Chris Todd

I don't watch a lot of serial American television -- after the Whedonverse went off the air, the few remaining offerings of interest just didn't seem like much fun, and most anything that I did happen to like ("Dead Like Me," "Inside," "Threshold," to name a few) usually managed to get cancelled just as it got interesting. That's not to say I don't watch a lot of TV in general, but most of what I watch nowdays is either on DVD or from foreign shores: "Lost" simply works better for me on DVD, and with shows like "ReGenesis," "Life On Mars," and the new "Doctor Who" coming from Canada and the UK, I manage to keep busy.

(There are exceptions -- I have to get my fix of "Battlestar Galactica" every week when it's on the air, most anyone could learn something about writing from the precision of any random "Law & Order" episode, and they can pry my Sunday trifecta of "Simpsons"/"Family Guy"/"American Dad" from whichever one of my cold dead hands is not holding the universal remote. But I digress.)

But during the dark time after the end of "Angel," my brother gave me the first season of "Alias" on DVD. See, "Alias" was a show I really wanted to like and get into -- the first episode was promising and the nod to "Run Lola Run" didn't hurt -- but my attention was distracted by "Buffy" and "Angel," and I simply didn't have the bandwidth to keep up. But the gift gave me a second chance (the same one many TV shows have gained through DVD), and once I devoured the first season I was hooked. I immediately picked up the sets for the second and third seasons and managed to catch up just in time for the fourth season to hit the air. Unfortunately, it wasn't to last. With creator J.J. Abrams' attention distracted by "Lost" and the "Mission: Impossible 3" movie, and ratings declining with an increasingly fickle audience, the writing was on the wall. I figure I was lucky to get the most recent fifth and final season, though, one more chance to spin out the plot threads before watching them yanked back together in the final episode.

Any synopsis of the show is somewhat futile now, but the basic idea was that Sydney Bristow, an attractive, intelligent, proficient woman, just happens to be a spy working for a series of nebulous organizations that require her to undertake dangerous missions around the world. That these dangerous missions frequently require her to infiltrate dance clubs while wearing a variety slinky outfits should, you know, go without saying. The problem is that I think a lot of people misunderstood the nature of the "Alias"; or perhaps, I was simply approaching it from a different angle. Critics believed that the heart of the show was Sydney balancing her career as a college student against the demands of being a secret agent in the early seasons and were never happy once that plot element was ejected from the show. Another contingent of viewers were frustrated by the constantly shifting nature of the ancient, occult Rambaldi Prophecy, in which Sydney figured prominently. And there were more than a few people perturbed by the fact that Sydney could continue to work with and for her boss, Arvin Sloane, even after he assassinated her fiancee.

But they all seem to be missing the point: "Alias" was never a traditional spy show, it was a superhero show dressed up in James Bond duds -- and more specifically, it was a superfamily show. It always reminded me of reading Chris Claremont's run on "X-Men" back in the day, with all the melodrama, family relations, mistaken identities, retcons, fights, double-crosses, triple-crosses, nefarious villains, secret agendas, and world-shattering threats that Must Be Stopped. Sydney's brief college fling was really beside the point as it distracted from all the fun. If you're a globe-trotting superspy who just narrowly escaped dying from a genetically engineered disease, then finishing your term paper is probably not only besides the point, but really boring for anyone else to watch. I was never happier than when they ditched that aspect of the show and fully embraced its comic book universe. I mean, did anyone really want to see "Felicity" with spies? And since when did Bond ever get to tussle with anything as bizarre as giant red floating spheres? In that context, the "answer" to the Rambaldi Prophecy was never particularly important to me; it was more or less an excuse for relationships to be rearranged and redefined into new, interesting geometries as everyone pursued the ultimate MacGuffin.

But it was the superfamily aspect of the show that interested me the most, and whether they were related by blood or not (and more often than not they were), everyone on the show formed a family, each one of them a master of their particular talents and most of them skilled in the art of deception, self and otherwise. It made for some interesting dynamics -- not to mention some occassionally sly commentary on tthe lies we tell to the ones we supposedly love -- but if it's remembered for nothing else, I think "Alias" will have contributed two of my favorite characters to the television pantheon. In many ways, they're the angel and devil -- well, maybe dirty angel and devil -- whose struggle for Sydney's soul provided the real spine for the series.

There's Sydney's father, Jack Bristow, a brilliant, ruthless, calculating man -- and spy -- emotionally traumatized after being betrayed by his wife, another superspy working for a foreign power. Originally a distant authority figure who so cared for his daughter that he tried to keep her from the life that had nearly destroyed him by shutting her out, he became her fiercest protector once both their secrets were revealed. Knowing no other way to demonstrate love for his daughter after years of suppressing his personal feelings, Jack Bristow became Dad as Terminator, an unstoppable force that would lie, steal, torture, kill, and endure any physical or psychological damage in order to save his daughter from danger. When an enemy agent infiltrates their headquarters and hides a bomb that could kill everyone -- including Sydney -- it's Jack who chokes the agent to death, then restarts his heart, with the promise that he'll keep doing it until the bomb's location is revealed or everyone dies. It was this strange combination of the monstrous and the heroic which defined Jack and made him a fascinating character week after week, even down to the series finale in which he gets to deliver one of the best quotes from the show ("You could beat death...but you can't beat me").

Then there's Jack's opposite number, the ambiguously ammoral Arvin Sloane. Obsessed with both the Rambaldi Prophecy and, only a little less, with Sydney, Sloane would play the good against the bad, the deceived against the deceiver, anyone against everyone, to get what he wanted. The ultimate narcissist, Sloane's tragic flaw was that he wanted to be loved, but would inevitably time and again be forced to choose between love and himself. That Sloane was also closely allied with Jack Bristow even as he acted as surrogate father to Jack's daughter, and then was later revealed to have even more intimate connections with the Bristow clan, only added additional layers of disturbing psychosexual tension to Sloane's already dubious personal motivation. When Sloane believes that someone may have killed Sydney, he flies into what could almost be described as a jealous rage, murdering the person he believes responsible; his creepy patriarchical feelings will allow for no one to harm Sydney -- except, when it comes down to it, for him. Sloane was the proverbial character you loved to hate, and there was always something satisfying about watching him calmly slip the bonds of anyone who tried to control him, whether they were the good guys or the bad. He was a chess player always twenty moves ahead, a villain through and through, but one who could never quite escape his own selfish obsessions and so pays the price for that weakness again and again.

And that's really what I liked about the series. It wasn't necessarily landmark television -- an above-average action show that could, on occassion, be a little silly -- but it was also a show where action was character, springing from collisions between motivation and duty only to become the catalyst for the next revelation. Every new secret or betrayal, every new villain or prophecy, was a way to further explore what motivated these characters and challenge them to overcome their fatal flaws. And if that happened to involve lots of gunfights, techno music, glam couture, and last minute escapes in the process...well, all the better. It was smart and it was fun while it lasted, and there's just too damn little of that on television.