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Abrams Promises to Fix 'Alias'
- Thread starter FoneBone
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Wow, it's pretty incredibly rare that a show's creator/producer will admit that a program has gone horribly bad. Even when there's a huge backlash the best that they will admit is something vaguely critical like "Oh, we had some weaknesses". When I clicked the link I expect to hear crap like that, but nope....he seems to be as pained by the problems as any other fan.
Until the final episodes of the third season, I was really hoping that they would be able to turn things around....but it only really got worse. I can't believe they pulled that Mission Impossible "mask" bullshit in the season finale!
"The irony is that I felt the show was at its best.. when SD-6 existed and that's sortta the biggest hint that I will give in that storyline."
Hmmmmmmm, now this should be pretty interesting...
"After a full season away, it has also become increasingly less likely that Lena Olin's Irina Derevko will make a retur"
Fuckin' A!
Until the final episodes of the third season, I was really hoping that they would be able to turn things around....but it only really got worse. I can't believe they pulled that Mission Impossible "mask" bullshit in the season finale!
"The irony is that I felt the show was at its best.. when SD-6 existed and that's sortta the biggest hint that I will give in that storyline."
Hmmmmmmm, now this should be pretty interesting...
"After a full season away, it has also become increasingly less likely that Lena Olin's Irina Derevko will make a retur"
Fuckin' A!
RobotChant
Member
That's good to hear because I didn't care much for the show this past season. It was no longer any fun with all the plot twists. They need and should stay grounded in reality as much as possible otherwise the suspense goes out the window.
SolidSnakex
Member
Jeff Bell and Drew Goddard join the Alias writing team for this season which should give them a good boost.
Alias is my favourite show, and I trust that JJ can turn it around. With Lost coming up, he's going to be a busy man, but they've got a good team there. I didn't hate last season, but when they pulled the face mask stuff in the finale (usually the season's strongest episode) the shit hit the fan. I know he's not writing many episodes, but how did he let them write that in?! The show should be grounded in reality.
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
I didn't mind the cliffhanger, it was the rest of the season that got to me.
I'm so happy to hear JJ Abrams saying this stuff. The show just went so far downhill last season...not that there weren't good parts still.
The finale though...I liked the mask thing when it was in MI, but that's because I'm only watching it for a couple of hours and don't have to consider the implications outside of this little story. On Alias though, it's such a cop out. It's a really cheap way of putting in plot twists and leads us to never being surprised, because we will always be considering every single character as possibly being someone else. Now I hate it when shows ignore earlier points just because they don't like them anymore, but I'm gonna make an exception here. They should just stop the whole mask thing. No more masks. Pretend it never happened, make out that they're incredibly difficult to make, say they give you cancer, I don't care, just don't carry on with them.
What annoyed me even more about the finale though was Lauren revealing things to Sydney in the showdown. Now I can understand why she's doing it, she knows it'll hurt Sydney when she finds out the truth, but my god I almost gave up on the show when Lauren told Sydney the numbers with her last breath. It was so, so lame.
Another problem was Sloane. Sloane may well be the best bad guy I've ever seen on a TV show. I liked him this season for a long time, because I kept thinking "It's going to be so good when he's revealed as still being bad". The show just seemed SO much better when moments hinting at his former self returning were dropped. Like when Katya Derevko sends Jack to "kill" him, then phones Sloane and tells him to back off Irena...it was just so cool to think that Sloane was putting pressure on someone as powerful as Irena Derevko. Really made him into that intimidating figure again. I even thought he was sleeping with that therapist woman to get information off her about Sydney and Jack, but sadly it didn't pan out that way.
Luckily they might be going back towards that sort of thing, given what JJ Abrams has been hinting at. Sark being brought back to recurring (excellent), Irena probably not coming back, that Bomani guy's dead, I doubt they could hire Isabella Rosselini or Quentin Tarantino full time...the door's open for Sloane. Plus Sloane was always at his best when you saw the human side of him, with his wife. He has his daughter now to fill that role.
What else didn't I like....oh yeah, Sark and Lauren becoming heads of a Covenant cell...and then never appearing in an office and still doing all the leg work themselves. The way Sydney apparently went through a radical new procedure so she could lose her memories of her time with the Covenant, yet that completely ignores the groups she went to early on in the season full of people who went through the same thing. Am I supposed to believe they all decided to go through this procedure, especially when it happened quite a while ago for some of them?
There's so much more, but I don't feel like going through the season and picking out all the bits that annoyed me. I hope they just take the major plot points from this season, ignore the dumbass crap, and we can forget about it.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I agree with bringing back Will, if they can get him.
I'm so happy to hear JJ Abrams saying this stuff. The show just went so far downhill last season...not that there weren't good parts still.
The finale though...I liked the mask thing when it was in MI, but that's because I'm only watching it for a couple of hours and don't have to consider the implications outside of this little story. On Alias though, it's such a cop out. It's a really cheap way of putting in plot twists and leads us to never being surprised, because we will always be considering every single character as possibly being someone else. Now I hate it when shows ignore earlier points just because they don't like them anymore, but I'm gonna make an exception here. They should just stop the whole mask thing. No more masks. Pretend it never happened, make out that they're incredibly difficult to make, say they give you cancer, I don't care, just don't carry on with them.
What annoyed me even more about the finale though was Lauren revealing things to Sydney in the showdown. Now I can understand why she's doing it, she knows it'll hurt Sydney when she finds out the truth, but my god I almost gave up on the show when Lauren told Sydney the numbers with her last breath. It was so, so lame.
Another problem was Sloane. Sloane may well be the best bad guy I've ever seen on a TV show. I liked him this season for a long time, because I kept thinking "It's going to be so good when he's revealed as still being bad". The show just seemed SO much better when moments hinting at his former self returning were dropped. Like when Katya Derevko sends Jack to "kill" him, then phones Sloane and tells him to back off Irena...it was just so cool to think that Sloane was putting pressure on someone as powerful as Irena Derevko. Really made him into that intimidating figure again. I even thought he was sleeping with that therapist woman to get information off her about Sydney and Jack, but sadly it didn't pan out that way.
Luckily they might be going back towards that sort of thing, given what JJ Abrams has been hinting at. Sark being brought back to recurring (excellent), Irena probably not coming back, that Bomani guy's dead, I doubt they could hire Isabella Rosselini or Quentin Tarantino full time...the door's open for Sloane. Plus Sloane was always at his best when you saw the human side of him, with his wife. He has his daughter now to fill that role.
What else didn't I like....oh yeah, Sark and Lauren becoming heads of a Covenant cell...and then never appearing in an office and still doing all the leg work themselves. The way Sydney apparently went through a radical new procedure so she could lose her memories of her time with the Covenant, yet that completely ignores the groups she went to early on in the season full of people who went through the same thing. Am I supposed to believe they all decided to go through this procedure, especially when it happened quite a while ago for some of them?
There's so much more, but I don't feel like going through the season and picking out all the bits that annoyed me. I hope they just take the major plot points from this season, ignore the dumbass crap, and we can forget about it.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I agree with bringing back Will, if they can get him.
Here's my general view on Season Three of Alias...it sucked ass.
Now, granted, it was still better than a helluva lot of TV, but I'm in the process of watching Seasons One and Two on DVD (Thank you, Public Library), and very simply put they are just that damn good. Just watching "Phase One" again reminds me how, before that, the show was in its prime.
What I think I'm realizing, however, is that Abrams is right about SD-6. Even in the episodes between the end of SD-6 and the big 2 years Sydney lost, there was that sense of mystery about Sloane, Rambaldi, Francie, Sark, and especially Ms. Lena Olin as Irina. She deserved a fucking Emmy for the work she did in the second season. On the whole, everything worked in the second season, and the first was just as amazing, but in the third I think it lost focus. It lost what made it such a great show. The attachment to characters was even stripped away by the missing two years, leaving everything just...blah.
Have high hopes for the fourth season...high hopes indeed.
Now, granted, it was still better than a helluva lot of TV, but I'm in the process of watching Seasons One and Two on DVD (Thank you, Public Library), and very simply put they are just that damn good. Just watching "Phase One" again reminds me how, before that, the show was in its prime.
What I think I'm realizing, however, is that Abrams is right about SD-6. Even in the episodes between the end of SD-6 and the big 2 years Sydney lost, there was that sense of mystery about Sloane, Rambaldi, Francie, Sark, and especially Ms. Lena Olin as Irina. She deserved a fucking Emmy for the work she did in the second season. On the whole, everything worked in the second season, and the first was just as amazing, but in the third I think it lost focus. It lost what made it such a great show. The attachment to characters was even stripped away by the missing two years, leaving everything just...blah.
Have high hopes for the fourth season...high hopes indeed.
IMO, the reason for S3's shitfest is the lack of Lena. She isn't the cause of everything, but I'm sure when they knew they couldn't get her back, they had to completely rework whatever storyline they had planned.
There was just so much ridiculous shit it was crazy. The masks were a joke, the super secure house they had to break into was a joke, it took them 5 minutes to get in, and like 20 seconds to get out past all the same exact security measures... There is like 1 per episode at least.
I still love the show, and I'm glad they are returning to focus on the character, it is the best part of the show.
And the rambaldi shit is just so insane at this point. I don't even know where that is at. First the point is to construct a machine, which prints out some DNA, which Sloane lied about and said it just printed 'PEACE', and then there is some liquid that makes the person with that DNA write some crazy shit, which leads somewhere else I forget...
And there was some shit about trying to create a baby from Sydney and Rambaldi, for some reason, which kind of came up then went away very fast.
There was just so much ridiculous shit it was crazy. The masks were a joke, the super secure house they had to break into was a joke, it took them 5 minutes to get in, and like 20 seconds to get out past all the same exact security measures... There is like 1 per episode at least.
I still love the show, and I'm glad they are returning to focus on the character, it is the best part of the show.
And the rambaldi shit is just so insane at this point. I don't even know where that is at. First the point is to construct a machine, which prints out some DNA, which Sloane lied about and said it just printed 'PEACE', and then there is some liquid that makes the person with that DNA write some crazy shit, which leads somewhere else I forget...
And there was some shit about trying to create a baby from Sydney and Rambaldi, for some reason, which kind of came up then went away very fast.
SKluck said:
I'm guessing the Covenant felt that they could try to create The Passenger with Sydney and Rambaldi's DNA, whereas it seems all they had to do was find her sister. Besides, Sydney destroyed the embryos, supposedly. That was the episode right before Lauren ended up evil, and the clusterfuck began.
The Rambaldi myth is ever so interesting, and I think is sustained itself despite the crapfest with Lauren. Hopefully, in reverting so much back to it now, we can discover what exactly all of this means.
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
One thing they've lost (which I can't really see them getting back) is the life outside of work. They had it with Francie and Will, and even though they were dragged into it, it was always there.
They tried to have it through Weiss for a while, but it didn't work because a) it just wasn't that convincing a friendship and b) she met him and knows him through work and they could pretty much only talk about things at work! And now he's being written out, so she won't even have that.
Syd won't make new friends now, because of what has happened to her old friends and how hard it is to keep secrets, so we're pretty much screwed. They can bring back Will, but I think I'm right in remembering that Bradley Cooper (the actor) would only return if he had more to do, more cool stuff. Like he did when he came back for that one episode. Which would be great anyway, but that kind of suggests he's going to be back working for the CIA, so once again, we lose the dynamic.
I believe he's doing kind of well away from Alias though, so maybe we'll never see him back.
They tried to have it through Weiss for a while, but it didn't work because a) it just wasn't that convincing a friendship and b) she met him and knows him through work and they could pretty much only talk about things at work! And now he's being written out, so she won't even have that.
Syd won't make new friends now, because of what has happened to her old friends and how hard it is to keep secrets, so we're pretty much screwed. They can bring back Will, but I think I'm right in remembering that Bradley Cooper (the actor) would only return if he had more to do, more cool stuff. Like he did when he came back for that one episode. Which would be great anyway, but that kind of suggests he's going to be back working for the CIA, so once again, we lose the dynamic.
I believe he's doing kind of well away from Alias though, so maybe we'll never see him back.
Sounds like SD-6 is coming back (or something to that effect)
I didnt mind last season, though by the end it did just seem like they were just thinking up new ways to nearly kill Vaughn (but i found that hilarious).
I have a simple equation that i follow..
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I didnt mind last season, though by the end it did just seem like they were just thinking up new ways to nearly kill Vaughn (but i found that hilarious).
I have a simple equation that i follow..
More
More
surprisingly, i agree with most of this post. the original alias formula was felicity + bond... when they lost the felicity (no matter how banal it was) the show lost a ton of depth; emotional depth specifically. this last season none of the shocking twists were really shocking at all because there was really no passion in the characters, they just went from point A to point B and then with the shooting, repeat ad nauseum.Mama Smurf said:
if they can find another character like lena olin's spy mom, they could very well pick it back up, but if all they have in mind is increasingly more shocking twists and rambaldi bullshit, they're just going to lose us to boredom.
if anyone remembers, by the way, rambaldi was the LEAST interesting part of seasons 1 & 2. i think its prominence in this years arc has a lot to do with why the show took such a downturn.
This thread is great 
JJ was always best at writing character-driven stories, and as he said in a DVD commentary, he insisted that the story be told through Sidney's POV. Meaning that you'll always see/know what she's thinking, and that was the emotional core of the show. Since he came from Felicity, he was very good at writing casual "hanging out", friendly dialogue..The other writers seem to have missed that. I put blame on him too, for deciding to take the show in another darker direction. The best episodes (except for maybe 2 or 3) have always been the ones with A+ light moments inserted into them. The new writers seem to be coming from a sci-fi/humor background, but they're very versitile, quality writers, and I don't think it'll be a problem. Rather, a big improvement. The long wait between seasons (coming back in 2005!!) will annoy us, but it should give them more than enough time to shape the entire season...or at least establish clear goals that they want to reach, and establish a tone.
Anyone know why Weiss is being written out (first time I heard it was here). I know he's JJ's best friend, and that they had written Weiss into as many episodes as possible until now...Is he getting his own show or something?
JJ was always best at writing character-driven stories, and as he said in a DVD commentary, he insisted that the story be told through Sidney's POV. Meaning that you'll always see/know what she's thinking, and that was the emotional core of the show. Since he came from Felicity, he was very good at writing casual "hanging out", friendly dialogue..The other writers seem to have missed that. I put blame on him too, for deciding to take the show in another darker direction. The best episodes (except for maybe 2 or 3) have always been the ones with A+ light moments inserted into them. The new writers seem to be coming from a sci-fi/humor background, but they're very versitile, quality writers, and I don't think it'll be a problem. Rather, a big improvement. The long wait between seasons (coming back in 2005!!) will annoy us, but it should give them more than enough time to shape the entire season...or at least establish clear goals that they want to reach, and establish a tone.
Anyone know why Weiss is being written out (first time I heard it was here). I know he's JJ's best friend, and that they had written Weiss into as many episodes as possible until now...Is he getting his own show or something?
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
I don't mind the Rambaldi stuff, but it was a bit overbearing this last season. I like those little things like in the first season when Sydney meets some guy who's hundreds of years old and knows it's his day to die, so he stands up in the way of a bullet to save her. It was pretty unexplained, just left a cool impression.
I even like the things like that machine which set everyone in the church on fire. The reason that was ok and didn't seem over the top to me, was that that was really the height of Rambaldi's wonder that we'd seen, we'd never really seen anything to that degree before. And that led to some smaller stuff again. If we have that sort of thing week in week out, like we began to last year, it gets stupid.
Rambaldi used to drive the story forwards. Now it is the story. It needs to be brought back to the way it was.
I even like the things like that machine which set everyone in the church on fire. The reason that was ok and didn't seem over the top to me, was that that was really the height of Rambaldi's wonder that we'd seen, we'd never really seen anything to that degree before. And that led to some smaller stuff again. If we have that sort of thing week in week out, like we began to last year, it gets stupid.
Rambaldi used to drive the story forwards. Now it is the story. It needs to be brought back to the way it was.
Rabid Wolverine
Member
Currently watching Season 2 on Dvd.. Sloane and SD-6 really make this show kick ass.
The Covenent did shit for season 3.
The Covenent did shit for season 3.
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