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(More customer reviews)Warning: Spoilers are liberally sprinkled in the following review
For four seasons now ALIAS has managed to be one of the most consistently entertaining series on television, showcasing arguably the most successful action-genre actress in the history of TV. What sets Jennifer Garner apart from her competitors for the Best Action Heroine is her combination of acting ability, stunning looks, and athletic prowess. Any other actress that I can think of fails to match her in all three of those crucial categories. As much as I adore BUFFY (my all time favorite show), Sarah Michelle Gellar, while gorgeous, was not quite as good an actress as Garner, and was no where near as good an athlete.
Season Four ended up a very strong season despite a somewhat shaky beginning and a very hard-to-swallow initial premise. The season starts with the creation of a new black ops unit of the L.A. office of the CIA. That isn't hard to accept, but what is that it is headed up by Arvin Sloane. In the world of television we are often asked to swallow some pretty astonishing premises, but asking Arvin Sloane to become head of a new CIA black ops unit would be like Goldfinger replacing M as James Bonds's superior. Things weren't helped by a string of rather lackluster early season episodes that fell far short of the usual ALIAS standards. Luckily about a third of the way through the season there was a sharp improvement in the quality of the scripts, and the last several episodes were superb even by ALIAS standards. The essential untrustworthiness of Sloane even was utilized in marvelous fashion.
Family has always played a role in ALIAS, and while it would be inaccurate to describe it as a family drama, doing so wouldn't be too far of a stretch. The complex relationship between Sydney and her father has always been a major component of the show, but family matters multiplied to embrace nearly every character in the show. The beautiful Argentinean actress Mía Maestro joined the cast as Nadia Santos, supposedly the daughter of Arvin Sloane and Sydney's mother and hence Sydney's half sister. (MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: I say "supposedly" because in the season finale Jack Bristow tells Irina Derevko that Nadia is a remarkably woman, and Irina affectionately replies, "I wonder where she got that from." To the attentive viewer it obviously implied that Irina, at least, thought that Jack and not Sloane was the father.) Nadia also spends time getting to know her father Sloane, while developing a relationship with Eric Weiss. Meanwhile, Sydney and Vaughan repair their relationship after the travails of Season Three. The "family matters" feel of the show was perhaps best epitomized by the end of the next-to-last episode of the season, where Jack, Irina, Vaughan, Nadia, and finally Sydney all parachute from an airplane in Russia.
From the first episode ALIAS has stood out for its superb cast and consistently brilliant acting. Before I continue I want to emphasize that ALIAS remains one of my favorite shows, and I was delighted when I heard that it had been renewed for a fifth season. This is clearly not an inexpensive show to produce, with its large and talented cast, impressive array of guest stars, and extravagant sets and special effects. But thankfully the powers-that-be at ABC gave the green light for a fifth season. I would, however, like to make two minor and one major criticism of the show. If I get my wish for Christmas, it will be for the makers of the show to resolve the main problem in the show. First, the two minor complaints. One concerns the final seconds of the season. One of the most hallowed rules of good writing is that if you are going to bring about a major plot change, it needs to have been foreshadowed earlier in the narrative. Sudden and dramatic shifts can not only feel tacked on and inconsistent, but can leave the viewer feeling deceived. This is how I felt when in the closing seconds of the season Vaughan revealed to Sydney that it was no accident that she had been sent to him in the first episode of the series and that his name was not Michael Vaughan. This simply was not credible, and in going back and watching several key episodes from the past, I cannot find that there has been even the slightest hint that Vaughan was playing a double game. So, it truly did feel "tacked on." My second criticism is that the Rambaldi prediction of Season One, namely, that someone who looked like Sydney would be involved in the fate of her sister in some pivotal event, was a thunderous dud. Unless, of course, the season finale was not the foretold event. But it is part of a larger problem: for four seasons we have seen an ongoing involvement in the legacy of Rambaldi, but the payoff has been rather slight. Despite random attempts, the Rambaldi elements of the show too frequently feel like they have merely been inserted, without being fully integrated.
Now to the major problem in the show, and one that is creating some uneasiness as I anticipate the coming seasons of J. J. Abrams's other show on ABC, LOST. With FELICITY, ALIAS, and LOST, Abrams has shown that he can create innovative series with marvelous initial premises with ongoing first rate writing. But what he has not yet demonstrated is that he can move on from those initial premises to take series in new and exciting directions. ALIAS has been magnificent for four years, but it has been essentially recycling itself each year. Contrast this to BUFFY, where each year Joss Whedon took the show in startling new directions. Even if one didn't like what he did, there was no question that each year was utterly fresh and unique. There have been changes in ALIAS, but the changes have been rather tame. Season Five of BUFFY was profoundly different than Season Two, while Season Four of ALIAS felt eerily like Season One. I will be delighted if Season Five of ALIAS is just another version of Seasons One through Four, but I will be far more excited if they try to shake it up entirely, if they try to redefine the formula or jettison it entirely.
There is one other factor that could affect Season Five: Jennifer Garner's pregnancy. Although ABC hadn't yet announced when Season Five was going to begin, it is pretty clear that it will have to resume in January like it did this year. Season Four ended with Vaughan and Sydney's vehicle being smashed by an SUV. Perhaps this will allow Garner to start Season Five in an injured state, giving her time in real life to get into the physical shape that allows her to do such wonderful stunts (although she uses a stunt double, she does more of her own stunt work than most performers). With a late fall due date, she is going to have very little time to get back into shape. However they work the logistics, I'm sure that we are going to have at the very least another amazing season of one of the finest action shows TV has produced.
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