The Safe House - Expositions

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - What if instead of deciding whether or not she should spend the summer with Ben or Noel, one May Felicity blew them both off and became a spy instead?

This isn't a thought that would occur to the average fan of the WB drama, but "Felicity" creator J.J. Abrams has a different take on things.

"The way 'Alias' sort of came about is I was sitting in the writers' room on 'Felicity' at the beginning of last year," he says. "We're all just sitting around talking about stuff, and I said, 'You know what would just rock, is if Felicity was recruited by the CIA, because then she'd have to go and do these missions internationally, you know, kick ass, be in these incredibly high-stakes, life-and-death situations, come back. She couldn't tell Ben. She couldn't tell Noel.'"

While Abrams realized this wouldn't exactly fly with the WB, he did think it would make a great series on its own. Thus, "Alias" was born. Calling the premise "ludicrous," Abrams likes to think of it as a comic book or cartoon that is taken seriously.

Premiering on ABC this fall, Jennifer Garner stars as grad student Sydney Bristow who leads a double life as an international spy. Things get ugly when the agency she works for kills her fiancé and she decides to become a double agent.

The secret life premise is trendy this season, with "Thieves" (also on ABC), "The Agency" (CBS) and "UC: Undercover" all make a bid for viewers. Abrams feels that his show is different though, because it puts character over concept every time.

"The idea of a young woman who loses the person that she loves dearly and has to get on with life, and has this estranged relationship with her father, and slowly they're coming together," says Abrams, "that to me is a story that I think would work in any genre."

Abrams is also prepared for the inevitable comparisons to such movies as "La Femme Nikita" and "Run Lola Run" (and not just because Sydney sports Lola's signature bright red hair for a good part of the pilot). In fact, he welcomes them. He admires the heroine of the latter for being "very young and of very few words, but she was incredibly vulnerable."

"As we all do, you need to compare something new to something familiar."

"Having done that, I believe a year from now, if we're lucky, people will be saying, 'Oh, this looks like 'Alias' meets something,' and it will just be that."

Thanks to vaughnetc.!

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