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.
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.