The List: #25 Alias

#25
Number of Seasons: 5
Years Active: 2001 - 2006
Network: ABC

Alias was inspired by a joking idea for a plotline on J.J. Abram's first series, Felicity, in which the lead character spent the summer as a secret agent. Expanding on that idea, Abrams created Sydney Bristow, a grad student and part-time international banker by day and a black ops agent by, um, other part of the day. The pilot shows a (fairly) happy Sydney. She is successful as both a student and a spy, she has great relationships with her friends, and her boyfriend proposes to her. She has a strained relationship with her father, but he isn't much a part of her life, so she has almost moved on. But her entire world is turned on its head when she learns that the black ops division she works for is not a faction of the CIA, but rather a terrorist organization that recruits people by posing as a government agency. She is further horrified to learn that her father is a top-ranking official in the organization. And on top of all of that, when she tells her fiance what she has learned, SD-6 (the organization) has him killed. Taking her information to the REAL CIA, she is persuaded to become a double agent... and learns that her father is also a double working for the CIA.

The show mixes spy stories, sci-fi elements and relationship drama to tell a story about family. This approach doesn't always work (Sydney's attitude towards her mother in the later seasons is pretty unbelievable), but for the most part, Alias put a new and interesting spin on family stories. The relationship between Sydney, her father and Sloane, the man who serves as both a villain and sort of second father to Syd, is at times touching, creepy, terrifying and bizarre.

Most of the other relationships work as well, but there are times when things tend to fall apart. One character, who was not an unlikable character, was almost universally detested because she stood between Sydney and the man fans felt she should be with (I wished that she could have stuck around for a little longer, but oh well). Also, it would seem that a last-minute change to the third-season cliffhanger (the creators claim that they wrote themselves into a corner and decided to change the story during the hiatus) along with some network mandates (dear networks: forcing a show to change its format to draw in new fans is almost never a good idea) led to a really bad fourth season.

Fortunately, the fifth season returned to form and was on par with the incredible quality of the earlier seasons. There are some staggering drops in quality in seasons 3 and 4, but the first two years are incredible, and the fifth season is nearly as good.

Up next: #24...