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Alias - The Complete First Season Customer Reviews (25 - 27 of 49 Reviews)

Alias is Brilliant!
The story lines and plots are clever, intelligent and full of twists and turns you can never see coming! The writing is excellent. But, most of all, the character development is brilliant. You'll find yourself being emotionally drawn in by the characters. For example, the hideous Arvin Slone worships his wife. How many hideous villians do you "know" that love their wives? Irina is an "opportunistic sociopath" (Jacks words) who shot her own daughter and heinously murdered Vaughn's father. Yet, the constant reference to Irina as "Sydney's mother" creates conflicting emotions. It's easy to hate Irina, but hard to work up a good case of disgust toward "Sydney's mother."

Marshall is great. He's brilliant, he's goofy, and he's a teddy bear, but he's working for the enemy. You're duty bound to hate him. But he doesn't KNOW he's working for the enemy, so you care about him. The interaction between Sydney and Marshall on their recent mission was MAGIC!

Dixon is like the big brother you always wish you had. You look up to and admire him, but he's also unknowingly working for the bad guys. Last season when SD-6 headquarters was invaded by the worse guys, Dixon actually appealed to the CIA for help... because he thought he was working for the CIA. A very touching scenario.

More and more subtle humor is being written in as part of the character development, and if you don't watch and listen closely, it will fly right past. I record each episode on video tape...since the DVD's are inexplicably not available... and find myself watching prior episodes to find explanations for something I missed. Being an Alias fan is like waiting anxiously for the next Tom Clancy book to come out.

I could go on and on. They've really got you cornered with this cast of characters.

I'M A NEW FAN!
Just got this DVD set. I had never watched the show on TV, but it always looked good. I watched the first 2 episodes, and now I can't stop watching the rest of the season! I have seen 8 episodes already in 2 days. I cant wait to finish this season and get Season 2 and 3.

Best show now on American TV
"Alias" is a great show. It's also wildly implausible. Jennifer Gardner stars as Sydney Bristow: grad student by day, spy by night, and double agent in her spare time. She does all this while racking up a million frequent flyer miles a year. It's not surprising that she's unlucky in love and often an emotional basket case. But when she's in the middle of a mission Sydney's got cool that James Bond can't match (OK, maybe the Timothy Dalton Bond could keep up).

The ABC network has helped the series considerably with liberal deviation from the accepted hour show format. This began with an uninterrupted showing of the pilot when the series debuted: 66 minutes without commercial or other interruption, a nearly unheard-of occurrence in American TV. The following 21 episodes fit the standard 45 minutes of content for an "hour" show, but many ran for 15 or more minutes before the credits and first commercial break (in sharp contrast to the 2-3 minute convention before first ad break).

The star and special effects crew of "Alias" are constantly pushing the envelope. Jennifer Garner had minimal action show work under her belt when she started on the series. Garner could run and dance, but was keen to learn more. It soon became apparent to the writers and stunt crew that she was adept at memorizing: not just scripts, but also stunt choreography and foreign language phonetics. The foreign languages in "Alias" are much more compelling than the usual cheat of English with some phony foreign accent. Garner has since studied kickboxing and wire stunts, and actually looks forward to jumping off 100' buildings as a regular part of her job.

"Alias" is in many ways a very flawed show. The flaws do not keep it from being remarkably entertaining. There's lots of impossible spy gadgetry, but the Bond movies have made us come to expect that. No real spy agency would keep on an agent as prone to emotional collapse as Sydney Bristow, yet both SD-6 and the CIA consider her a valuable asset. The whole prophetic 15th century Milo Rambaldi technology schtick is WAY out there. And many of the effects over-reach. One particularly egregious example is the oft-shown exploding car sequence. The hood pops off and the car pitches up while fire lights it from below/behind. Since you can see through the engine compartment it's glaringly apparent that this stunt car did not, in fact, actually have an engine in it as it rolled down the road.

"Alias" show honchos have hedged their bets by going with known quantities where possible. Series creator J.J. Abrams worked with star Garner on "Felicity", and has known Greg Grunberg (a "Felicity" regular) since childhood. Kevin Weisman played a recurring role on "Felicity". (Amanda Foreman, another "Felicity" regular, shows up in seasons two and three.) Executive producer Ken Olin appears in a small recurring role, and his wife and "thirtysomething" costar Patricia Wettig also plays a recurring character on "Alias".

In the first season notable guest stars include Gina Torres, Quentin Tarantino, Angus Scrimm, Amy Irving, Lindsay Crouse, Terry O'Quinn, and Peter Berg.

"Alias" is written as a continuous story arc and few episodes end without leaving the viewer eager to see what comes next. The first season has plot threads involving Sydney's graduate school studies, her secret agent work for SD-6, her double agent work for the CIA, clueless best friends Will and Francie, the thaw in her relationship with her distant father, the mysterious Alliance, the prophetic works of Milo Rambaldi, and the growing question of what happened to her mother.

As Sydney's view of her mother changes, so does the casting. The character is played in the first season by Arabella Holzbog (in old photos), Natasha Pavlovich (in grainy surveillance footage), and April Webster in a quick backlit scene. The character gains major importance in the second season when played by Lena Olin.

It's not surprising that the show's producers and writers spend considerable time worrying about ways to bring viewers up to speed if they've missed or forgotten plot points. There's a lot going on in "Alias", and you don't want to blink sometimes for fear of being thrown off the roller-coaster.

The DVD first season collection of "Alias" is unremarkable for its packaging and extra content. This is mostly a good thing. The effort went into excellent video and audio transfer, and the menus are less annoying than most. Extra content is largely what they had lying around in the editing room: a few deleted scenes, and the ABC promo spots for a few episodes. Audio commentary was added in three of the 22 episodes, including the first and last.

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