Overall I’ve not been impressed with the direction the show’s been taking. I think it works best when there’s some overarching objective to the season rather than crisis of the week. Thus far we really haven’t seen much of anything that indicates to me that there’s going to be a seasonal arc. Rimbaldi seems to have been relegated to the back burner. Irina’s dead (which pissed me off greatly). There was some potential in the whole “will the sister figure out the dad did it?” but that got defused in the space of an ep. The first couple of seasons ALIAS was on my “must not miss” list. It’s rather rapidly dropping off, and it’s not being helped by the extremely late start to the season and the sporadic scheduling.
That’s kinda funny - I feel the opposite. To me, the last season and a half have gotten WAAAAY off track for me. I never really cared much for the Rimbaldi plotline, which overtook the show almost completely after a while. It got to the point where everything was mystical, everything was related, and if you missed ten minutes four episodes ago you’d be lost. I prefer the return to the original premise (in a manner of speaking) where there is a general thread throughout, but the various threats are not really related to the others.
I agree with Otto that this season seems to lack focus – and I share his annoyance about Irina’s death. :mad: But as long as I keep getting to see Michael Vartan shirtless, I’ll watch every episode… 
Am I the only one hoping that things will heat up between Weiss and Nadia? I love Weiss – for an episode or two there, I was hoping he and Syd would hook up (before Lauren was revealed to be Evil, of course). He’s a good guy, and it would have made for an interesting story – and some nice tension between Weiss and Vaughn. Oh well. 
I have no real opinion just yet - I’m waiting to see what else develops.
However, I am getting a little tired of the whole “Syd-is-really-mad-at-Sloane-and-must-therefore-snark-and-bitch-and-snip-like-a-thirteen-year-old-girl” drama that unfolds with every dialogue. Enough already. She hates him. With good reason. Yay. Let’s move on!
And count me in as another who is pissed Irina’s dead.
I thought bringing Sloane back with the logic “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was just stupid. So far, I’ve been really disappointed in this season.
Ehh, it’s been an average season so far. They’ve done much worse.
I am excited about next Wednesday, though, because of
Anna Espinosa and Will Tippin coming back.
They do need a Big Bad, though.
Yeah it does seem that this season lacks focus but it’s hard to wrap up a sucky previous season. There are a lot of loose ends. Plus the network had said to do a lot of self-contained episodes, which for a show like this isn’t the best thing, but there ya go. There are supposedly more story-arc themed shows coming.
Irina had to be dealt with in some way. From what I’ve read, things are going to get a lot better. They’re referencing past seasons a lot more (Santa Barbara in the Liberty Village ep was a nice touch) so it’s got promise. At least J.J. Abrams has been more in touch with this season. That’s a HUGE improvement over last.
So what happened with Lena Olin? I wasn’t really following the show last year while it ran (caught up on DVD over Christmas and now I’m hooked)
Did she not want to come back for another season?
I think it’s OK. Abrahms will pay off the Rambaldi stuff from last season eventually, and until it happens I’m glad it’s out of focus for a while. I like the more episodic nature. That said, so far it hasn’t been executing as well this year as it has in the past. One thing the show has done very well is moments where you stand up off the sofa and shout – in my case, profanely – because you’re so shocked at what’s happened. We haven’t seen that yet this season, but it’s not the thing you see in the first few eps of a season. I wager it’ll come across at some point in the next several weeks.
–Cliffy
I liked the first episode, but I think the writing has gotten lazy. It didn’t help that the last episode was terrible - Sydney and Vaughn replace two well-known international terrorists…and the organization they infiltrate never had pictures of the real terrorists to compare against? Please. Then they have a “secret” conversation carelessly revealing their true identities and mission, knowing the house is bugged, but it’s OK b/c they were running the water in the tub. And it turns out it was OK - nothing came of it. Please again. Also, it didn’t help that the entire plot was stolen lock, stock and barrel from Nelson DeMille’s book Charm School.
Of course, the final nail in the coffin for me is the commercials. I can tolerate them (barely) on Lost b/c I’m way into that show - but when they show 5 minutes of uneventful exposition on Alias and then break for 5 minutes of commercials, then repeat - well, it ain’t worth it. It’s worse on those two shows than any other show on any other network - so bad it’s jarringly obvious. I almost started a Pit thread about that, but I figured it would devolve into everyone telling me to get a Tivo.
It’s my understanding (TV Guide article) that the fall-out from Irina’s death has yet to occur. Dad won’t be getting away with it…
Meh.
It’s not as crappy as last season (thank god the love triangle from Hell is gone) but it’s still not, y’know, Alias. Alias being the show with cool cliffhangers and incredibly complex double agent + home life scenarios for Syd to work her way out of in addition to a bunch of foofy outfits for Sydney to wear. This show being a straight up spy show where Syd gets to play dress up a lot.
I realize that the network has been working to dumb it down basically since it premired, so I’m not necessarily blaming the creative team behind it. But it’s still not that great. It’s OK. I’ll keep watching until it’s cancelled out of loyalty.
Instead that’s what this thread will devolve into.
–Cliffy
P.S. One thing this season is missing that was great last year – Melissa George in her underwear. swoon
Uh-Oh. Wasn’t it Otto that hated her so much that he came up with an amusing derogatory nickname for her character in last year’s Alias threads?
Yep. We all ended up calling her “Bug.” I believe it started when we referred to her as “Vaughn’s Wife,” then just VW.
I like this season better than last…was starting to get tiring all the “Sloan is good, no Sloan is bad, no wait, he is good, no wait, he is your father, no hold on Sloan is…”
Plus all the sudden revelations of Rimbaldi lore (“we have always known the microchip was in the belly of a dead whale under Atlantis, but until now, we weren’t sure if it was an RC400 series chip, or just a piece of pottery with etchings depicting the map of Amelia Erhart’s crash site where the decoder ring for the chip will be found”) and other such nonsense was getting tiring.
And Irina is “dead” only as long as Lena Olin plays hardball with salary negotiations…like any good soap opera, she could be revived in a megasecond with some faked death, or she could be found in the belly of that whale in Atlantis.