Sardonicus On... Alias

***WARNING - THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

Ten years ago, I got to the end of Alias Season 3, then moved house and missed the final 2 seasons. Having managed to spend the entire ensuing decade avoiding any spoilers regarding what happened next, I familiarised myself again with the first three seasons recently and finished off this mix of spy thriller, family drama and science fiction at last.

One big positive in Alias' favour: no matter how bizarre, campy, unbelievable or OTT the plots were, it never failed to be entertaining, which is the M.O. of any self-respecting TV series, right? So, having lived through all the ups and downs of Sydney Bristow's (Jennifer Garner) life over the course of a few short weeks, why did I feel empty and even a tad let down as the credits rolled on its 105th and final episode, rather than bereft and depressed that I was bidding farewell to a cast of characters that I had come to know, identify with and care about over the course of its 5 seasons?

The main reason lies with the major failing of creator JJ Abrams' other hit series, Lost, in that the writers created a detailed, compelling and involving mythology - largely around the missing works and predictions of a fictitious DaVinci style 15th century inventor, Milos Rambaldi - but crucially, either never knew how this would work out or what the Rambaldi end game was, or worked it out too late for it not to feel rushed and somewhat of a cheat on the viewer who has been led to believe over seasons 1 to 3 that everything Rambaldi related was part of an overall, grandiose plot that ran throughout the entire series, rather than just a plot device designed to create cliff hangers and weird or thrilling situations for Sydney to get involved in. So far, so Lost, although rest assured Alias does have a proper ending, but the way many of the plot points that the show had been working towards were resolved (The Passenger storyline; Rambaldi's ultimate invention; the loyalties of Sydney’s mother) felt haphazard and half-baked, like they'd been decided on by consensus in a writers’ meeting shortly before the episode was filmed, rather than the natural progression of plots and characters that might have been expected from the implied "plan".

The loyalties of Sydney's mother, Irina Derevko (Lena Olin), brings me to my other major gripe with Alias: the treatment of its characters during its final season. Twists, turns and ever-changing loyalties were part of the show's keep-you-guessing ethos, but the turnaround of Sydney's agent boyfriend Vaughan (Michael Vartan) in to a man with a hidden life and secrets that he'd apparently had from the get-go just felt like the show was running out of ideas and decided to keep people interested by changing audience perceptions of one of its main characters - but the problem is it spoils all the identification we had built up with Vaughan over the course of the prior 4 years, and none of his actions during the course of season 5 ever felt that they fit with his character. The ambiguity of Sydney's mother and her boss Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) had been another of the show's strong points: it was fun and intriguing wondering if these characters were truly good or bad, and observing different facets of their characters that hinted at one side or another over the years. By time of episode 105, both Irina and Sloane are unambiguously bad and evil, and behaving in ways that I don't think befit the characters they had built or their complexities as people. Why exactly was Irina deciding to nuke London and Washington, writers? I'm still very unclear as to what exactly her intentions were. And when a show kills off and then brings back to life so many of its cast so many times, it's hard to feel emotional at the show's end when there's death and upset - you feel that the writers would find some way to being everyone back to life again if there was ever an Alias film, and you  become immune to scenes written to have emotional impact - most of the time I found myself thinking that the character in question would be back somehow in a few episodes anyway, so there was no need to bother caring.

To be fair to the show, the network had insisted the show change its direction at the end of Season 3 and that year's big cliff-hanger was explained away very unsatisfactorily at the start of the next year - the show's writers essentially backed into a corner by the network there, but given the show's propensity to tie itself in knots for the sake of a big reveal (see the resolution of season 2's end), this may not have made any difference to the overall quality of the show at this point anyway. Like many shows, Alias might have benefited from wrapping up at the end of Season 3 and leaving fans wanting just that little bit more.

All this being said, it takes patience and perseverance to watch 100 plus episodes of a show from start to end, and Alias always had enough to keep me hooked in and watching 'just one more'. Every episode has the look and feel of a mini-movie, it's never afraid to take risks and shift the show in unexpected directions, its characters are well drawn and a group of people you find yourself genuinely caring about, and Jennifer Garner as a female James Bond acts well, looks great and kicks major ass in every episode while wearing a variety of awesome outfits and utilising some nifty gadgets. And if at times it gets unbelievable and requires its characters to behave in ways that would require superhuman levels of fitness or intelligence, isn't that a large part of the spy genre anyway? Alias knows its audience and what they want, and it never gets so caught up in its own mythology that it can't take a few tongue in cheek swipes at itself from time to time.

So, Alias is dramatic, entertaining, action packed and ludicrous but (mostly) in a good way. At its peak (Season 2) it rivals any show on television for spectacle, excitement and invention, and even its lower points (the silly final episodes of season 4) have enough entertainment value to keep you watching. Just don't expect that perfect, satisfying, and answers all your questions ending; it has one, but tighter plotting (and maybe a more understanding network), and I feel it could have been a whole lot better.