Sydney Bristow’s spy antics arrive on DVD in an elaborate series set.

November 17, 2006 - JJ Abrams’s Alias debuted fall 2001, and was one of two new highly serialized series that season that focused on a government agent fighting to stop disaster. That other series was 24, which eventually would become a huge, breakout hit. This was not to be for Alias however, which could never escape its cult status. Still, Alias had a hugely loyal fanbase from the start, which it quickly earned thanks to its extremely inventive blend of over the top spy action and relatable family drama.

However, it’s an understatement to say that Alias would then go on to endure an extremely rocky five years. It’s hard to think of a great show that so dramatically and quickly went off the rails a couple of years in, and the show struggled to regain its footing after several highly questionable plot turns. Unfortunately, the early perfection of the show never fully returned, but much of the innately enjoyable aspects of the series were still there. Looking back on Alias now is an often fun and sometimes frustrating experience, but one worth going through, as there’s no doubt the show had a unique place in the television landscape.

Season One of the series is simply awesome and one of the best, most exciting debut seasons for any dramatic show I’ve seen. Even excellent series like Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Angel had to work a bit to find their footing early on. But with Alias, JJ Abrams seemed to know exactly what he wanted to put on screen right out of the gate, and damn if it wasn’t exciting. Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is a spy who discovers the organization she’s been working for, SD-6, are actually criminals, and not an offshoot of the CIA as she had believed. Sydney goes to work as a double agent for the actual CIA, and remaining at SD-6 to help bring them down from within. She also learns to her shock there is one other person who is also a double agent in SD-6; her father, Jack (Victor Garber). Each week had a gasp-worthy cliffhanger, as Sydney went on one crazy mission after another, while trying to maintain her cover.

Season Two continued the excellence, as a major new character was brought in, in the form of Sydney’s mother, Irina (Lena Olin). In season one, Alias firmly established the father/daughter dynamic between Jack and Sydney as the central relationship on the series, as they tried to get past his emotional barriers and a lifetime of secrets. Season Two ramped this up by bringing in Mom, who was herself a duplicitous spy who had betrayed her family long ago. Olin was remarkable as the sometimes loving, often feral, and always dangerous Irina. Meanwhile the SD-6 storyline came to a head (too soon for some), but the villainous Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) still had plenty more nastiness up his sleeve.

And then there’s Season Three... in all of its sadness. And not in the good way. Season Three of Alias was a disaster. A compelling and exciting season two cliffhanger leads to a huge amount of dramatic misfires. Sydney finds herself missing two years of her life, and the search for what occurred in that time isn’t given nearly the weight, excitement or payoff it deserves. Sydney herself, usually such a strong, admirable female hero, becomes a woman who spends the entire season weeping for and pining for her former love Vaughn (Michael Vartan), with apparently no ability to center herself and move on with her life.

Vaughn’s new love interest Lauren (Melissa George) could have been a fascinating character, but instead she’s ridiculous, and it becomes utterly obvious the writers are drastically altering her course as the season goes on, with no thought spent on what occurred before. Other great shows had gone bad before (Buffy Season Seven, I haven’t forgotten you), but rarely so quickly. Alias Season Three was a shadow of the first two years.

Season Four was a rebuilding year, and it did so with very mixed results. A network mandate put a temporary end to the serialized spy and mythology storylines that had been so much of a part of the series, and made for an odd new version of Alias, with many more standalone "case of the week" episodes for the first two thirds of the season. There were some cool episodes along the way, but it just didn’t make for a good fit, as Alias was designed as a serial, and Sydney was now stranded without a compelling storyline (as opposed to season three, where she had a compelling storyline initially, but it was done so badly). Things do get more interesting in the final episodes, but there’s still a lot missing.

It was clear by Season Five the show couldn’t completely recapture what it lost in the third year. The dense Milo Rambaldi mystery/storyline the show had contained from the start had gotten too convoluted for its own good, and too many other plot strands had gone off course to hope to put them all back exactly right. That being said, Season Five is very good television. For the first time in awhile, the show was consistently fun and exciting again. Sydney is finally given a strong personal stake in the storyline again, and the producers work with Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy in a way that might be a bit unbelievable (would a pregnant woman really be in the field as much as she is?) but fits the crazy style of the world of Alias.

Best of all, the show had a very satisfying finale. It couldn’t wrap up every strand of the mythology — a nearly impossible task at that point — but the characters we’d grown invested in through the years were given exactly the right send off, and emotionally at least, the series paid off.

Taken as one big piece, the five years of Alias is a bit of a mess, there’s no denying. But it’s a dynamic, exciting and involving mess, with some incredibly great episodes, seasons and stories. Jennifer Garner deserves a ton of credit for the show working as well as it did, as she was exactly the right actress to portray a girl who is so bigger than life, yet contradictorily, so down to earth, in the way Sydney Bristow is. Displaying unbelievable martial arts abilities one minute, then breaking your heart with a heartfelt moment with her dad (wonderfully played by Garber) the next, Garner was fabulous.

The show went through massive ups and downs, but in the end, Sydney Bristow and her messed up family make it all worth it. That and it’s just cool to watch her kick ass in some crazy, skimpy outfit.

Score: 8 out of 10

The Video As far as the episodes go, Alias - The Complete Collection includes the exact same discs and extras that were contained in the original box set releases of Seasons One, Two, Three and Four, along with the Season Five set being released at the same time as the series collection. While these remain the original transfers, there’s nothing wrong with that, as Alias has always been one of the better looking TV shows on DVD. All the episodes are in widescreen, unlike their non-HD broadcast versions.

This is a series that truly benefits from the widescreen format, as Abrams made Alias a very cinematic and visually dynamic series, with action scenes and set pieces on par with many feature films (which greatly prepared him to direct Mission: Impossible III). All the episodes here boast well done transfers, that are definitely above average for television.

Score: 8 out of 10

The Audio Presentation From the start, the Alias DVD releases have featured some of the best audio you’ll find for a TV series. All five seasons are presented in Dolby Digital 5.1. Alias called for a lot more audio tricks and subtleties than other series, as the characters spoke to each other across hidden microphones, worked intricate sound effects laden devices and computers, and of course, shot a whole lot of places and people up. This is a well balanced and nuanced audio track for the entire set, which is hard to match among TV series DVDs.

Unfortunately, when it comes to additional audio options and subtitles, the seasons aren’t consistent.

Season One and Three feature an additional Spanish language track, and captions in English for the hearing impaired.

Season Two, Four and Five feature subtitles in Spanish and captions in English for the hearing impaired.

Score: 9 out of 10

Packaging and Extras The packaging for Alias - The Complete Collection is truly a standout. The series comes in a large golden box, with intricate details on it, which is referred to in the press materials as a "Rambaldi Artifact." The loyal fans of this series who will want this limited edition set — only 40,000 were made, though this Alias fan thinks it should have been 47,000 — will understand the imagery involved here, as the box evokes a Rambaldi item seen on the series.

When the lid of the box is lifted, the four sides of the box collapse down, revealing the DVD sets inside. Each season is packaged in its own booklet, which continues the Rambaldi imagery, and is covered in pictures and writing familiar from the show.

Also included is a hardcover, CD-case sized book, Alias Revealed. The book contains an introduction by JJ Abrams, in which even he makes some jokes about confusing storylines on the show. The book asks some questions left dangling from the series, and has various Alias writers and producers, including Abrams, give their answers. It’s a fun, quick read, though it unfortunately is a reminder of how overly dense the mythology got on the series and that sadly, no, everything wasn’t explained at the end.

When it comes to extra features, the majority of them are simply the same ones featured on the previous releases, since again, these are the exact same discs. Without repeating the entire list, here are IGN’s reviews of Season One, Season Three, and Season Four (somehow Season Two slipped through the cracks apparently!), and a Season Five review will be forthcoming.

Suffice to say, together, this is an unremarkable but nice collection of extras, consisting of several commentaries from cast and crew, some blooper reels, featurettes and other behind the scenes looks at the series. There is no true standout here, and other TV show sets have gone more in-depth, but fans will enjoy these extras, assuming they haven’t seen them already.

The Complete Collection does however contain one additional disc, which is only available in this set. Finding it is actually a bit of a challenge, in that it is located inside a "Secret Compartment". There aren’t all that many options for where this compartment could be in the box, but jump to the next page if you don’t want a big hint: What was Rambaldi’s symbol?

As for the content on the Complete Collection exclusive disc, which is titled "Endgame," it consists of:

* "Case Closed": A Look Back at Five Years of Alias * Alias Time Capsule: The Pilot Interviews * "Forty Seven" featurette * "Axis of Evil" featurette * Deleted Scenes * Alias Magazine: Complete Cover Gallery

"Case Closed" is easily the standout feature here. Split into five sections which can be played either separately or via a "Play All" function, this sort of mini-documentary, which runs about 37 minutes, functions as a nice overview on the series. I say mini-documentary, because it really isn’t the all-encompassing look at the series that Alias deserves, and doesn’t really get into any of the nitty-gritty fans would enjoy, such as discussing why Lena Olin didn’t return for Season Three or why other controversial decisions were made.

That being said, what is included is very enjoyable, including a look at the show’s start, which includes a lot of footage shot behind the scenes of the pilot; a talk about the show’s many aliases (hey, it IS the title after all), where Jennifer Garner adorably recalls all the different languages she’s spoken on the show; and a segment focused on the fans of the series, many of whom are interviewed here. Lastly, the section "The Final Chapter" is about the series wrapping up, with nearly all of the cast and key crew members speaking about their feelings on the series, in footage shot right at the end of production. There is some on-set footage here fans will love, including a lot of emotional moments as Jennifer Garner and other cast members film their very last scenes as their respective characters and then say their goodbyes to their coworkers and friends.

Also of note in this section is that among the interviews with Garner, Abrams and other people associated with the show, is a little known director named Steven Spielberg. Spielberg is interviewed for this feature, and discusses his love of show and admiration of Abrams, and it certainly is a notable "get" for the DVD.

The pilot interviews are self-explanatory; they are interviews done with most of the main cast while they were filming the pilot. While not giving us a lot of new information, they definitely are fun to see and it’s interesting to get a perspective on what the cast were thinking going into the series.

The "Forty-Seven" and "Axis of Evil" featurettes both run about four and a half minutes and are brief discussions of two elements of the series; the latter focusing on the different villainous groups on the show, the former on the number 47. Alias fans have long noted the number 47 appearing throughout the series, and here there is some discussion of that, along with a look at the many times the number was said or seen on the show. Unfortunately though, the answer to what it really means is not given. Similarly, "Axis of Evil" names off the different bad guys, but doesn’t do much more, and frankly, one of the ways the show faltered as it went on was the never ending addition of shadowy criminal organizations that became less and less focused.

The Deleted Scenes consists of three scenes from different episodes from Season Five. Why they are included here and not on the Season Five discs (and thus in the separate Season Five collection) isn’t quite clear. Presumably it may be because there was more production time available on the series set and so the scenes were left out of the Season Five set, but were able to be put into this set. None of the scenes are all that important, but one, from the flashback laden series finale, is fun, as it features the first meeting between Sydney and her Dixon (the underused Carl Lumbly).

The magazine cover gallery is silly. Just as you’d expect, it’s simply the covers of the various issues of Alias fan magazine, presented together.

Note that while it may be older material, the score for the Packaging and Extras takes into account the extras featured on the episode discs.

Score: 6 out of 10

The Bottom Line It was hard not to get really angry with Alias at times, but it’s also impossible to not acknowledge how involving and wonderful the show could be, and certainly was for its first two seasons. It went through awesome stories and inane stories, but in the end, it was a clever, notable series whose outlandish plots were always juxtaposed with drama about a family we cared about.

This DVD’s value is greatly diminished if you’ve purchased the previous season sets, as some really cool packaging and some solid behind the scenes footage still don’t elevate it to something truly special beyond what you’d get with the individual sets. But if you don’t have those other sets, and have been waiting to purchase the show, or are a true Alias die hard fan, this set is for you. The show itself, the various extras included across the seasons and the very strong audio and visual presentation make this a good investment in a TV series that stood out from the rest.

Score: 8 out of 10