Alias

Sunday's premiere delivers spectacular fun with great style edged in melancholy, its balance of breathless action and tenderness providing still more evidence of this fall's crop of new shows being the best in years. [29 Sept 2001, p.16]

Alias is one of the most non-linear and illogical pilots I have ever seen. It's also one of the most exciting television rides I've had in years. I love its energy. The breathless, roller-coaster montage of movement, color, action and emotion never quits. [29 Sept 2001, p.1D]

One of the best pilots from a new show this season -- a wild, stylish ride through Sydney Bristow's unraveling life. You have to suspend disbelief, but this series promises to be one nifty piece of entertainment. [28 Sept 2001, p.5E]

The joy of this series really comes down to two things: lots of action and some babelicious butt-kicking. Not something to be proud of for enjoying it, but true. Pass the chips and ale -- and down in front!

One of the best new series of the season. [30 Sept 2001, p.H01]

Alias is one of those rare action dramas where all the elements - plot, characters, production design, costumes, soundtrack and performances - come together to form one perfect hour of television. [30 Sept 2001, p.56]

Great fun. Leave your brain in neutral and enjoy the zany ride. When the twisting and turning are over, the briskly paced and visually intriguing Alias glides home as solid escapist fare. Don't ask questions. If logic gets in the way, this material will start unraveling like the proverbial cheap suit. Yet, while comic-bookish and derivative, Alias emerges as a winner because it shrewdly assembles bits and pieces of "La Femme Nikita" and other espionage thrillers. There's even a little "X-Files" trust-no-one paranoia thrown in for good measure. [29 Sept 2001, p.6]

The stylish, fast-moving series premiere is filled with surprising twists, witty repartee and some revved-up, well-choreographed action sequences. But the real star of Alias is, well, the star: athletic Jennifer Garner, who portrays Sydney with intelligence and graceful, hard-bodied charisma. [29 Sept 2001]

Can Alias work on a weekly basis? While the Alias pilot plunges forward effortlessly, it also leads to some fairly complicated twists involving Sydney's father (Victor Garber) and the nature of her agency. These twists could make future episodes overly layered, or too dependent on backstory. Also, any CIA suspense series, with or without a flashy pilot, faces the challenge of coming up with 20 or so fresh espionage plots each season - no easy task.

Sunday's Alias premiere plays out as a high-energy adventure wrapped in a mystery -- and it's better than a lot of theatrical films of the genre. Whether the series holds up is open to question. But the premiere is a gas. And the show could well turn out to be a good one. [28 Sept 2001, p.C08]

Hip, bright and done with a great deal of flair, Alias is like some candy-colored -- and very violent -- comic book come to life.

An improbable, heart-pounding and-tugging mix of fantastical '60s spy chic and emotionally realistic drama ... Ridiculous, over the top but unashamed, it manages to thrill and win our hearts.

Abrams directs stunning action scenes, and he develops a shadowy world of long-term potential. Garner manages to keep the show involving in the sillier moments, such as when Sydney dyes her hair loud red and goes off to settle scores single-handedly...Garner plays this conflicted heroine with poignancy and grit. [30 Sept 2001, p.4]

Somehow it works, thanks in part to a tangled intrigue that pulls this lowly matriculator into a conspiracy of the highest order. [29 Sept 2001, p.E1]

It's a taut, action-filled opener, and Garner's charisma and agility in this demanding role give it a special glow. If America's in the mood at all for spies and terrorists, this show's the semi-Superwoman version. [29 Sept 2001, p.9]

Yes, it's a ridiculous notion, but it's also a lot of stylish fun. [29 Sept 2001, p.1E]

Alias is so captivating because the actors and the writers make you believe in the characters, the situations and the jeopardy. There's a lot of humor, too, in both the romantic relationship and the James Bond-style spy gadgetry. And there are plenty of surprising turns. [28 Sept 2001, p.149]

Garner has an appeal that transcends implausibility.

As realistic a series as you're bound to see in which a beautiful, smart, athletic and resourceful young woman moonlights for an ultrasecret wing of the Central Intelligence Agency in between her grad school studies. [28 Sept 2001, p.48]

Garner played Felicity's new friend in that series' first two years, and here she replaces character's earnestness with ferocity, confusion and concealed pain. She plays the more human side with aplomb, but gets stuck in fight scenes that are so stagy one can count out the steps.

The intermittent blare of pop songs, telegraphing how the audience should feel, also breaks the fourth wall, undermining the power of the action sequences and the few poignant scenes between Sydney and her in-the-dark boyfriend (Edward Atterton). [30 Sept 2001, p.9C]

There's plenty of espionage action and kick-boxing but little concern for political authenticity. The appeal rests in the heroine, played by Jennifer Garner with an attractive combination of vulnerability and entrepreneurial self-protectiveness. This lively piece of entertainment is too cartoonish to feel threatening.

Alias suffers from a split personality. It's half John LeCarre, half comic book. In the field, Sydney, who looks about as formidable as your average Vogue cover girl, becomes a spike-heeled super-spy who shoots and karate-kicks her way through a horde of terrorist storm troopers as if they were targets in a video game. She's preposterous, and so is half the show. But viewers who just want to see bad guys die may not mind.

Though there are surprises and crosses and double-crosses in the show's waning minutes, Alias fails to make me care much about its characters, their future or understanding who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. "La Femme Nikita" kept these mysteries beguiling in its early seasons; Alias can't manage to do that in its first episode. [30 Sept 2001, p.TV-5]

Often violent and brutal (Sydney packs one mean karate kick and knows how to use a dentist's pliers effectively), Alias is a jumbled, cliche-ladened offering. Not only is it laced with hip, mellow, contemporary songs a la "Felicity," it also has guitar chords reminiscent of the James Bond 007 theme, and a musical segment inspired by the theme to "Shaft." [30 Sept 2001, p.TV-6]

At first glance, Alias appears to be unadulterated garbage. But then you start noticing all the adulterations...Nothing is as it seems except for the fact that this seems like a lousy show and it is one. [29 Sept 2001, p.C01]