Alias Discussion
 

Wow. I thought there'd be a thread already for the show.

Anyone watch the 2 hour premiere last night? It could have been better, but w/Sydney being pregnant, there's only so much she could do.



please feel free to discuss and USE SPOILERS

gracias

I would have watched it last night, but I still haven't seen the last two episodes from before the break. Now that's four episodes I need to catch up on.

Still waiting for Season 5 to START here in Australia.

Fucking Channel 7...

Well, you could always download the torrents of the episodes if you want to watch it as it first comes on. But I understand wanting to watch it on TV though (always my preferred method).

Alias is one of the damn best shows I've seen in recent years.
I own the first 4 seasons on DVD, and it's a real shame that the current season will be the last one. I am just not ready for this awesome ride to end.

You answered the question for me.

Though I'd actually prefer the DVD, but I'd have to wait even longer for that. And I'd probably watch them all too quickly. I want to savour, especially the last season, even if it's on commercial television here.

Why are people still watching this show. I got bored with it half way into Season 3. It just stopped being good. Sydney being pregnant makes for boredom, and that replacement chick (sorry, not good with names) just doesn't cut it.

Agreed. It's a CLOSE 2nd to 24, but a fantastic series no matter what.

That's because the chics are HOTTTTT! i'm a sucker for a girl who can kick major ass.

Jennifer Garner has a manly face, is bony, and has no breasts.

What?

She can act though, give her that much. Her jugs are fucking weird though.

Anyway, this show shit the bed after two seasons but what do you expect from JJ Abrams? It got too, too far fetched - every week there was a new Rambaldi device and it just got retarded. Also, theres way too many plot twists in the shows third season to even be remotely plausable. It's like the Bosch paintings of television shows.

I completely agree. I thought the biggest joke of them all was the storyline making Sloane a good guy for Seasons 3 and beyond. He seemed to get a completely clean slate after his terrorism in the previous series.

The major downfall of the show seemed to be when the writers decided on the 'Three Year Memory Loss thing'. The show was trying to be too clever and it payed the price.

Seriously. He was so good playing this evil jerk figurehead and they decide he's a good guy just because.

I also got tired of the technical expert. You can only play the cute, dumb genius for so long and they really carried it out too far.

As opposed to making him evil just because? All they did was explain his appalling behaviour He's no more "good" than he was at the start, it's just that some people feel sympathy for him now, and he has a reason to repent (his daughter).

I also got tired of the technical expert. You can only play the cute, dumb genius for so long and they really carried it out too far.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, Marshall is getting tiresome.

Well, they never gave a justifiable reason for Sloane to turn good. From the start, he's a bad guy - that doesn't need justification because he's that way from the start of the show.

Why did the most recent episode end with Sydney getting pseudo-cloned unto the black chick (who I always thought was cool.) I guess this is how they're going to decide to play out the whole Rambaldi prophecy with the lady who looks suspiciously like Sydney fucking up the world.

Or maybe clone-Sydney is just a red herring for real-Sydney to actually take over the planet, but I doubt that much darkness in her could be revealed in a few episodes.

Can someone tell me what the full Rambaldi device actually turned out to be? That shit had me hyped for Season 1-2 but it never seemed to go anywhere important.

JJ Abrams seems to have trouble keeping stuff simple and likes to apply science fiction twists to stuff. Alias was fine as a spy show, but the introduction of Rambaldi was like "huh?". Somehow it got pulled off and - for a time - made the show more intriguing. JJ was sure to make it known from the first episode of Lost that there was a sci-fi/fantasy twist so that the same mistake wouldn't be made of alienating viewers after the season has already begun.

I wonder if there's any kind of crazy sci-fi plot in Mission Impossible III.

I finally got caught up on the episodes I missed (five hours worth!), and while the show still isn't as good as it used to be (Seasons 1 and 2), it's still better than the last couple of seasons (3 and 4). My only gripe is that it seems kinda stupid to be making up some of these new plots (like whatever the hell Agent Grace is doing) so close to the end of the series. They should instead be making sure they can tie up the loose ends of the series as much as possible.


It was featured in the last episode of season 4. It was this giant red floaty ball thingy (like the one in the first episode, except realy, really huge) that was supposed to poison the entire Earth's water supply, or something. I don't really know for sure though, as it all kinda stopped making sense after a while.

God, I hope you're kidding or I'm going to go outside and take a 15 pound sledge to my Alias DVDs

But I thought the giant red floating ball (wasn't it called "the circumference"?) was just part of the Rambaldi device? Sydney encountered two of them in Season 1 and they seemed like part of something larger. Maybe not.

I just thought all the Rambaldi manuscripts together made some awesome thing.

And didn't Sloane at one point say he put it together and and it simply played back a message of love that somehow changed his outlook on life?

He did say that, but I don't think it was a literal message, just something he saw that made him do that.

Also, I know they said that Elena Derevko created that thing (I think they called it 'The Mueller Device') using the other Rambaldi artifacts, so since Sloane was a part of her plot, I guess it's possibe he meant he saw the device and that's when he "changed his outlook" or whatever. Like I said though, a lot of it really didn't make sense

Not only that. It turned people into what could be most aptly described as zombies. If you watch any of the recent episodes, that's the disease they keep referencing Sloane's daughter has.

Oh, and the one word message Sloane recieved simply said, "Peace."

Yeah I remember seeing Sloane's daughter as a zombie. That shit was just dumb.

Actually the show might have jumped that shark at that exact moment. Total lack of originality.

Tonight's episode was alright, but someone needs to ask J.J. what's with all the deaths tonight on his shows.

The full Rambaldi device, and his ultimate "endgame" and the true meaning of the prophecy is not yet revealed. It was apparently the Mueller device cleansing the world through making people violent and killing each other, and as Syd stopped that it was assumed to be her "[rendering] the greatest power unto utter desolation". But as the rest of it hasn't been fulfilled ("only one (Syd or Nadia) will survive" and "she will bring forth my works") it's probably not the big one.

The device at the end of season 2 was Il Dire (The Telling), which told Sloane where to find the Passenger (and various other devices related to her) who, in turn, would be able to find the Sphere of Life which apparently contains Rambaldi's soul/essence. As I haven't yet seen Season 5 (and will NOT be spoiled) I don't know if that's in the mix yet, but considering it was what Sloane's been after since Season 2 at the latest, I'm guessing it has a bigger part to play, and may well be vital to the final "endgame"/Rambaldi revelation.

So, in short, the entire Rambaldi thing is still a mystery. We may as well be at square one.

Wow, J.J. Abrams is an ass for not telling.

Becasue this is the last season, and with only 4-5 episodes left, I'm sure Abrams will tie all the loose ends together, especially what the hell the Rambaldi device does.

That looks like a bit of a mighty task to me. I mean the plot of the whole show has been blown out of preportions so nothing really makes sense anymore.

Personally, I don't think he can tie up all the loose ends by the last episode. Not only would he have to tie up the loose ends of this season (like with Vaughn, Grace, and Prophet 5), but the loose ends of the entire series as well (Rambaldi, Irina, etc.). Something tells me we're gonna be left with a lot more questions than answers.

to me, that's not a bad thing. as long as the main storylines are brought to conclusion, i'll be alright with it. if some of the smaller, secondary storylines are left unanswered, it won't ruin the show. it's sorta like Fight Club in that i left the theater wondering what would happen to Ed Norton's character. did he get back w/that chick? did he continue on the path of destruction?

They attempted to tie up some loose ends in Season 4 in case the show wasn't picked up again, but really didn't try hard enough as most of the events of the last episode didn't fulfill any of the prophecies, and only raised more questions (apart from the obvious questions such as Vaughn's identity - but spare me as we're not up to Season 5 yet in Australia).

So how about this week's episode? To me, it still seems more like they're trying to tie up all the loose ends from this season, and not the ones that from throughout the whole series. I think one of the reasons why it'll be hard to do that is because they brought in so many new characters this season (Rachel, Tom, Renee, Peyton, and all of Prophet-5). Not only that, but they also tried to give them as much importance as the characters who were already there (Sydney, Jack, Sloane, etc.), as well as bring back others (Irina, Anna, Sark) and try to make them important adain as well. Maybe they weren't planning on this to be the last season, which is obvious in the massive scope they gave to this season, but once they knew it would be they should have altered the direction this season was going in. As it stands now, I don't think we'll get any long-term ending from the series finale, so maybe they'll do some type of follow-up movie or something to really tie up all of the loose ends.

I agree. not every question will be answered and that's ok by me. I know i should not have been surprised, but i was when Sark was pictured at the end of the episode. that guy needs to be gone. his time has come and gone. hopefully, his death will be painful.

Yeah, Sark's appearances have really become useless "let's try to elicit surprise from the fans" occasions. He hasn't really been relevant since like season 3, yet they still keep bringing him back. I hope he does finally die this time, just because.

I actually thought his presence was quite pointless in Series 3. It's such as shame because he was quite an interesting character in the seasons before.


I have a general question to anyone who has seen Season 5 (I haven't started watching it yet).

Does anything happen regarding Quentin Tarantino's character which seemed to be forgotted in Season 4?
I'm pretty sure nothing happened with him unless I forgot about it amidst the confusing and far fetched plots.

Well, I didn't watch all of the third season, but I thought he was important because his dad was someone important that Sydney killed or something and Vaughn's wife was working with him in some group or something or other (I'm obviously babbling, but my point is I thought that he at least had some relevance to the plot back then).

As for Tarantino, I totally forgot he was even is season 4. I remember him from the first season, but I don't even remember what he did in season 4. But to answer your question, no, nothing happens with him in season 5.

EDIT: I just looked it up, and it seems his character (McKenas Cole) was last seen in season 3, not 4. In addition, he was in a couple of the episodes in the second half of the season, which are the episodes I missed, which explains why I don't remember him coming back

Yes, actually you are right about Sark, he did have a lot of relevance in season 3. I think I just got sick of him pretty quickly though because he seemed to get caught a lot and than escape.

The Tarantino character was obviously introduced in Season one - ''The Box'' two part episode where SD6 gets hijaked.

He is also in an episode from Season 3 as well which I am struggling to remember well. It seemed a good idea to expand on this character further to make things interesting but I don't remember seeing him in Season 4.

Alias was an amazing show...I will miss it greatly...tonight's episode was everything I wanted to see and more, although it's too bad that I always want to watch more and more after every episode...


I'll go weep now that my favorite show is done forever...

I finally got around to watching the finale tonight, so here are my thoughts.

For the most part, they did a better job of wrapping up most of the loose ends then I thought they would, though I can't say I liked how they dealt with them. It seems like the best way they could figure out how to tie up all the loose ends was to kill whoever was involved, which they did with Prophet-5 (though it was pretty cool how Peyton killed them), Sloane (well, as close to death as he could get), and Irina (loved that fight with Sydney). But overall, I think this finale did justice to the series.

As for season 5 as a whole, I actually enjoyed it alot. I don't think anything will ever top the first two seasons, but I would place this one right after them (especially before season 3, which was so bad it made me stop watching the series for a while). It did manage to do what it did right, even though it wasn't even a full season (only 17 episodes). I think all the new characters help give the show some new life, but this was as far as the show needed to go storywise (meaning any more seasons would have been overkill).

As for the series as a whole, I'll remember it as one of the good ones, but probably not a great one. For everything it did right it probably did just as many things wrong, though I don't really fault that against it. I don't know it it'll go down in the TV history books (especially since realizing how it borrows some things from La Femme Nikita, a show which predates Alias by about five years), but I'll probably wind up getting the entire series on DVD one day.

So was the Rambaldi device anything more than a giant red ball of water?

The final thing turned out to be regular-sized red ball of water. It was found in this tomb in Mongolia, and it was activated using The Horizon, which was this metal encased red sphere thingy. Once The Horizon was removed however, it caused the red ball of water to burst, forming a pool of red water in the area beneath the pedestal that it was set on. We eventually find out that this water gives eternal life.

Boring.

So what about the prophecy and Sydney destroying the planet, etc. How does that work out?

That was actually never really touched on. Some parts of the prophecy were referenced in relation to some of the things that happened in the episode (like that part about Mt. Subasio or whatever it's called), but nothing about sydney destroying the planet ever came up.

I guess the closest thing to that happening was when Irina (since wasn't it stated at one point in the series that the prophecy could have been referring to Sydne'ys mom?) was going to shoot some missiles at Washington D.C. and London, but I would hardly call that close to destroying the planet.

Man, talk about your lame revelations

Then again, the first mistake was in trying to explain the Rambaldi devices

So JJ Abrams is full of shit. I wonder what it would be like if someone went back in time back when audiences were really hyped about Rambaldi and explained the whole thing to them.

This among other reasons is why I've officially given up on Lost.

I've also been informed that Mission Impossible 3 starts off awesome and then ends disappointingly. I want someone to confirm this, so I can know that JJ Abrams just likes giving people handjobs but letting go once you're about to orgasm so you merely dribble.

JJ's problem (with Lost and Alias, anyway) is that he doesn't stick around with the shows after a while. I don't when he stopped working on Alias, but I think he stopped working on Lost sometime late in the first season. If he would just stick around with a show instead of constantly leaving to work on other projects, we would probably have something better than what we have now.

You know, early in season one there was a man similar to the man in the prison who gave Sydney The Rose artifact. He was suppose to be an impossible number of years old. It wasn't outright said but there were obvious hints. At that time I assumed the ultimate secret of Milo Rambaldi was that he held the key to eternal life.

It's not exactly a horrible revelation. It really does give motivation to the strained actions of the main villains. But how do you stretch a story arc out for five years when the idea behind it is so basic?

I know a big reason why the show could never decide whether or not it wanted to be about Rambaldi or just an ordinary espionage show was that the ratings were always on a gradual cool down and there was pressure to mix up the focus to draw back viewers. In the end, things became pretty tangled. This show should serve as an example that if you want to do something elaborate with a tv program, you better have a good idea where things are headed in advance, not to mention a core team that sticks to their project.

But eternal life is so... Cliche. And yes I do remember that fellow that was too old. You kind of assume that if its been put right in front of your face it's not really the secret to it all. Surely revealing that it is can be a twist... In this case it just doesn't work out that way, I don't know. I guess because you desire something much cooler all the while; eternal life seems like it could be one of the things Rambaldi was capable of but you still expect his actual device to be BETTER than that.

My problem with it was less that it was cliche (though it was) but that it was inconsistent. They touch upon it early but then everything else shifts to something that would be apocalyptic, something involving Sydney. The end of the world slant turns out to be an off to the side deal and not even to do with a Rambaldi device. On top of that, nothing catastrophic actually happened! There was a threat, but it was foiled. The guy's so infallible until it comes down to the major one?

My thought about the series finale:
It wasn't bad, but it could have been better. I can't believe Saek is still slive. damn Vuaghn! does he not have any balls? Sark tried NUMEROUS times to kill he and Sydney and when he has the chance to kill him, he doesn't?? what the hell??
So infinite life was the powert of Rambaldi's "device". not a bad idea, just a little overblown. syd and irina's fight was very lame. that could have been MUCH better. Hoever, Jack's sacrifice was great! he was very underappreciated in the show. what a fitting tribute to him...taking out his "friend" by burying him alive. that was nice.
I will miss the series. this past season wasn't the best, but i did enjoy it. i'll miss seeing Jennifer Garner in her sexy outfits!! (Season 2-episode 1)

the best season in my opinion was the season of the beginning of the discovery of the Ramboldi prophecy and the one that followed. they were classy and where great, but the very last one is starting really bad, and i hate that (will put this in spoilers in case)



this gets the show out of content and destroys a lot of what was done before!

if it continues like this (we're like in episode 6) the 5th season is a failure!

too bad the last season of my favorite show turned out to be bad! i think that the show lost a lot and it just isn't as intersting as it used to be!