On the Bookshelf

Golden Globe Award-winning actress Jennifer Garner is Sydney Bristow. Syd's not exactly your average grad student. Her life might appear normal, but she is hiding a secret life working as a spy for the CIA.

Sydney's world is turned upside down when she learns she may work for the very enemy she thought she was fighting. Now she's entangled in a covert lifestyle where she is forced to question the allegiances of everyone, including those closest to her.

Before J.J. Abrams got us all Lost he took us undercover in the world of international espionage. Season One of Alias introduces us to Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) who works for what she believes is a black-ops division of the CIA until they murder her fiancé. She discovers that she was tricked into working for the bad guys all along and now must work as a double agent for the CIA, working to bring SD-6 down.

Watching this show a second time around, I find that I am getting sucked in just as easily as I did when I first saw it being aired on television. Alias has a unique and non-traditional episode formatting where a new story will start around middway through the episode instead of at the beginning so that each show can end in a cliff hanger. This always used to keep me hanging on waiting for a new episode when the show was first out and it made it very easy to keep watching episode after episode on DVD. One slightly off-putting aspect of the formatting is how late the opening credits play. The opening credits can play anywhere from right after the opening scene but quite often are not thrown in until fifteen (15) to even twenty (20) minutes in, as though they nearly forgot to include them at all. Watching episodes consecutively I also got sick of the introductory "My name is Sydney Bristow..." sequence that plays at the very start of each episode.

I really enjoy the plotline involving the creations of Milo Rambaldi, the (fictional) fifteenth century artist and inventor with seemingly prophetic abilities. Rambaldi adds a mystical element to the show setting it apart from other "spy-fy" dramas while remaining within believable boundaries.

The soundtrack is also of great strength to the show and, combined with Garner's snappy wardrobe, you can almost forgive that so many valuable items and secrets are kept in nightclub basements.

Terra