Alias: J. J. Abrams was already laying the groundwork for Lost

Rewatching Alias more than twenty years later is curious: it takes you back to a time when series were made for television, not for streaming.

The aesthetics, editing, music, choreography, disguises and even the way episodes are built around internal cliffhangers timed for commercial breaks place it squarely in the early 2000s. 

Other series from those years, such as Battlestar Galactica, which I’m currently rewatching, create a similar feeling when you return to them today: technically, you can see the years that have passed, but that does not stop them from working if they worked back then.

In the case of Alias, there is another interesting point as well. Watching it now, it is fairly easy to recognize many of the things J. J. Abrams would later use in Lost: mysteries, cliffhangers, conspiracies and characters whose past ends up being more significant than it first seemed.

The first time you watch it, many of those tricks work brilliantly and make you immediately start the next episode. On a rewatch you see them coming much earlier, but that is part of the show’s personality.

What Alias is about

Sydney Bristow, the lead played by Jennifer Garner, believes she works for SD-6, a secret division of the CIA. But she discovers that the organization has nothing to do with the US agency and is, in fact, part of what she thought she was fighting.

From then on, she begins working with the real CIA as a double agent, trying to dismantle SD-6 from within while maintaining an apparently normal life outside work.

A simple and well-worn premise, but Alias starts expanding the playing field relatively early.

You get a bit of everything: other clandestine organizations, more double agents, family secrets, romantic relationships, betrayals and a mythology built around Milo Rambaldi, a Renaissance inventor whose writings and artifacts seem to anticipate scientific discoveries centuries ahead of their time.

The series mixes all of that without the slightest embarrassment. And, oddly enough, despite how it sounds, it actually works.

Sometimes you are watching a spy mission whose ending leads into a family drama, but not before the show (tries to) explain why a man from the 15th century designed a device from the future.

If you analyze it calmly, there is clearly a lot of soap opera and you cannot take it remotely seriously, especially given the countless implausible elements. But you keep watching.

Why? Well, the trick is that the characters have enough charisma to make you buy the whole thing.

The J. J. Abrams style was already here

As I said in the introduction, much of what I would later associate with Lost is already clearly defined in Alias..

The cliffhangers are probably the most obvious example. Many episodes end at exactly the point needed to make you want to watch the next one, and the series understands very well how to ration information to keep you hooked.

It also makes heavy use of another device Abrams would repeat later: starting the episode in the middle of the problem..

Sydney is in a difficult situation, something has gone wrong during a mission or it looks as if someone is going to die. Then we jump back a few hours and start reconstructing the path that led us there.

That opening hooks you the first time because you do not know what is coming. On a rewatch, when you already know the outcome, it works less well. But honestly, how many people will watch this series more than once?

Exactly.

The pacing helps too. Alias moves quickly and knows how to alternate action scenes with more personal moments in the right mix. You never feel that a scene is unnecessary. The choreography works well for its era and the missions are varied enough to keep the formula from becoming boring too quickly.  

To make it clearer what I mean, I’d say it has quite a lot of Mission: Impossible in that respect, although obviously it is not playing in the same league as major film productions.

Abrams also handles this particular blend of genres well, even though in other hands it could easily become a problem; in fact, it is the series’ main distinguishing feature. Espionage, adventure, romance, family soap opera and science fiction coexist amicably in its universe like good neighbors, without trampling over one another. It is clear that Alias is not ashamed of what it is.

Sydney Bristow and a bunch of cool characters

A large part of the series rests on Jennifer Garner and her Sydney Bristow.

Sydney is beautiful, strong, intelligent, kind, capable and loyal to her people. Basically, the girlfriend we would all want. She is heavily idealized and has too many virtues to feel believable, but Garner has enough charisma to sell the character.

Sydney also evolves.

She develops through her missions and, above all, her relationships with friends, colleagues, partners and family. The series shows different sides of her without ever making her feel like a different person.

Her relationship with Vaughn, the main male lead, works especially well. There is obviously chemistry between Jennifer Garner and Michael Vartan, but it does not rely solely on that.  

The circumstances each of them faces over the course of the series affect their decisions, and those decisions have consequences for the relationship. The result is a believable relationship despite the highly fictional universe around them.

Jack Bristow, Sydney’s father and also a secret agent, is another of the show’s big successes.

The contrast between his role as a father and as a secret agent makes him very compelling. He is cold, calculating and seems capable of almost anything, yet at the same time many of his decisions come from his need to protect Sydney. Precisely because you never know exactly where his limit lies, you believe he could do anything at any moment..

Sloane works in a similar way as an antagonist. He has his ups and downs and his obsession is extreme, but he remains interesting throughout the series. He is intelligent, manipulative and always has an ace up his sleeve. He is the precursor to Ben Linus in Lost..

And then there is Marshall, who is basically the Q from James Bond in Alias. He is the tech specialist who turns up with the gadget of the week, explains how it works and helps release some of the tension. The character is fairly obvious and stereotypical, but both his appearance and personality make him endearing in the end.

Rambaldi: the island of Alias

Milo Rambaldi is the most distinctive element of Alias. At the same time, he is the least believable one—yes, even more than all the action-spy stuff—so he is also the element that most forces you to accept the show’s rules.

At first it is quite intriguing: Rambaldi was a Renaissance inventor who left writings, designs and artifacts scattered around the world. Some seem like simple historical curiosities, but little by little we discover that he anticipated technologies and knowledge humanity would take centuries to develop.

The problem is how the whole thing escalates.

First the leads find one piece. That piece helps interpret another document. Then several pieces connect to each other and the series draws some rather unreasonable conclusions.

The series plays with ideas involving communications, cryptography, energy, regeneration and other scientific advances, until the line between extraordinarily advanced inventor, time traveler and prophet starts to become very blurry.

There are moments when Rambaldi is so precise and seems to have foreseen so many things that it is hard to find even a minimally convincing explanation for how he could have achieved it centuries ago. Basically, like the island in Lost..

As there, Alias does not fully resolve the issue either, so in the end you simply have to accept that it is part of the game.

It works for me because the mythology has a premise I find appealing and sets the series apart from any other spy production, but Rambaldi gains so much weight that he ends up overshadowing everything else. And with such a shaky, poorly explained foundation, that does not help.

A series of its time

The passage of time is quite noticeable in Alias. . The technical side cannot compete with a major modern production and some action scenes, effects and visual choices very clearly show their age.  

Sydney’s disguises are a perfect example. They are part of the series’ charm and some of the looks are funny now, but they also help give the missions visual variety.

Jennifer Garner also manages to come out looking remarkably good in practically any wig, dress or outfit they put her in.

Overall, I think Alias will be easier to appreciate for someone who grew up with this kind of television. A younger viewer used to more polished modern productions may find a technically more limited series with narrative devices that are used differently today.

But they may also find something I miss in many modern productions: a very clear personality..

The best of Alias

Without a doubt, the characters. Sydney carries the series quite easily, and around her Jack, Vaughn, Sloane and Marshall have enough personality to make you care about them.

The relationships between them are handled well too. There is chemistry, family conflict, friendship, romance and shifting loyalties, but decisions have consequences. That does a lot to sustain the soap-opera side.

I also like the genre mix and its balance, which helps make the pacing another strong point. There are always several interesting plots running in parallel: secrets to uncover, new missions, changing relationships or Rambaldi’s latest madness. When one particular plot interests you less, the others still give you reasons to keep going.

The worst of Alias

Its biggest problem is that almost everything is taken too far.

Sydney is too good at too many things. 

Jack seems too capable of doing absolutely anything. 

Sloane is too obsessed. 

Sydney and Vaughn have too much chemistry. 

Rambaldi knew too much, and he knew it far too precisely.

And the conspiracies, naturally, can never be small.

That makes Alias work very well as entertainment, but it also severely limits how seriously you can take it.

I think it would have gained a lot from a little more restraint. With less excess, the conflicts could have carried more weight, certain revelations would feel more believable, and Rambaldi would not have to test your suspension of disbelief so often.

Conclusions

Rewatching Alias today makes two things clear.

The first is that it is still tremendously entertaining. The second is that J. J. Abrams already had many of the tools he would later take much further with Lost..

The cliffhangers, expanding mysteries, episodes that start in the middle, mythology, conspiracies and importance of personal relationships were all already here.

So were the excesses.

Alias mixes so many things and takes them so far that it is hard to treat it as a serious series. Start pulling at the threads and you end up finding holes, with explanations that do not hold up to many questions.

It works better if you accept that this is an over-the-top adventure series with charismatic characters and an identity that remains recognizable more than twenty years later.

With a little more restraint it would be a better series. But along the way, it would also stop being Alias..

Alias technical details

Item	Information
Title	Alias
Creator	J. J. Abrams
Premiere	September 30, 2001
Finale	May 22, 2006
Seasons	5
Episodes	105
Original network	ABC
Genre	Espionage, action, thriller, drama and science fiction
Lead	Jennifer Garner
Main character	Sydney Bristow
Production	Bad Robot / Touchstone Television
Approximate runtime	42–45 minutes per episode