I'm an Alias fan as well...got hooked on it from season two onwards and pretty much agree with everyone's assessment regarding quality. Alias is actually what made me a JJ fan.

 

[Forbin]

I got addicted on DVD too. I'll repeat the of-quoted criticism "season 3 is ass." But it's still fun.

An interesting experience is to watch an episode of Alias on a Saturday afternoon, and an episode of Mission Impossible from the 60s on a Sunday. There are wonderful similarities.

 

[Hermiod]

I just bought them of DVD.
I loved the show when it was on. A cool "hall of mirrors" style spy show with a dash of sci fi thrown in for good measure. And if you have just started I won't spoil you on the radical twists and turns coming your way. All I can say is hold on for your life.
On a production note, I was also pleased at the fight choreography. Normally a show would have slim Jennifer Garner throwing big guys around. But here she punches, kicks and occasionally throws, but if any of these big guys get a good grip on her they muscle her right down. It's nice to see a show take that into account. Lighter people can beat the crap out of bigger people with skill, but mass and strength have a quality all their own.

This is the one show where this makes a small amount of sense - a small one, but still some.

She very often uses improvised weapons in her fights, as the Krav Maga they mention in the show would teach. She'll grab decorative swords off walls, hit people with metal teapots, basically use whatever is handy.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Seasons 1-3 were fantastic, 4 had it's moments and by 5 I was loosing interest and faith

I agree. I have seasons 1-3 boxsets.

Seasons 1 & 2 are very dependable action/spy episodes with a mission in almost every episode set in far off cities. But when it was broadcast if you missed an episode then good luck because with the serialized storytelling you may not have understood what was going on the next week.
The season 1 pilot is really something else and at 70 minutes its a mini movie budgeted at 9 million or something like that.
Great live orchestra music, costumes & hair for the aliases Jennifer Garner becomes, production design. It's a lot like a James Bond movie really.
Starting in season 3 the cinematography got very low key and some scenes are just way too dark in standard definition.
Season 3 is just all over the place with who is really good and who is evil and with the addition of Melissa George to the cast was not a likeable actor in my mind.
Also in season 3 the scifi factor is cranked up. It's in season 3 that the personal lives of the characters are given more time than the missions and yet at the same time the whole series mythology starts to come more into focus.

If you've not finished season 1 you'll love season 2 but you may start to lose interest in season 3.
I saw season 4 DVD set for $20. used and I might get it.
The behind the scenes featurettes are great and good commentaries too. Good 5.1 surround sound mixes.
I don't know if this series will ever come out on Blu-ray since it is already 9 years old...

 

[Pilot Ace]

^ All five seasons are on sale at Amazon for $18.49-18.99.

I've been thinking about trying this show out. I'm a huge fan of La Femme Nikita and this strikes me as a bit of spiritual successor.

 

[Greg Cox]

Check it out. It's a really fun show (and I'm not saying that just because I wrote three ALIAS novels).

It's a slightly lighter version of NIKITA . . . with a bigger budget. I liked NIKITA too, but ALIAS did a much better job of faking the various "exotic" locations.

 

[Warp Coil]

It's a pretty decent show, and it's worth checking out if you've never seen it. I consider Alias to be a show ahead of it's time - it was smart, complex, serialized drama back before it became popular due to Lost. ABC didn't really seem to like the show being so complex and inaccessible to new viewers, which led to their tampering of the formula and a little "dumbing down" of the show in later seasons, with more emphasis on sex appeal and gimmick and less emphasis on complex, serialized arcs. The writing definitely suffered as the series went on.

Seasons 1-2 are near perfect. Season 3 is a slight decline in quality, but still pretty good. I consider season 4 to be awful. A lot of poor writing (and re-writing), lack of focus, lack of a coherent plot. Season 5 was a step back up in quality. The show introduces a lot of mythology and mystery, and a lot of it never gets adequately addressed. Things pop up and then never get mentioned again, story elements get dropped or changed mid-course, and I think the overall resolution to the show is a little rushed and poor. But it's still a really fun show to watch.

 

[Mr Light]

Of the last three years, I thought the final stretch of episodes in Season Four were very good and a good resolution to the series... but then it went on for another year

 

[jefferiestubes8]

There are some issue with when the show jumped the shark:

On a personal note, I felt that Alias jumped the shark when Michael Vaughn was shot

http://www.kulturblog.com/2006/02/house-can-a-show-jump-the-shark-but-still-be-good/

Mia Maestro is set to join the cast of ABC's "Alias," playing the sister of Jennifer Garner's character. Jump the shark indeed.

http://blogcritics.org/video/article/alias-jumps-the-shark/

Sadly, “Alias” jumped the shark by going ahead with the fifth season.

http://www.7mpictures.com/inside/reviews/alias5dvd_review.htm

One day I was watching an episode during initial broadcast I think in season 3 or 4 and Sydney was walking on a street at night in Mexico City and all of a sudden a firelight ball of fire comes out of the sky and blows up a car I remember I said, "okay that's it for me."

 

[Greg Cox]

Without giving too much away, the show had some great villains, too.