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"Alias" (2001) More at IMDbPro »

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200 comments in total

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168 out of 241 people found the following comment useful :-
Watching Alias is a waste of time., 25 May 2006

Author: Juju from United Kingdom

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The two first series are great, the third one is not too bad (fortunately, Melissa George was here), but then it got really bad. When plots got completely messy, zombies appeared and boring characters were introduced, this show became SO rubbish !

The only reason I was keeping on watching was to finally understand the mystery around Rambaldi. But in the end, we'll never know because it's not explained. Not to mention that characters were totally lost in the ending (Irina wanting to destroy Washington and London to have power ??? Are you kidding me ???). It's really disappointing and lots of fans are angry about that.

Watching Alias is a waste of time.

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123 out of 188 people found the following comment useful :-
Pedestrian and lazy, 2 June 2006

Author: pliget from United Kingdom

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I was quite amused by the first series of Alias and am now ploughing through series 4, having seen the quality drop remorselessly since the opening. Excess can be amusing in moderation but not episode after episode after ... I was interested to see what happened with Rambaldi but I think I realise now nothing ever will; we will just continue going round in circles since any form of conclusion will kill any form of suspense however minute. I now watch it looking to see how many times they use the word protocol (loved the inferno protocol - hard to top that for over-thetopness) and to see if the actors will surprise me with a new expression beyond their stock-in-trade bemusement (Vaughan), bewilderment (Jack Bristow) etc. Hard to blame the actors when the script is so inane and one-dimensional. It reminds me constantly of the parody-line in Notting Hill "inform the pentagon we need black star cover". The whole script is full of this line over and over. And for a bunch of supposedly mentally toughened CIA agents they do fall apart when family comes up. It is clear if Sydney (or anyone else for that matter) were to find out her mother had been hurt she would either break down in tears (to a suitable song of course) or raze the whole of the USA to find the antidote. I also carry in my mind a (slight mis-)quote from the end of episode one which I am still waiting for Jack Bristow to say; it sort of sums up the experience so far in this show where nothing is as it seems yet everything is totally predictable - "Sydney, I'm not your father, I'm your mother".

Well, I think I shall be leaving the show after series 4. It was amusing in the beginning but enough is enough. If it had ended after series 1 with a good resolution of Rambaldi I would have given it an above-average mark. Unfortunately episodes 3 & 4 dragged it down.

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111 out of 169 people found the following comment useful :-
Unrealistic, Insulting & Inexcusable, 15 March 2007

Author: foyalution from United Kingdom

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Having watched all five seasons, the only reason i did that was because i watched season 4 & 5 first so i had to watch the first three for closure. All i can say is that i was really impressed with season 4 & 5 i think they were really well made however the preceding seasons were ill conceived and patronising to anyone with real sense. This was starting to look more and more like a Steven Seagal flick (only worse this is a series) all the baddies are so generic they are either waiting to have their asses kicked or get hypnotized into giving up intel by Jennifer garner garner's hot body i can't say i am really surprised since the creator is none other than J.J Abrams THE SAME MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST which like alias had a lot of potential but like its predecessor is bricking itself in by trying to overstretch a concept. Any way back to Alias the thing i find most frustrating are 1) Arvin Sloane's implied sense of evil, honestly for a man who is supposed to be so evil i expected gut wrenching evidence of his villainy without this evidence i find it hard to detest this man, in fact i find myself drawn to him and in most cases rooting for him to do something to cement his credibility all ending in disappointment.

2) Sydney bristow - if agent Bristow is really the bleeding hard she is portrayed as why doesn't she have the heart to give Sloane a second chance in spite of his transgressions(the mind boggles). The condescending forwardness with which Sydney conducts herself is a miscalculated attempt to portray her an independent strong woman which backfires because we are all aware that such conduct wouldn't fly with any credible organisation let alone a government agency like the CIA , please,

3)Agent Vaughn's wooden acting, no doubt Vaughn is a cute guy but his face seems incapable of rendering an emotionally rooted performance

In conclusion i feel obliged to recommend to anyone who's planning on catching this show on DVD or tivo DON'T or you CAN'T but if you insist let someone who's watched season season 1 - 3 tell you what happens then watch season 4 & 5

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63 out of 114 people found the following comment useful :-
a waste of production-design, 30 March 2006
Author: Kosinus from Hamburg, Germany

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this show looks great, stylish, fast paced... like popular shows like x-files or 24... those shows share more problems than most seem to be aware of: they are all totally lost in themselves. At a certain point they all gave away the chance of finding to a descent conclusion. I gave Alias a second chance... after watching in on TV and being annoyed about the show being a permanent cliffhanger I waited for the DVD release... if you would shift the episodes for 15 minutes it would be even enjoyable on TV. but it's OK if you watch it on DVD. after but after the second season they started breaking with all rules of story-telling and became as arbitrary as possible (like 24 also does). People seem to be transferring sides from one moment to another, people die, come back, are cloned, copied, brainwashed... there is no clear story line left... or, if there still is, this show really got me to the point where I gave up trying to give it a chance...

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15 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
How to ruin a TV show, 9 August 2008

Author: (hiperbolha@mailbox.hu) from United Kingdom

ALIAS is the drama series I could never decide whether to be loved or hated. Probably one the most entertaining shows I've ever seen on TV, but also one of the biggest disappointments in my life. Now, how comes that? Arguably, Alias is a great example on how to ruin a drama show that started out with such a great potential. Not with a ground-breakingly original idea (the show obviously resembles La Femme Fatale Nikita and dozens of similar espionage stories), but with its interesting characters and slightly unrealistic but rather clever story lines and plot twists, it DOES manage to get you hooked, after just a few episodes (provided you get to see the right episodes). It sounds good so far, so what the hell went wrong?

Well, during its 5-years run, nearly everything. Too bad Alias never managed to become a mainstream show, somehow it always remained kind of underground, a cult show, having said that its ratings never were what network executives expected. Which, despite the initial hype around the show, really was a shame. That was why the network finally decided to tamper with Alias, and the results were somewhat mixed. So it wasn't long before the show started to lose its fanbase, its core audience, and since the show never had sky-high ratings, I consider losing its fanbase... well, the obvious downhill of Alias. For me, it definitely was season four, when ABC had an attempt to introduce Alias to a larger audience, so they had JJ Abrams reboot the show, yet again. Nothing wrong with that... except it went horribly wrong, in my opinion. ABC's idiotic mandates such as avoiding any potentially great long-term plot or mystery (including Rambaldi) made the show so simplistic, so dumbed down, that you might as well have watched any other drama series involving dumb CIA agents fighting dumb terrorist organizations. Gone are the plot twists, the interesting story lines, even the cliffhangers, Alias had lost nearly all of its elements that kept us watching it week to week, only to introduce awfully uninteresting, clichéd stand-alone episodes and dumb criminals that no-one ever cared about. Only when the fourth season came to an end, it was terribly disappointing too. The writers' attempts to make up for the boredom in the first half of the season were absolutely ridiculous, and I just couldn't believe why the same producers that banned Alias from being intelligent and creative (not to mention the Rambaldi storyline) let the season's (and apparently the Rambaldi storyline's) conclusion turn into something that resembles some low-budget 70's horror flick. Undoubtedly that was when I realised that Alias had turned into something it was never supposed to be, and I was praying that the fifth season would somehow make up for the disappointment of the fourth.

Sadly, it didn't. Banning Rambaldi again for about the half of season five (but at least not being so desperate about the self-contained format as in season 4), the network clearly had no idea about what they were doing and how much harm their tampering would cause to the show. However, it quickly became clear that Alias would be cancelled, so all we could expect that all the story lines and mysteries would finally be resolved. We also hoped that it would go out with a bang - with the same bang it was introduced to us. But every now and then, we were let down. Really let down.

Most of the blame should fall on ABC, for constantly dumbing down Alias and turning it into something it was never supposed to be, and JJ Abrams, who had abandoned the show and moved on to Lost, leaving his own 'child' for the dead (which you might consider a successful move if you are a Lost fan, but otherwise you might as well hate Abrams forever). They should have asked themselves the question: is Alias exactly the same great, intelligent, exciting, suspenseful drama that the audience came to know in its first season? And if there's even a slight possibility that the answer would be 'No'... then clearly, something has gone wrong. Horribly wrong. And it needs fixing. That is what the creators of Alias, along with the network, always failed to do. And this is what led to the ultimate destruction of a once-great TV show. So to answer my initial question: the show is to be loved, and the creators are to be hated for killing it.

(Let's be a little bit rude with the rating. The first 2 seasons were near-perfect, the third was a so-so, the last 2 were utter crap. Golden mean it is, I give Alias 5 stars.)

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18 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
A mix of ambition, bad acting and big question marks., 8 July 2008

Author: treefeller from Azerbaijan

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I have watched about 30 episodes of the show and cannot, in all honesty, decide whether it's brilliant or crap. Every aspect of it seems uneven, overly complex or simplistic, the amount of suspension of disbelief required in order to enjoy it is immense and yet..and yet "Alias" cannot just be dismissed.

The acting is bloody terrible - the actor playing Garner's CIA handler looks on the verge of tears every time and the one playing her dad just pushes his lips together and looks constipated. Yet, the cameos by Tarantino and Faye Danaway are great and Lena Olin creates a very intriguing character throughout season 2. The whole concept of an evil global alliance bent on world domination places Alias in the James Bond spy universe - good looking, well dressed, very urbane, multilingual, savvy and cruel guys, against well dressed, immensely talented, good guys.

Most of the dialogue goes to show that the show takes itself very seriously and even though it is not as bizarre, self contained and irrelevant as a Mamet script, it still is far away from how normal people talk to each other.

And then there is Rambaldi. A fictional renaissance inventor/artist, whose creations ( dispersed in hard to get to locations all over the earth) are coveted by seemingly everybody in the intelligence community and their enemies; they seem to hold the answer to mankind's eternal questions about power and truth and life unending.

Reading my review so far, I realize that I haven't touched upon the main premise/plot line of the series, that of a young woman being recruited by the CIA right out of college, only to discover that she has in fact been recruited by SD-6, a criminal organization posing as the CIA. Then the CIA recruits her and asks her to act as a double agent. And her father is a double agent as well. And her mother. Only she might be a triple agent or something. It looks a bit preposterous, no? Still, it somehow works. I was more annoyed with the whole " your plane leaves in an hour, infiltrate that facility in this east European city, grab the schematics/usb/camera/suitcase etc., kick ass on your way out and come back" idea, that seems to be how the creators of the show vizualize how high-priority, top-secret, intelligence-gathering operations are conducted. Jennifer Gardner dresses up, goes to the place, speaks a bit of the lingo, gets in the lab, grabs the stuff, comes out kicking or shooting and is brought back to the states every single time. Seriously, this process I just described accounts for at least 90% of the episodes.

All that notwithstanding, the show seems driven by some sort of ambition that hope gets it somewhere and for that, I give it a 6.

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111 out of 219 people found the following comment useful :-
What a waste of potential, 5 November 2006

Author: HubertFarnsworth from United States

This show was the best in the first couple seasons. Kept me riveted with its story lines and great action scenes. Jennifer was beyond sexy, a confident woman, an independent woman. Then came the third season - wasn't horrible, but didn't keep me watching. The fourth season was an absolute mess. It should've been cancelled after the second season because what they offered was b.s.

I am really sick of JJ Abrams and his tendency to write great shows, lose interest, and move on to another idea and let the previous show to flounder. I've stopped watching shows he writes. It's just a waste of time.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
One of my all-time favorite shows, 18 October 2009

Author: dilly_16 from United States

I loved watching Alias. It was one of the few series where I would freak out if I missed an episode - it was just that good. Season 1 through 3 were the best seasons though and I think it got rather heavy after that - ridiculous plot lines and Sloane's crazy obsession with Rembaldi, clones...

The cast are terrific - Jennifer Garner's such a terrific actress and she's surrounded by a stellar cast - Victor Garber, Michael Vartan, Ron Rifkin..

It really is a great show - if you don't mind the confusion now and again and just watch it with an open mind, take it for what it is - a really great series!

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A True Thrill Ride from Season 1 through Season 5, 29 May 2009

Author: edblitzz from New York

From the very first episode to the series' final moment, 'Alias' never failed to keep me on the edge of my seat. Dramatic, funny, thrilling, action-packed and smart, it brings you through so many twists and turns that you may have to come up for air once in a while, but will undoubtedly find yourself diving in for more. Three years after its conclusion 'Alias' still remains my favorite show, thanks to a stellar cast, gripping score, intelligent writers and great production values; with the lovely Jennifer Garner being the glue that holds it all together, and of course, the brainchild behind it all, J.J. Abrams. Part James Bond, part Indiana Jones, Garner's Sydney Bristow is a hero for the ages. 'Alias' is at once epic, heart-warming, exciting, and ultimately unforgettable; a true gem in the history of serialized television.

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11 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Started out good but ended a total mess, 15 September 2007

Author: QueenofF-ckingEverything

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I loved the first 2 seasons of this show. I really did. they ended season two with a mother of a cliffie, which they promptly turned to utter crap in season three. what an anticlimax. it just went downhill from there. by the end of the show we have frigging zombies running around biting and killing people and Arvin Sloane becoming immortal. i think that Sydney finally snapping in the middle of a business meeting and shooting Sloane in the face mid sentence would have been a better way to end the show. instead they kill off her whole family, trap the zombie Sloane thing in a cave and Syd lived happily ever after.i think this is a good example of what can happen when the creator gets bored. should have stayed a spy drama and left the sci-fi out. i should have stopped watching after season two... bye bye Alias (the 5 stars are for starting out well.)

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