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Alias
2001 · TV series · 43 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by J.J. Abrams
Sydney Bristow, an agent who has been tricked to believe she is working for the U.S. government, is actually working for a criminal organization named the Alliance of Twelve. Upon learning this, Sydney becomes a double agent for the real CIA.
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11 comments on Hacker News
>when do we get the next alias that has 24 episodes a season and 8 or 9 seasons
When? It'll be 3 years late when you discover a cult classic that was canceled for abysmal ratings after 6 episodes. Which is why they'll never make it.
I don't understand why TV sucks so bad. I mean when do we get the next alias that has 24 episodes a season and 8 or 9 seasons.
Seeing this makes me feel old. Wow... where does the time go? Jumpin' Jehoshaphat.
In a similar vein, I only just now started watching Alias, which premiered in 2001. In one of the first season episodes, one of the characters is talking about MEMS[1] and how it's "the next generation's next generation." I was struck by that as I had no idea that MEMS was as old a technology as it is.
Seems like everything is getting old so fast here lately.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems
I'm sorry but what TV show are we watching right now Alias, Scandal I'm sure this didn't just REALLY happen.
The Buffy vs. Angel vs. Firefly discussion is a good one. Babylon 5, Veronica Mars, and the recent Battlestar Galactica also fit in. Ditto Dollhouse, Heroes, Alias and Lost.
I'd say:
-- It's just a detail, but recall that the first season of Buffy was actually just a half-season in length.
-- The first three seasons of Buffy had a very clear meta-metaphor. :) It posited monsters as being a good representation for what happens in actual high school life.
-- That aspect of the show hit its stride in the Buffy/Angel romance: Girl sleeps with guy and he turns into a monster.
-- Firefly was good, but nothing in it was as brilliant as, say, the best of Buffy.
-- A lot of shows started with a lot of monster-of-the-week/crisis-of-the-week and emphasized the ongoing story more later into the run. But most of the shows cited did at least some standalone stories all the way to the end. (Babylon 5 is one exception).
-- Firefly never got past that part of the show's evolution. This may be one reason it never matched Buffy's brilliance.
-- Not knowing whether or not a show will be renewed is a huge problem. If you're a fan of Buffy or Angel or Babylon 5, you're familiar with the consequences.
-- The writers' strike messed up multiple shows, or at least their audiences. I never went back to watching Battlestar Galactica post-strike.
-- Joss Whedon tried to oversee three shows at once. That didn't go well. Each of Buffy, Angel and Firefly deserved more of his attention.
-- Dollhouse didn't have real characters, the people running the place excepted. It was never going to work.
-- Some shows have a brilliant idea for an overarching story, in which the big story and the individual characters' experiences and arcs mesh beautifully. Then that story comes to a natural end, and the show is never quite as good again. Veronica Mars Season 1 is a great example. Ditto the first 1 1/2 or 2 seasons of Alias. Ditto Babylon 5 after things were wrapped up in Season 4.
-- I'd put Battlestar Galactica into the same group. The best part was the first season, as everybody builds a society on the fly )as it were) that can survive against terrible odds. The plots with the election and the defeat and the aftermath weren't as good. And the pseudo-mystical stuff toward the end was just weird.
After watching "Babylon 5", the first American TV series I knew that had a fixed length and didn't try to go as long as possible, I decided that if you don't have an end, you don't have a story. So unless I know there's an end, I don't bother. It's worked out pretty well; Robert Jordan's series kept getting longer (= doesn't know how to finish) until it got so long he died. GRRM seems be having similar problems--taking 5 and 6 years to write the latest two suggests to me he is getting bogged down (= doesn't know how to finish).
I had similar problems with "Alias." You can't just upend who is good and who is bad every month. It isn't believable, and it feels like you're playing with your audience. It also indicates you have no idea what you are doing (= no end point). I watched season 3, and quit early on in season 4 after I realized...
The first two seasons of Alias were pretty ok regarding the use of computers. Granted, they still did impossible (highly advanced) stuff with them but it looked plausible. But after season 2 they jumped the shark in all regards.
The first episodes of Fringe felt like a leftover script from Alias, with some car chase action, a mild sex scene and X-file monsters dropped in.
(Thinking of it, maybe that combination is the reason why I got hooked... :-)
I just discovered Alias and my wife and I have been watching episodes back to back. The show does a good job of making the contents of various displays legitimate. In one scene, the 'tech guy' (Marshall) has to build some source code - and I saw various familiar libtool/autoconf symbols scroll by.
Alias has the same problem. The best solution I have ever heard is to watch the first few minutes of the next episode to solve the cliffhanger.
But excessive cliffhangers are mostly what turned me of Lost.
I upvoted you, but I wholly disagree with the idea. I mean, for many shows, I'm sure it would work. Most sit-coms, or reality shows, things of that ilk, I can't imagine being too much different for having more ads. They tend to have LOTS of ads on television, and I honestly don't think that their appeal is lessened on Hulu if their ad content approaches that of television.
For many other shows though, I'm reminded of an interview with Joss Whedon (I couldn't find it in a quick Google search) in which he argues against the commercial break, and I agree. For dramas and serial episodes, it really sucks to break the flow of a story for an arbitrary break. ANY break, even for just a few seconds, sucks horribly. Having to write your stories in a way where you plan out where the commercial breaks are is an art form. Making sure that the breaks are carefully planned takes skill. Networks like TBS (I think they still do it) which put arbitrary breaks in that were not intended screws this all up.
The first season of Alias made this work, in that they were able to work in the commercial break, along with old-fashioned cliff-hangers at the end of each episode, but they eventually gave that up.
I would gladly pay Hulu for commercial-less shows. What I've been doing lately, however oddball that it is, is finding shows I never watched before that are highly regarded, and watch those shows in serial form.
I've been buying the DVDs for the shows (small cost, really) and then ripping it to disk. I've recently gone through a slew of shows this way, and without commercial interruption, it's SO much easier to get into.