Author Topic: ALIAS on AXN  (Read 11504 times)

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Offline JojoD818

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #60 on: Aug 27, 2004 at 07:28 AM »


LOL, at the rate things are going on the show, they might pair Sydney and Sark.  ;D



Now that is something new!  ;D ;D ;D

Offline scully

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #61 on: Aug 27, 2004 at 02:39 PM »
Sark has been demoted? I didn't know that. Meh. No big loss, I think he's getting stale. Come to think of it, all of them are getting stale. Except for SpyDaddy  :-* I love me some SpyDaddy. 

As for the decline of the series, I think it's coz JJ has too many fingers in different pies - the rumored MI:3, the new Superman, his new project with Greg Grunberg etc. At least he has the guts to say that he made a mistake (sabay taas ng kilay kay Chris Carter). Let's hope we have something to look forward to in S4.

Oh, btw, JJ is a rip-off guru  ;D Listen to his commentary in the dvds.
« Last Edit: Aug 27, 2004 at 02:42 PM by scully »
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Offline AshKetchum

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #62 on: Aug 27, 2004 at 05:29 PM »
Sark has been demoted?

Here are some July 2004 articles about J.J. Abrams where he talks about how Season 3 failed and mentions upcoming stuff about Season 4:

Zap2It article

SciFi.com article

There were also scattered mentions of Abrams on E! Online denying that Sela Ward will replace Lena Olin as Irina Derevko; even though he's depressed that Lena isn't anymore interested in returning, Abrams will not recast the role.

Sark & Weiss disappearing, Will & Francie returning, plus the resurrection of SD-6? So, are they going to build a Rambaldi device now that will turn back time? Maybe they should also bring back Ana Espinosa--at least she was good as Sydney's nemesis.

Offline JojoD818

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #63 on: Nov 12, 2004 at 12:31 AM »
I miss Sydney.  :(

Is season 4 on the way?

Offline Reuven Malter

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #64 on: Jan 06, 2005 at 10:33 AM »
NY Times review on the new season. Spoilers ahead!

Yet More of One Face in Season 4 of 'Alias'
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN


Published: January 5, 2005



ABC's series is nothing more than a pretentious comic strip: static, allegorical and a pleasure only to addicts.

What you think of "Alias" depends a lot on what you think of Jennifer Garner. If the actress's great beauty suggests to you infinite variety, then the show's claim to profundity, which it makes with ponderous attention to Ms. Garner's face, will ring true. But if Ms. Garner's winning modes - smiling and dimply, or precociously solemn, jaw set like an Eagle Scout - seem merely like two tricks she's being forced to repeat in place of acting, then the series is a bore.

In the second view, "Alias," whose fourth season has its two-hour premiere on ABC tonight, is nothing more than a pretentious comic strip: static, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize in these times when American comics have become, through male nostalgia and the canonization of the graphic novel, sacrosanct.

Let's be honest. Many of us don't like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys. And now we can admit that while the redemption dynamic - little X-Men boys finding in their eccentricity and loneliness a superpower - is touching, there's nothing duller than listening to someone explain, in all seriousness, the Syndicate and the Shadow Force and the Hard Drive and the Plutonium Lance. And the characters: lame. One is good and the other is evil, and then one is evil pretending to be good, and then one is good pretending to be evil.

Zzzz. "Alias," which is a production of J. J. Abrams, who also created "Lost," is no different. When the story began, Sydney Bristow (Ms. Garner) was good doing good, working for what she thought was a good government agency. (Government agencies are always good.) Then she found out the agency was evil: an anti-government agency. Then she resolved to turn good-pretending-to-be-evil and continue working for the agency as a double agent, reporting back to the good American government, and in particular a dashing operator named Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan).

For some reason this was bearable for one season. Sydney's newly openly evil organization had its own foes, and she of course now opposed her evil organization, so there was plenty of conflict, and plenty of occasions for wig-work, Eastern European accents and saltatory combat, which was pretty to look at.

But the characters and situations are so derivative, and the plot is so full of cheats, that the series has become wearing. Sydney's father, Jack Bristow (Victor Garber, who's good) is intermittently a good-pretending-to-be-evil type, and her mother, an alive-pretending-to-be-dead type. A "Da Vinci Code"-like subplot involving a fictional figure of the Italian Renaissance named Milo Rambaldi and his prophecy (the Prophecy, naturally) has dragged on interminably and must have made at least some viewers wonder why they were spending so much time inspecting Rambaldi's fake notebooks when they might have been studying Leonardo's real ones.

There have been several fake deaths on "Alias." People who seem dead generally can be counted on to show up alive and conspiring. Amnesia, another soap opera staple, featured prominently in the logic of the third season.

Sweetheart characters mingle with corrupt ones so often that they inevitably merge. In the second season, the show - tired, perhaps, of plain old psychological duplicity - introduced "genetic doubling," which became the show's classy way of doing the old evil-twin plot that nighttime soaps rely on when they're feeling desperate.

Tonight's episode begins with the boyish Sydney in drag, as she often is: This time wearing a teddy in a couchette, seducing a Russian-seeming scientist for secrets about isotopes. A fistfight flashes to life quickly, and suddenly Sydney's about to fall out of the train. But she doesn't.

A flashback shows Sydney feigning some missteps on another mission and getting herself falsely fired. In fact, she's been moved to a still more secret and autonomous intel gang called Authorized Personnel Only, but she tells everyone she's out of the spy game, and thus gets her cover back. In the new group are all the old pals: Jack, of course, and Vaughn, but also the stone-faced Dixon (Carl Lumbly), the geeky Marshall (Kevin Weisman), and the baddie Sloane (Ron Rifkin), the former head of the rogues, who has now either gone straight or is evil-pretending-to-be-good.

The new superfriends head out on their first missions: the isotope feint and a related museum heist, which allows Sydney to dress in cat-burglar clothes and brachiate around an unguarded exhibition. Sydney and Vaughn's sporadic romance, interrupted every time that one of them is dead or involved with someone else, flares up again. Her half sister, Nadia (Mía Maestro), comes around to multiply the girl action scenes. And her troubled relationship with her father grows more troubled and then possibly less troubled as he lurches in Sydney's esteem from evil-pretending-to-be-good to good-pretending-to-be-evil.

In short, it's a very typical episode of "Alias." Ms. Garner, who when not in a wig still has apparently unprocessed brown hair, looks honestly beautiful in close-ups. But as a character who has been betrayed by everyone around her - and who faces death on a regular basis - she ought to have the gravitas of Anna Karenina by now. Instead, when in somber mode, she looks vacuous, as if she's lost her train of thought. Finally, when she's being cute, she just doesn't let herself go far enough. That's too bad, too, because if she beamed after the stunts and didn't look so solemn, she might come off like Lynda Carter in the old "Wonder Woman." And then we who dislike comic books could dismiss this show as silly without the least compunction.
« Last Edit: Jan 06, 2005 at 10:35 AM by Reuven »
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Offline DViant

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #65 on: Nov 24, 2005 at 12:41 PM »
  MSNBC.com

‘Alias’ to end its ABC run this spring
Network promises big finish for spy drama
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:51 p.m. ET Nov. 23, 2005

LOS ANGELES - “Alias” is going undercover for good.

The spy drama starring Jennifer Garner will end its five-season run in May, ABC announced Wednesday, promising a big finish.

“’Alias’ is not going to wind down as it comes to an end, it’s going to rev up, and we’re going to make it the event it deserves to be,” ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson said in a statement.

The series co-stars Victor Garber, Ron Rifkin, Carl Lumbly and Kevin Weisman. It was created by executive producer J.J. Abrams, who is also part of ABC’s popular “Lost.”

Airing at 8 p.m. EST Thursday this season, “Alias” has struggled to hold its audience against the competition, especially CBS’ “Survivor: Guatemala.” Last week, the ABC show drew about 7 million viewers compared to about 19 million for “Survivor.”

Garner and her husband, actor Ben Affleck, are expecting their first child around Christmas. Her pregnancy was written into “Alias” for her character, a globe-trotting spy.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10185076/

Offline AshKetchum

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #66 on: Nov 24, 2005 at 02:30 PM »
Thank God. I gave up on this show after Season 3, which reeked to high heaven with its idiotic plots that could diminish anyone's IQ after watching one episode.

Friends told me Season 4 was even worse, and for all that foolishness we get yet another season. Enough already.

Hopefully the final, final episode will see Sidney waking up hours after she lost consciousness during the Season 2 finale, and that Seasons 3-5 was just a dream.  ;D

Offline dni

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #67 on: Nov 24, 2005 at 04:55 PM »
i am only watching this for the sake of watching it.  my friend and i have been laughing about the plot already!!  la lang para lang may mapagtawanan kami!!   ;D

Offline Reuven Malter

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ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #68 on: Apr 27, 2006 at 06:01 PM »
On its 100th episode, Will and Anna Espinosa came back!
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Offline scully

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #69 on: Apr 27, 2006 at 06:18 PM »
Keraykee. They're still around?

S4 was utterly forgettable. I hear bad things about S5 as well.
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Offline Reuven Malter

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ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #70 on: Apr 27, 2006 at 06:23 PM »
No one is really dead in Sydney Bristow's world. ;D
Clear eyes, full hearts can't lose!

Offline dobler

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #71 on: Apr 27, 2006 at 11:34 PM »
Keraykee. They're still around?

S4 was utterly forgettable. I hear bad things about S5 as well.

Season 1 and 2 were pretty solid. The show slowly became a joke once the 3rd one began. By that time, J.J. Abrams was busy with Lost. Same thing happened with Felicity, he somehow wrote that horrible time travel bulls**t series finale when Alias was just starting out.
« Last Edit: Apr 27, 2006 at 11:35 PM by dobler »

Offline scully

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #72 on: Apr 28, 2006 at 04:21 PM »
No one is really dead in Sydney Bristow's world. ;D

Much like in TXF's world (no, my DooHickey's not dead!) :)

My puny interest disappeared totally especially when I heard about what happened to Vaughn at the start of S5. I mean, really! How could they do that??? Baah. I read somewhere that MV couldn't take the heat of JG and Baffleck but that's all pure speculation naman. 
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Offline Reuven Malter

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Re: ALIAS on AXN
« Reply #73 on: May 03, 2006 at 07:21 PM »
Funny recap of Alias from A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago:

Bob Balaban taps USC lit student Sydney Bristow to be his super-special weapon for the CIA's black-ops SD6 division, because the best way to find a tireless worker with infinite focus, superlative athletic chops, and loads of free time is to raid the grad schools. Syd spills the beans to her fake-French fiance, who gets killed for security reasons. Balaban will do the same for Syd if she doesn't get out of bed and back to the ass-kicking, so her dad outs SD6 as a pro-terror syndicate and himself as a CIA/SD6 double-agent and SD6 truancy officer. Syd Run Lolas through the CIA front door and enlists with the legit agency, not realizing that the "6" in SD6 indicates that there may be some other SDs out there.

Syd's colleagues at real CIA include a real French love interest, Vaughn, (not to be confused with the fake French fiance) and Seth Rogen. Her colleagues at fake CIA include by-the-book Dixon and hobbit Marshall, both of whom will later join her at real CIA.

Syd roundhouse kicks her way into the control rooms of a loosely-organized network of terrorist nightclub operators, where she copies discs containing the plans, the lists, the passwords, and perhaps bootlegged copies of "Dude, Where's My Car." Each week Syd defeats what she believes to be the greatest danger known to mankind. Because it's the CIA, or the fake CIA, each week she learns that last week's greatest danger is, in fact, the second-greatest danger, right behind this week's greatest danger. For exactly one and a half years, she kills exactly zero people. Incompetent spy.

Bob Balaban is obsessed with a 13th-century prophet/Leonardo wannabe named Milo Ventimiglia. He invented a magical way of painting a globe red. Syd's part-time job is to steal pages from Milo's collected works so that Balaban can make himself a red globe and rule the world. In discharging her duties, Syd discovers that (a) Milo drew a really good picture of her; and (b) she is the Key Master. She also meets an atelier who hints that Milo is still alive, but JJ Abrams later forgot about this so it didn't happen. Or did it?

For a year, roommate Frenchie and deadbeat Will fail to notice that Syd's bank job requires her to be out of the house for several days a week and that she always returns with three broken legs. Frenchie has a boyfriend who sings, or maybe that was on Ally McBeal. Will has a smoking-hot intern who leaves for The L Word. They congregate in Central Perk behind a sepia-toned camera filter before being killed, replaced by an identical but evil twin who is killed (or is she?), or put into witness protection. Frenchie doesn't like Rocky Road ice cream. Or does she?

On approximately SuperBowl Sunday, Syd's lingerie jumps out of a plane as Bob Balaban takes down the SD network. Syd kills somebody in the basement, thus ending her pacifist period.

Syd's mom, who was previously dead, is in fact not dead, but bad. Later, she is captured, good, and escaped. Still later, she is bad, and dead. Still even later, she is alive, bad, and captured. Yet even still more later, she is good, and escaped. Do I need to tell you that she is now perhaps bad? Or is she? Also, she killed Vaughn's dad, who actually may not be dead, but who in fact may be dead. It's not entirely clear. And she has a whole separate ass-kicking family, including erstwhile Skinemax stalwart Sonia Braga, severe-haircutted Isabella Rossellini, and current bombshell-with-a-porn-name Mia Maestro. That's right, a Russian family entirely played by Swedish, Brazilian, Italian, and Argentinian women. Oh, the betrayal. Which reminds me, Balaban is secretly bad, then openly bad, then through-and-through good but bad-curious (this is his World Health Organization/research into Milo juice phase, if you're scoring at home), then meets the Enlightened Master and drops the whole bad thing completely, then has a bad relapse, then is in jail, then is good and in charge of the CIA, then is bad in the service of saving his daughter (Mia Maestro), then is remorseful, then cuts exactly the same deal to be bad again to help his daughter (except with the sister of the first person with whom he dealt) but reneges. Or does he?

I forgot to mention that some kid named Sark, after the famous Cutty, is exactly like Syd except (a) male; and (b) bad. They are made for each other. He gets beaten up and jailed a lot, but has a pretty healthy attitude about it.

Syd falls asleep and wakes up two years later, with Vaughn married to an unaccountably English-accented blonde. She is a double agent, and is killed. Or is she? Syd discovers that she is a "Project Christmas" kid, meaning that whenever somebody says "Queen of Diamonds," she assassinates the President. Then JJ changes his mind, and this didn't happen. Or did it? Syd gets engaged to Vaughn, who reveals that he's a double agent and then is killed in a car accident. Or is he? He's not, because he is later killed by the bad guys. Or is he? An unwitting bad-guy analyst who conveniently wears the same wig size as now-pregnant Syd jumps the fence and kicks ass with slightly less enthusiasm but more va-voom than Syd. She also has a love interest, Agent Liev Schreiber. And now Mama's back.

Tally
Principal spies: 13 (Syd, Balaban, Jack, Dixon, Marshall, Seth Rogen, Vaughn, Irina, Lauren, Nadia, Rachel, Liev, Sark)

Spies who have not been double-agents or worked for both sides: 3 (Seth Rogen, Nadia, Liev)

Conclusion: internal controls insufficient. Or are they?
Clear eyes, full hearts can't lose!