September 13, 2002, Fall TV Preview Edition

Alias - Spy Anxiety

by Dan Snierson

Scans courtesy of Mel TM. :)

Cover:

Transcript courtesy of Alias246, Vartan Ho #112. Thanks! :)

SPOILERS!

Jennifer Garner’s grad-student-turned-secret agent faces her most dangerous opponent yet (her mother) when conspiracy thriller Alias returns for a potentially do-or-die season.

When we last saw Sydney Bristow in the May finale of Alias, our favorite superspy had been knocked out and chained to a chair – the trapped prey of a most dangerous enemy (“Mommmmm?”) – while a tsunami of giant-red-ball juice (it’s a long story) swallowed up her CIA contact, Vaughn. However dire the situation may have seemed, this was clear: Things couldn’t get any worse.

On a tepid August night inside a glum industrial warehouse in San Pedro, CA, they just did.

Barbed wire cordons off a makeshift surgical workshop. Forceps, saws and scalpels lie on the countertops, along with a tray of moist eyeballs. Brains and intestines float in jars of colored liquids. Mangled human bodies stretch across steel gurneys. And there, on the center slab in this little shop of horrors, lies a dazed, half-naked Vaughn (Michael Vartan), bruises around his eyes, wrists secured in restraints, an IV tube poking out of his arm. A well-known nemesis is about to turn him into formaldehyde fodder…unless Sydney (Jennifer Garner) can suck up a bullet wound, shake off a clock-cleaning, ram a needleful of adrenaline into his heart, and scoot him out of here – all the while dressed in a platinum shag wig, sequined black cocktail dress, and three inch heels.

“I can tell this is going well,” chuckles Garner, practicing her hypodermic technique as the camera readies to roll.

“Jennifer, jam that needle in him,” instructs the episode’s director, Ken Olin. “And when she jams it in,” he continues, turning to the helpless Vartan, “you have to really yell, like it f---ing hurts.”

“Oh, you’ll need some earplugs,” Vartan warns. He cranes his head toward Garner and says reassuringly: “Do it as hard as you want.”

A big shot of adrenaline may be just what Alias needs right now. Sure, the whip-smart spy-fi serial enjoyed a fine first season, holding it’s own among 18 to 49 year-olds in a tough Sunday slot, and dazzling critics with its filmic cunning (it netted 11 Emmy nominations, and catapulted Garner into next-level stardom – hello, Golden Globe and lead role in Daredevil opposite Ben Affleck.) Yet the show hasn’t recruited the throngs of people that struggling ABC had hoped for, ranking only No. 55 in the Nielsens with 9.7 million viewers. But now – armed with a key cast addition (security clearance granted: Lena Olin), deeper yet easier-to-follow story lines, fresh world-spanning missions (get ready to chill in a Siberian ice cave), and jacked-up network promotion – Alias could very well be in prime position to crack the ratings code. “It feels like the live-up-to-our-own-buzz year,” declares Garner, “we’re so all business.” Adds Bradley Cooper, a.k.a. Syd’s reporter pal, Will Tippin: “There’s no question this is the year. Are we going to put ourselves on the map and take it to the next level? It’s make it or break it.”

For those not keeping the series under heavy surveillance, here’s your necessary intel: Sydney is a grad student-cum-double agent, snooping for the CIA by penetrating SD-6 – a branch of an evil global organization lorded over by the Machiavellian Arvin Sloane ( Ron Rifkin), who had her fiancée snuffed out after she spilled too much to him. Her two confidants remain her distant dad, Jack (Victor Garber), who plays the same double-dip spay game, and puppy-dog loyal Vaughn, with whom she swaps classified secrets and subtextual romantic gazes. Though she hasn’t been able to share any of this with Will, he’s been rooting around the death of Sydney’s fiancée and has now stumbled into her undercover life. Making matters even stickier, Sydney ’s long-thought-dead mom – A lethal KGB agent named Irina Derevko – has mysteriously resurfaced during the mad dash to retrieve the scattered works of Rambaldi, an enigmatic 15th-century inventor who was planning something so big we couldn’t possibly fit it in this paragraph (even if we did understand it). All of these plot points (plus about 600 others) are packed into Alias’ fantastical kaleidoscope of impossible missions, ultra-fab outfits, wicked gizmos, techno beats, and wigs, lots and lots of wigs.

Although the show received mucho attention for its wham-bam-glam goings-on, creator-exec producer J.J. Abrams wants viewers to realize that his series is actually an emotional story about a messed-up family that just happens to be filled with cool-ass, globe-trotting, fluent-in-a-dozen-languages secret agents who could take you out with an effortless wrist flick. “I think a lot of people saw the commercials with the explosions and the posters of the girl with the red hair, and they thought, ‘Oh, it’s like a punk action show only’” he says, “but this really is a family drama as much as anything on television.”

And, if anything, Alias is about to become the poster child for familial dysfunction. “The first episode is almost a pilot for a new show. The year begins with Sydney on a mission and coming up against her mother, who shoots her,” Abrams continues, “by the end of the episode, it becomes increasingly clear that this year will be about Mom and it complicates everything, because this woman not only was a KGB agent, this woman not only faked her death and abandoned her husband and daughter, but she betrayed the country, and she killed Vaughn’s father. And it’s not hard to figure out that she’s not a warm, cuddly woman with enormous maternal instincts. The metaphor of being the divorced kid and sort of bouncing back and forth between your mother and father – that’s the focus. And questions of trust and betrayal and revenge and love are the themes. Yes, you’ll get the rubber dresses and the incredible fight sequences, but the reason I like to do the show is because I love the relationship between Sydney and her father, and now Sydney and her mother. To me, that’s really the thing that keeps the show from becoming V.I.P.”

Well that and the luxurious story mythology, killer stunts, savvy acting (Garner And Garber nabbed Emmy noms), and the fact that respected Swedish import Olin will play Mommy Fearest. “She was wonderful in The Unbearable lightness of Being, she was incredible in Chocolat, but in Romeo Is Bleeding she really demonstrated a strength, a brutality, a darkness, a mystery that felt so much like the woman we were talking about,” says Abrams, “We needed someone who could be compassionate and loving, despite an inherent malicious sense – someone who had the soft side but who was intimidating as hell.”

Funny, that’s how Garner describes her too. “I liked her immediately,” she recalls. “She’s so elegant. And she’s so intimidating to me, which I think is appropriate. She’s a fierce actress, she’s got a fierce body. She has a fierceness in the stillness, in the way she looks at you. She’s just such a woman and it’s so cool. That’s the element we need…our family is complete – our little twisted, dysfunctional, freaked-out spy-happy family.”

Initially, Olin wasn’t sure she wanted to join a TV family – she was living in New York, she had film commitments – but she decided to meet with Abrams anyway. He “completely got me hooked,” she recalls. “It was such a complex, multilayered character that was just – I was almost drooling when started telling me about this character. Whatever he told her, though, she’ s not sharing. When asked if we should trust her alter ego (Garber warned us not to), Olin measures her words carefully: “Should we trust her? I think it’s going to be hard to trust her, but I couldn’t tell you whether you should or not at this point really.” Couldn’t tell us as in you can’t discern yet or couldn’t tell as in Abrams swore you to secrecy? “Ummm…both.”

Fear not, we’ve got lots of dirt on the other cliff-hangers dangling from last season’s gripping finale, including that whole Is Vaughn dead or alive? Situation. Of course, your first hint is the opening scene of this story. Now, for a slightly less subtle clue: “Hello??? He has a six year contract!” says Garner. “He’s not going anywhere! Do you think we’d kill off one of our hot guys? Thank you, no!”

So if he’s not sleeping with the fishes, how on earth did he manage an underwater escape? “There’s a hand-powered tool involved,” confides the man in jeopardy himself. “I was kind of worried when I first read it. I thought, ‘What kind of crazy f---ing thing are they going to come up with?’ I hope it’s not like ‘Well, he had an oxygen capsule in his heel.’ I was very happy to see that it was something a lot simpler than I could have dreamt up.” (Although Vaughn won’t be joining that big agency up in the sky, he’s not quite out of danger yet. “All I know, says Vartan, “is that that wasn’t just water I was in.)

Will, meanwhile, is swimming in hot water thanks to his journalistic meddling. And here’s a little scoop: In a desperate but novel attempt to throw off his pursuers, our news junkie is forced to dip into heroin as well. “He has to destroy himself,” hints Abrams, “and it is a very public destruction. He really is starting from scratch and paying the price for being such a snoopy, nosy guy.”

No need to remind Cooper. “I was always shocked that people thought Will was annoying because I never saw him that way,” he says, “I saw him as trying to protect Sydney. He was constantly one step behind the audience, so you’re like, ‘Well come on, why don’t you know this?’ Now that he’s introduced to that world – the possibilities are endless.” Does that mean he might be whupping some bad-guy butt? “I’m ready to rock,” he says, “I got my girlfriend’s Tae-Bo tapes.”

In other rockin’ shockin’ news: Irina possesses a DEFCON-1-level secret about Jack that places his already tenuous relationship with Sydney in jeopardy. (There may be a little more drinking involved,” says Garber of Jack, “We saw him toward the end of the season having a little bit of a breakdown and then he kind of rallied, but this could put him right over the edge.”) Sloane is haunted, literally, by his decision to gain a permanent seat on the Alliance board by pulling the plug on his cancer-stricken wife, Emily (Amy Irving). The troubled brother of Sydney’s SD-6 partner, Dixon (Carl Lumbly), enters the picture. Goofy gadget guy Marshall finally gets to go on a mission. And – ssshhh, keep this very quiet! – Sydney’s roommate, Francie (Merrin Dungey), opens her own restaurant.

Oh, here’s one other thing that Abrams is cooking up: Ambitious storytelling that won’t short-circuit your brain. One of the few criticisms dogging Alias last season was that it sometimes shoehorned too many complex plot points into an episode (by the way, Sydney will soon graduate from school). This season “will definitely be as intricate, but I think it will be more accessible,” notes Abrams, who’s also cutting back on the more esoteric aspects of Rambaldi’s doomsday prophecy. “You’ll be able to jump in a way that is fareasier. That is not to say that fans of the show will feel like they’re being spoon-fed. Even for those people it will be nice to get a stronger handle on what’s good and what’s bad.”

The jury’s still out, though, on the merits of Alias’ scheduling – Sundays at Nine, following The Wonderful World of Disney and opposite The Sopranos, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Malcolm in the Middle. “It’s not my favorite time slot,” says Abrams, whose request for different digs was denied. As Cooper observes: “You haved this Wonderful World of Disney, the you have blood and violence and heavy drama. It’s a tough transition for viewers to make. You’re not turning a lot of Mickey Mouse fans into Sydney Bristow fans.” ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne seems undeterred: “The fact that there’s no dominant time-period winner at 9 o’clock Sunday,” She says, “ makes me feel there’s opportunity there.”

To make the most of that opportunity, Disney has launched an all-out Alias assault: A movie trailer plugging the drama is running in theaters nationwide, and comic books, novels, videogames, a DVD, and a line of action figures will soon be infiltrating a store new you. “We have a long way to go to rebuild the network,” admits Lyne, “but this is the kind of show that could give us a huge boost.” Which explains why Alias' Christmas present may come little late this year: ABC will likely follow its Super Bowl broadcast with a special episode of the series." (“It’s going to be big and crazy and fun,” says Garner, “and I’m sure I’ll have to show more skin than I’m comfortable with, but that’s a good reason to be in shape before Christmas.)

And what if none of the above turns Alias into a supersize hit? Let’s check in with the man who always has a plan B. “I think Jack should get up and do a cabaret act,” deadpans Garber, “I think we should see a side to Jack where he secretly goes to a piano bar and sings show tunes on the weekend. Don’t you think? Wouldn’t that be good? And I can do something from Sweeney Todd.” Um, would somebody please pass the adrenaline needle?

© EW 2002

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