ALIAS season 4 ongoing thread (merged)

My preference on seasons goes in sequential order. I agree the show isn't sufficient as a straight espionage drama but I'll stick with it, given a couple items were dropped last night, though I also wonder how much I really care about Irina Derevko anymore. The result of strategies to gather more viewers usually seems to alienate existing fans...

Since I am not the kind of guy to take for granted an entertaining and fairly clever hour of episodic television, I found this episode interesting and amusing and would like to see more like it. They had more than enough light continuity elements to whet my appetite as to what kind of shenanigans Jack and Sloane are planning and what Isabella Rossellini is up to these days without undermining the episode being about something and telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Regards,

I also think the writing is more sly when it comes to an overt arc vs. the standalone missions with sprinkles of an on-going arc that only Sloane and Jack are in on for now. And then with it hits the fan, the viewers and Sydney will be caught up to speed as to all the behind-the-scenes manuevering that's been hinted at for the past few episodes.

I did like the "47" allusion for one of the incidences that one of the couples were involved in.

So much for the "will run every week without interruptions" pledge by ABC.

Come on, for all ABC knew, the SotU speech would be on Tuesday (like usually is for the last decade, if not longer), but for some reason, it's on Wednesday. At least it's not a rerun.

I have no complaints about the season so far, and I thought last night's episode did a very good job of creeping me out, with the training base being a replica of suburban America.

Maybe on the S4 DVD set they will have a featurette on how the production designers managed to make suburban Southern California look like a Russian city exactly replicating suburban Southern California. I'm sure it would be fascinating. Where could they possibly find a location for this?

Regards,

I think the only problem with Season Four so far is that there hasn't been any really GREAT episode yet. I think all the episodes have been good but not the amazing type of episode that you know that the show can make.

Some of those great ones are coming though. Hopefully the upcoming episodes with
Warning Spoiler! Click to show will be what I'm waiting for

I need more Rhambaldi. I hope I get my fill in the next few months.

So did no one here catch that Elena Deverko is the sentienel they were talking about? Elena is Irina's other sister.

Look at the ep with closed captions, Elena and Irina sound alot alike to the ears.

Nice catch. I thought they said Irina, meaning the Russians were on a wild goose chase or that Jack/Sloane had done something else to Irina that they wanted to keep secret.

My wife and I kept rewinding the Tivo saying, "they didn't say Irina, they said Elena!"

Who the hell is that!

For what it's worth, they're actually running a re-run of Lost instead of Alias that night. I'm just pointing out that the statement they made was bogus from the start, whether it was Easter's 10 Commandments or the Academy awards they weren't going to live up to the pledge.

What if they said they'd show 22 hours of Alias in 22 weeks? That would be truthful (week 1 had 2 hours of Alias). Either way, it's not worth getting all that worked up about it.

Or look at it another way, if the producers of Alias had their druthers, they'd rather show a new episode in their Wednesday timeslot next week, but it's beyond their control.

I think Bush is doing his SOTC speech on wednesday because of the iraqi elections.

I had heard that there were only going to be 20 episodes this year. And assuming they run one episode a week (after February 2), that works out to May 18 for the airing of episode 20.

I assumed that this was due to the 'shortened' year and more importantly (to ABC) due to the fact that the show is expensive as hell.

The season premiere was technically a two-parter, and if the season finale is a two-parter as well (I'm guessing that's going to be the case), that will add up to 22 episodes.

I counted the two-parter as two episodes and with the skip week, it still works out to one episode a week until May 18 for a total of 20 episodes.

Oops, I miscounted. It could run until May 25, and if the season finale is a two-parter, then that makes 22 episodes. We shouldn't be worrying about quantity anyways. Quality over quantity, right?

Exactly

"Good episode. I liked the whole "Prisoner" feel to it. I kept waiting to see a Rover!"

I was picking up on this theme too. Personally, I haven't liked Alias since it started (my wife is the addict)
but noticed a change in approach this year. This episode was tolerable.

For my money, this was the best episode of the season so far. Pretty ridiculous, but in a fun way. The characters actually seemed to have a little more personality, and there was some good continuity with the Irina/KGB stuff (I chalk that up to Drew Goddard). I still think the show has pretty much lost the potential it had to be great, but if it can at least be entertaining, I'm somewhat satisifed.

I agree with Brian that this has been the best ep of the season so far. The showroom shootout was one of the funnier things I have seen this week.

Did ABC timeshift Alias in anyway last night (2/2/05)? It was obviously interrupted by GWB's state of the union address (EST) so I was wondering if ABC timeshifted it or are they just going to broadcast last night's show next wednesday? I noticed that I was recording Bush and quickly stopped the VCR... Ack!

Jay

Alias simply got pre-empted, next new episode is next Wednesday.

Big Alias fan, but so far, the new season just hasn't been as compelling as the previous seasons. However, this is the first time I've watched the broadcasts. I have usually waited for the dvds and watched the entire season in about a week or 2. I think Alias plays better that way.

It's certainly not bad, but I do hope it can improve. Glad to see the ratings are good so far though.

My ranking of the seasons are:
Season 2
Season 1
Season 3

My favorite episode still remains the beginning pilot, Truth Be Told

Personally for me, Alias is stronger-more connected having Will & Francie on the show.

Sloane as the boss is a hard sell for me.

BTW, Jennifer Garner won the Screen Actors Guild award Sat night for her acting in Alias.

This is not really a "Season 4" question, but this has been bugging me.

We were talking about Alias the other day, and I vaguely remember some episodes where Sydney was hypnotized to remember her past. While unconscious, she sees a number (I think it was 47) that was supposed to be significant.

Did we ever find out what that meant?

-Kelly

47 is the number of Rambaldi, so that's just part of the whole Rambaldi storyline that hopefully will be picked up again sooner or later.

It seems there was some conflict with negotiating Lena Olin's new contract. I don't think she'll come back as I don't see a point in bringing her back

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/050207a.php

Actually, there've been significant rumblings that she might indeed be back (in a guest-starring role) sometime later this season... I believe SFX Magazine (among others) mentioned that.

Since the recent interviews indicate that she enjoyed working on the show and wouldn't be adverse to reprising her role (in a limited manner), and since J.J. Abrams has stated he'd love to have her back, I think some hurdles have been cleared.

We'll see.

btw, I'm also a recent convert to the whole Alias scene -- got hooked when I finally Netflixed the first discs of Season 1 about a month ago, and then my wife and I jammed through all three seasons. We got through the first season thru Netflix, then that got too slow, so we borrowed Season 2 and 3 from a friend. We've been watching 10-12 episodes every weekend (!)... and last weekend I managed to grab the Season 4 eps off BitTorrent, so we're finally totally caught up.

I didn't hate Season 3 nearly as much as some of the comments I've read here (and elsewhere) -- I think in part that's due to DVD: the show plays a lot better when you can watch through it in chunks, and you're less annoyed at a single episode because you can always start watching the next. And all the doom-n-gloom from other Alias folk prepared me for the worst -- it wasn't all that bad!

I'm having a blast so far with Season 4 -- if for no other reason than to laugh at Abrams' ballsiness of reinventing the show whenever he feels like it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I sure prefer that than the staleness of watching the same sort of show endlessly. If season 4 turns out to be nothing but stand-alones, then I'll be disappointed, sure -- but every season, it seems, has taken a few episodes to get up to speed... and if I learned anything from watching B5, it's that seasons tend to start slow and build up once the new plotlines, characters, and situations get fully set up (both for new viewers and oldbies).

Tomorrow will be my first "live" viewing of an Alias episode. Woohoo!