Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Hercules The Strong loves television. Loves it. Lives it. Breathes it. Can’t get enough.
Harry Knowles hates television. Refuses to watch anything, even if it’s recommended strongly, even if I tell him he’ll love it. He’d rather wait for it to show up on DVD so he can tell himself he’s not watching TV. Total freakin’ snob.
And me? Well, I fall somewhere in the middle. I love the potential of television to tell stories you can’t tell in a two hour feature film, the way you get caught up in a favorite show, the way you get pulled back week after week to see these characters you’ve come to love. When it works, I think it’s really great. Admittedly, there’s a lot of crap to wade through, and one of the most interesting times of the year is the start of the season, when you pick and choose to see what you’re going to tune in for, what you’re going to sample.
I’ve been sent a lot of pilots recently, and in most cases, the shows have been so forgettable that I didn’t see any reason to review them. THE DOWNER CHANNEL. NIGHT VISIONS. These aren’t shows that are going to last, and you’ll figure that out on your own. There’s really no need for me to pipe up.
In the case of ABC’s upcoming ALIAS, though, I thought I should chime in. You see, the first two reviews we’ve had on the site were negative, and after seeing the pilot, I’m somewhat surprised. There was Viacom Girl’s review, and we also had a review by Stumpy. In both cases, they called it a cliché, a boring retread, not worth watching.
Well, I call shenanigans on both of them.
ALIAS is going to be playing on Sunday nights on ABC, opposite THE X-FILES and the new LAW & ORDER show. For my money, ALIAS looks like the strongest of the three. It may cover familiar ground, but I’ve always said... it’s not what you’re telling, it’s how you tell it. In this case, the pilot, written and directed by executive producer JJ Abrams, is stylish, appropriately intense, and confident. Yes, it’s apparent he’s seen both LA FEMME NIKITA and RUN LOLA RUN. So what? The way he blends his obvious influences is what makes the 71 minute pilot (an odd running time) such a pleasure.
The opening takes place in a dirty, dank little room in Taiwan, a concrete square somewhere underground. A girl is being beaten while her tormenters bark at her in Chinese. It’s a disturbing opening, and when she answers in Chinese, it’s disorienting. Where are we? It’s not made any clearer when we suddenly cut to a classroom at a major university where the same girl, looking very different, is finishing up an exam. Time runs out and her teacher tells her to put her pencil down. She manages to sneak in a few extra lines before handing the test in.
Outside, we get our real introduction to Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), a long lanky beauty. She’s with her boyfriend, doctor-in-training Danny, complaining about her test, and when he stops in the middle of the campus yard and drops to one knee, she’s not sure what he’s doing. He proposes, and she is overwhelmed. She says yes, and the two embrace. It’s a sweet scene, handled with the right amount of humor, and Garner generates an immediate warmth. She’s hard not to like. For fans of FELICITY, the other JJ Abrams show on the air right now, this is going to feel like familiar territory. As Sydney tells her friends about the proposal, there’s the suggestion of a strained relationship with her father (played by Victor Garber, who many of you will recognize from TITANIC). We also learn that she has a best friend, Will, who is constantly pining for her. I was all set to roll my eyes and tune out when Sydney went to work.
The show’s got a great soundtrack, and as it kicked in, I realized just how fun the blend could be between the sort of relationship drama Abrams is known for and a sophisticated spy romp. It’s the same sort of balance that James Cameron struck in TRUE LIES, and as Sydney makes her way into the building where SD-6, her top-secret agency, is located, there’s a feeling that we’re passing from one world to another. The great Ron Rifkin is her boss, and he briefs her and her partner Dixon about a mission they’re going to be sent on in Taiwan. There’s a genuinely funny Q-type character, Marshall, a sort of uber-nerd who explains their spy gear to them, and then they return to their normal lives to get ready to leave.
Before she can go, Sydney decides to tell Danny the truth about what she does. At first he thinks she’s kidding, but when he realizes it’s the truth, he flips out. She explains how she got involved with SD-6, and we see it all in flashback, but Danny doesn’t want to hear it. He cuts her off and leaves, not sure how he feels about any of it. Sydney is crushed when she leaves town, and in her conversations with Dixon on the plane, it’s obvious that it’s weighing heavy on her. She wants to believe she did the right thing, that Danny should know the truth. Dixon has never told his wife anything, and there’s the implication in what he says that it’s for her own safety as much as out of a sense of duty.
While she’s overseas and working to photograph the high-tech doodad which serves as the episode’s McGuffin, Danny calls her answering machine and leaves a message in which he tells her he doesn’t care if she’s a spy or not. He loves her and he wants to be with her. That call is intercepted by SD-6, though, and Rifkin ends up with a report on his desk within minutes. He calls in another agent to discuss the matter, and in a nice reveal, it turns out to be Sydney’s estranged father. They debate what to do, and in the end, there seems to be only one choice.
When Sydney returns from Taiwan, she finds her apartment trashed. Even worse, Danny is dead in the bathtub, slashed up. It’s a shocking image, and it sets up the stakes in the show. It plays for keeps, and it plays rough. When she confronts Rifkin, not only does he admit to having had Danny killed, he rubs her nose in it and tells her it’s her fault. She has to be debriefed, and Anghus (PHANTASM) Scrimm shows up in a nice cameo as the guy in charge of the interrogation. All of this is intercut with that opening scene, Sydney in some underground room in China, being tortured. Again, they play rough. They pull teeth from her head without anesthesia. They beat the shit out of her. It’s surprising how far Abrams goes.
But when is that torture taking place? How does Sydney end up back in Taiwan? Is SD-6 really the agency she thinks it is? Where do her father’s loyalties really lie? I don’t think ALIAS is the greatest show ever made, and I’m not telling you that you HAVE to tune in to find out the answers to these questions. I will say that I enjoyed it greatly, that I think Garner has the right stuff to carry the show, that I want to see more of the supporting cast around her, and that I was impressed by how well Abrams serves both halves of Sydney’s life in the show. If he’s able to walk that balance each week, and if he’s able to really get us invested in the life of this girl, then Touchstone Television could have a real winner on their hands. I’ll say this... in some ways, this is a better piece of spy pop fiction than the recent Bond films have been. At least here, there’s a chance we’ll see some real growth or change in the character at the center of things. In Broccoli-land, nothing ever changes, and nothing ever matters. There’s never any real peril. We see Sydney get hurt badly in this first episode, so we’re prepared now: anything can happen.
I give this the highest compliment I can for a TV pilot: I’ll tune in for the second episode. I’ll be curious to see how many of you feel the same when the show premieres this fall. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
