That's not to say Alias has aged incredibly well. I can't stand the awful music choices whether it's a techno beat or some soft-rock montage that barely ever works. The costume choices for undercover are mostly creative, but sometimes it's a costume that I can't imagine anybody has ever worn. Lastly, Alias requires a lot of expositional dialogue, which ends up painfully forced most of the time.
But these are very forgivable problems. You'll notice I didn't mention anything about the acting, which is uniformly fantastic. I didn't mention anything about the plot, which is just about flawless. And there are very few shows that have managed to shock me as much as Alias did in the second season. 24 has gotten well-deserved critical praise and recognition, but Alias' second season has more mouth-dropping moments than any season of 24. I'm not saying 24 is a worse show than Alias, but it's not a vastly superior show either (Necessary disclaimer: I'm through three seasons of 24 and apparently haven't reached the best season.)
This is a season of television that, half-way through, drops the entire structure as we knew it and goes in a different direction. This is a season of television that gives us Irina Derevko, the most badass mother ever seen on television. This is a season of television that has a cliffhanger to where the word shocking feels woefully inadequate. Upon having seen the last fifteen minutes of the finale, I sat at my computer for a good hour wondering how I could process what I'd just seen.
With the addition of Lena Olin as Derevko, the show elevates by making everything personal to the two characters we care about most, Sydney and Jack Bristow. (You may say Michael Vaughn is one, but I really couldn't care less about him for some reason - somehow not to the detriment of the show because he's very rarely at the forefront of an episode). Helping is the masterful acting of Lena Olin, who somehow has exceeded the mother I imagined in the first season. It wasn't an easy task: this is a woman who destroyed Jack Bristow, the master of not letting shit get to him. And Olin plays her so ambiguously that it was easy to imagine her coming out as a good person, completely evil person, or both at the same time!
With the addition of Olin, the acting in Alias really seemed to take a step up. Victor Garber and Olin somehow managed to play every scene like they were one step away from fighting or fucking. Ron Rifkin manages to be both undeniably evil and not a cartoon. David Anders, Bradley Cooper, and even Merrin Dungey manage to impress in their screentime. Then there's of course Jennifer Garner whose acting talent is somewhat easy to forget about in this show because did you just read all the actors I just named?
I didn't really go into this review planning to have no spoilers, but I just decided I wanted to convince people to watch this show. At least for the first two seasons, it's definitely a show that is worth your time. The second season exceeds any and all expectations I had about this show. It's certainly not a perfect show, but it's hard to imagine a more perfect season of television coming from a show like this.
Grade - A
Playlist
1. "i" - Kendrick Lamar
2. "Breezeblocks" - alt-J
3. "Human" - Diiv
4. "Haunted Heart" - little hurricane
5. "Everyday People" - Sly and the Family Stone
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