Alias Gripe Season Opener



TV viewing season is upon us. I am a regular watcher of the following: Alias, 24, West Wing, and ER.

West Wing has been pretty good. I'm not as carried away by the show, so I barely talk about it. Clearly Pres Bartlet is on his way out and it looks like the series will continue with Jimmy Smits as the next President. I think Smits is a fine actor and personality, he could definitely anchor the show in the next four years. I think he's done well moving from "I'm-a-sexy-heartthrob" in LA Law to roles with gravitas.

ER is on life support. Why people still watch it is beyind me. Why I still watch it is beyond me. I think it is allegiance to the show's past excellence. I'm tired of Carter finding a new love of his life every season and then it ends and I'm tired of them trying to force the young black doctor (I forget his name) into the original black guy's role (brash and supremely self confident).

24 is about to start. The premise for 24 is that the whole show takes place in one day. Each show is an hour. This is the fourth season. I watched a few scenes here and there in the firs season. We became regular watchers in the second season and thus rented the first season. Both first and second seasson were excellent. Third season was okay good. Now, here we go. I'll have more to gripe about after the season opener tomorrow.

Then there is Alias. This is the third season, I think. The show's premise has changed somewhat,but here's the original first season storyline.

Sidney Bristow was UCLA college student, estranged from here creepy dad who worked for an aeronautics firm and her mom, a former college professor, was dead. She was approached and recruited to work for the CIA in a Black Ops division called SD-6. Besides being a student, her front day job was at a bank, but really, when she went to work, she took a special elevator to the SD-6 offices. She also had a couple of very close friends whom she lived with and who had no clue, of course that she was a secret agent.

Life took a nasty turn, when her boyfriend proposed to her. She then told him about her secret life and SD6 had him killed when they found out by listening in on a call he made. SD-6 then tried to kill her because she had broken confidentiality. In the process of trying to escape the SD6 agents, a car pulls up and it is her dad. Well, it turns out that Dad is an SD6 agent too. He saves her life and reveals the bombshell that SD6 is really not part of the CIA, but a branch of a world wide criminal network called the Alliance. This fact was only known to the topmost individuals on the food chain. To stop SD6 from trying to kill, she then goes on a solo mission to retrieve an item of great importance to SD6 and informs her boss, Arvin Sloan, "We're on the same side." She regains SD6's trust.

She then turns herself over to the true CIA and they turn her into a double agent. So everytime she goes on a mission with her partner, she is given a counter mission. This is what made the show spectacular in the first season, the fact that she had to play double-agent in a very dangerous environment and also hide her identity from her friends. Basically, her whole life was a charade and it made for some fascinating watching. A quick fact here: she later found out that her Dad was also a CIA double agent (she was disgusted at him for being part of SD6).

So that was the basic story.

The problem is that the writers of the show move way too fast and the first season ended up being 3-4 seasons in one. So at the end of the first season, we find out that Sidney's mom was actually not a sweet college professor who died in a car accident, for which she blamed Dad, who was fleeing people. She was actually a KGB agent who had fooled her Dad and the CIA and gotten away with it. They also find out that she wasn't dead and the in season finale of Season 1, she comes face to face with mom. Exciting stuff.

Another major storyline is Milo Rimbaldi. Rimbaldi was a 16th century personality, architect to the Pope and other things, who was like Da Vince and Nostradamus merged into one. He left plans for a major contraption scattered all over the globe and the rush was on, by the CIA, KGB, and the Alliance to get all the pieces. First season Rimbaldi stuff was fascinating, then it got stupid.

I was going to gripe about season opener, but this post has gone on too long already. But suffice it too say that because JJ Abrams and writers have moved too fast, subsequent seasons have moved far from season 1's storyline and now we are left with sexy chic, who kicks guy's butts. It is still a fun show, but the underlying tension is gone and that's another post.