Show of the week
I'm checking my notes on this show's late-September premiere, and I notice half of them are crossed out.
Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) works for a bank. No, it's a front for the CIA's SD-6 division. Hold on. SD-6 is really a renegade espionage outfit inimical to U.S. interests. And apparently one of the evildoers is Sydney's stern father (Victor Garber), thought to be an importer—or was it exporter?—of airplane parts. Out of patriotic duty, she'll have to become his covert foe by serving as a CIA mole inside SD-6. Wait—or are they both secretly on the side of right? By the time the exciting pilot was done, Alias had established itself as a drama where nothing is written in ink, much less set in stone.
Not that I'm totally sold on the series. Sydney gets out of jams with martial artistry Jackie Chan might envy, and episode 2 was a mite early for her to be disarming a nuclear bomb. But Garner (Pearl Harbor) has an appeal that transcends implausibility, and the strong supporting cast includes Ron Rifkin as the ruthless chief of SD-6 and Carl Lumbly as the partner Sydney probably can't afford to trust.
Bottom Line: Spy vs. spy with style
