Finally catching up with "Alias"

[Biggshow]

For a number of reasons (mostly grad school), I never caught this show first run. Now, thanks to the awe and mystery of Netflix, I've seen the first 16 eps of season one. Wow. What's going on? No, don't tell me. Just tell me I'm in for more fun than humans ought to be allowed to have.

 

[ancientone51]

Welcome to the club!

First season is tops.

A couple of the later ones...get a bit much. Focus shifts a bit.

Forget the romance angels...focus on the family dynamics...and they will drive you nuts.

Enjoy!

 

[unimatrix7]

Great show. IMO, Season 2 is one of the best seasons of television ever produced (that I've seen, anyway ). Absolutely fucking incredible from start to finish.

Well...almost to finish

 

[kalysto]

Seasons one and two are great, three is good stuff too, just not reaching the heights of the previous two. Can't say much about the last two seasons, have not got around to them yet.

 

[DarKush]

I thought there were five seasons. with five being shortened?

Anyway, seasons 1 & 2 were awesome in my book. Season 3 veered off course, Season 4 tried to get the mojo back, and I pretty much gave up on Season 5 though I did watch the series finale.

I hope you enjoy the series. When it was good, it was really good, and when it wasn't it left me scratching my head.

 

[Warp Coil]

Seasons 1-2 are very solid. You can't go wrong there. Season 3 is still pretty good, IMO, but it does sort of get off-course a bit. Season 4 is lackluster and underwhelming. Season 5 improves but still doesn't get the show back on-track to its glory days. It's still a very entertaining show, though, and I recommend it.

 

[Worf2DS9]

I also really enjoyed Alias. As others mentioned, I think Season 1 & 2 are great, Season 3 is good, and 4 & 5 are just okay. But if you love the first few seasons, I don't see how you can possible not watch the last two and enjoy them to bits anyway.

 

[DarthPipes]

Season 1 and 2 were some of the best on television. The seasons after that were still good but they were never able to recapture what they had those first two years. It certainly wasn't because of the cast, who were uniformily excellent from start to finish.

 

[Christopher]

Throwing in my two cents... the first season and a half are excellent, but they end up overextending the concept, getting a bit repetitive and implausible. They tried to revamp things late in season 2, and they had good reason to in my opinion, but what they ended up with was not an improvement. Seasons 3 and 4 are uneven, unfocused, and way too dark and angsty. Season 5 was a major improvement, because they remembered to start having fun with the concept again.

 

[Mr Light]

S1: one of the best TV seasons ever produced.
S2: mostly just as good.
S3: Mediocrity.
S4: Even worse... until the final third which is amazing.
S5: Alias: The Next Generation. Spin-off. Lame.

Unfortunately ALIAS will always be one of those missed opportunities to me, a show that started out brilliant and quickly faded into blandness. The first season promised such a fascinating in-depth storyline of secrets and answers that never surfaced. It basically started out as LOST and quickly became homogenized.

 

[Warp Coil]

S1: one of the best TV seasons ever produced.

S5: Alias: The Next Generation. Spin-off. Lame.

I really wouldn't describe season 5 like that at all. While some new characters were introduced in the final season (and there was some speculation as to if they'd continue the series without Jennifer Garner), the focus remained on Sydney Bristow throughout.

 

[captcalhoun]

Alias is pure win. largely because i fancy the pants off Jen, Mia and Rachel.

but also because they really made the most of their budgets and made it really like a movie each week.

even when they did cock things up (gun-toting security guards in Britain, where most COPS don't carry guns?!?!)

 

[crouteru]

Seasons 1 and 2 are awesome. Season 3 is generally good. Seasons 4 and 5 are pretty bad for abandoning the main story, starting a new one, and not really solving anything. The final episode was a sad waste.

 

[Christopher]

I liked the final episode. Especially the opening action sequence, where Michael Giacchino got to do this fantastic extended music cue that runs for something like seven and a half minutes. That alone would make it worth seeing even if nothing else did.

 

[ancientone51]

I also loved the last ep. Victor's last scene still makes me react much as I did at teh time...a mix of incredable feelings, it was perfect.

 

[DarthPipes]

Blowing up their premise during the Super Bowl show in the second season worked in the short-term with the search-for-Sloane and Francine storylines but hurt the show in the long-term.

 

[Christopher]

Blowing up their premise during the Super Bowl show in the second season worked in the short-term with the search-for-Sloane and Francine storylines but hurt the show in the long-term.

It was the right idea, since the original premise had become repetitive and unbelievable; how could Sloane continue to trust Sydney as a top agent when she constantly "failed" in her missions? But the problem is, when you tear something down, you need something better to replace it with, and they didn't have that. They rushed into it and changed things too abruptly at network insistence, rather than taking the time to resolve it organically and work out a strong way to continue the series.

 

[unimatrix7]

What I don't understand is how Sid did not know that her father also worked at SD6, and only happened upon this realisation in the first episode. By the first ep, Sidney had worked for SD6 for, what, 7 years? After the revelation came and Jack was strolling around the office like he belonged there, it seemed as if everybody - Marshall and Dixon in particular - knew Jack, and knew that he was Sidney's father. It makes no sense.

 

[ancientone51]

She knew it was her dad working there...she didn't know that there was an issue of which SIDE he ws on.

 

[captcalhoun]

no she didn't. he was working in a different part of SD6, but after the pilot he moved into the Credit Dauphine office and Marshall and Dixon probably knew him before or got to know him well between the pilot and the first regular episode...