World Famous Comics: Alias - The Complete Second Season
Alias - The Complete Second Season
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Ron Rifkin Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: DVD Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment Number of Items: 6 Region Code: 1 Release Date: December 02, 2003 Running Time: 900 minutes Theatrical Release Date: September 30, 2001
Amazon.com: It was a family affair in the second season of J.J. Abrams's wonderfully inventive Alias, as super secret agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) came face-to-face with the mother of all super secret agents--her own mother, Irina Derevko (Lena Olin), a former KGB agent presumed dead but alive and more dangerous than ever. After shooting poor Syd, Irina later shows up at the doorstep of the CIA, offering to turn herself in and work for the good guys. But can she be trusted? Alias set up so much duplicity in its second season that it might have been hard to keep track of who was doing what to whom, but thanks to a great ensemble cast, fast-paced writing and direction, and some cannily cast guest stars, Alias rode a stunning emotional roller-coaster and never broke its momentum, even when halfway through the season, the show reinvented itself. With episode 13, "Phase One" (which aired after the Super Bowl to the show's biggest audience), Syd's original nemesis (and employer) SD-6 changes forever, yet the kick-butt agent still finds herself going up against the malevolent leader Sloane (Ron Rifkin) and his ever-changing set of henchmen. Action fans got plenty of fighting, while romantic Alias watchers swooned as Syd and the dashing Vaughn (Michael Vartan) finally consummated their unrequited love.
The critically acclaimed show owed a debt to Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its mix of action, romance, mystery, and moral quandaries, but in this season Alias truly came into its own--with a climax that came as a total shocker and prepped the show for an emotionally volatile third season. Guest stars included the phenomenal Amy Irving as Sloane's wife, Faye Dunaway as a nefarious bigwig, Christian Slater as a kidnapped scientist, and Ethan Hawke as a fellow CIA agent (or rather, two of them), but it was the dysfunctional nuclear family of Syd, Irina, and father Jack (Victor Garber) that gave Alias its heart and its strength, whether the three perfectly cast actors (all Emmy nominated) were just bickering or undertaking deadly hand-to-hand combat. And you thought your family had problems! --Mark Englehart
Description: The action gets even hotter in ALIAS' sensational second season. Double agent Sydney Bristow faces the greatest challenge of her life when her mother, an enemy long thought dead, turns herself in to the CIA. As family relationships change and Sydney's friends take on new roles, her life becomes even more tangled and dangerous. It's "like watching a 2,000-piece puzzle assembled before your eyes," says Entertainment Weekly. Experience all 22 scintillating episodes of season two with exclusive bonus features that take you inside the world of ALIAS. Your favorite characters are back, joined by special guest stars, as Sydney fights to reclaim her life and the action builds to a spectacular climax. "Think Bond with feelings, Dostoyevsky with smart bombs," says GQ Magazine. This comprehensive six-disc collection will have you hooked from episode one's incredible start to the season's stunning final minute.
superb collection this was my first season collection. i have watched and loved first season and i predicted that second one should be fantastic. as i predicted, that was awesome. each episode took me to the adventure of two sided agent sydney and her complicated family :D
Love it; Hate it; I've just got to have more Alias Last Year...on a very special "Alias":
Sydney Bristow, a young woman working on her PHd while working part-time at Credit Dauphine, leads a double life as a secret agent for SD-6 - purportedly a deep-cover branch of the CIA, but really a faction of "The Alliance", a global-network of arch-criminals who make hundreds of millions in arms sales, extortion and murder. Warned by her father when SD-6 murders her fiancé and then marks her for death, Sydney "defects" to the CIA, and becomes their double-agent. Now Sydney conducts compound missions - operations for SD-6 which are really counter-missions for the CIA intended to bring SD-6 down. Her only ally in SD-6 is her father, Jack Bristow, one of the few who knows the truth about the organization and its chief - the evil Arvin Sloane. Sydney must navigate the tight channels between SD-6 and its rivals (other evil organizations, security operatives of the alliance obsessed with uncovering moles, etc.) and not infrequently other functionaries of the US Government. In season 1, Syd faced several complications: the workings of a renaissance-era inventor named Rambaldi whose writings and inventions border on the prophetic and the apocalyptic, the shifting (and often selfish) loyalties of her homicidal father, the meddling of her reporter-friend Will Tippen and the truth about her mother, Laura Bristow (AKA KGB agent Irina Derevko, AKA "the Man"). (MadTV spoofed this show with a rapid fire skit that parodied the many tangled webs of Sydney Bristow's life - the biggest joke is how much of the material was accurate.)
If that sounds like a lot, it is, especially since many of the episodes resolve around the same basic idea: a mission that involves Sydney sneaking into a highly-secured location in disguise, break into a secure vault or hack a computer using exotic technology, grab the goods, kick-box her way out. Rinse and repeat. Nevertheless, the show manages to work its plot twists in how these missions connect - a mission goes bad, and somebody's captured, is he worth the risk?; a mission goes too well, and SD-6 gets the goods before Sydney can get them to the CIA; and just how good is this intel anyway? Brisk action keeps each episode going - also keeping us from wondering how SD-6's agents (presumably about as competent as Sydney, multilingual, combat-trained, techno-savvy and just so generally brilliant in so many other areas) never learn of SD-6's true nature while out in the field.
Tonight, on ALIAS!! Everybody's loyalties are strained to the breaking point. It begins with mom - Laura Bristow (referred almost all the time as "Derevko") revealing herself as "The Man", the shadowy head of an organization with a murderous efficiency rivaling that of SD-6. Surrendering herself to the CIA ("The Enemy Walks In") she proves in every way the perfect match for Jack Bristow. Can she be trusted? Sydney is torn, but her father is not - making us wonder how far he'll go to discredit her. And what will happen when the Bristows take a family trip (hunting for WMD's in Kashmir)? Meanwhile, Will Tippen's investigation into last season's murder of Sydney's fiancé causes him to be sucked into the world of international espionage. In order to ensure his promotion into the Alliance, the evil Arvin Sloane must execute his wife, Emily. (Dying of cancer, Emily blabs what she knows about SD-6 to Syd, and then inconveniently goes into remission.) When Sloane receives hints that Emily may be alive, he slowly goes off his hinges - or is it something else? Season 2 gives more attention & action to characters given the side-order treatment last year, including Dixon, Marshall and even Asst. Director Kendall (Terry O'Quinn - YES!!!).
"Alias" is a lot of fun even though it's also dated - having less in common with shows like "Lost", "Heroes" and the new BSG than the shows replaced by them (any of the reincarnations of "Star Trek"). "Alias" isn't about ordinary people in extraordinary situations; nor will we find Syd in a situation where her only hope is a tenacity she's not supposed to have. And most graying of all, we never doubt that Syd's targets have it coming - they're all bad-guys, and the only bad consequences of Sydney's actions are further missions. For all the murkiness about SD-6 or any pretension about how we're too modern to simplify the world into goodguys and badguys, once Syd's stilettos go into action, we need not worry that she's going after a totally innocent dude, or that the measures (or wardrobe) taken aren't overly extreme. "Alias" is about as obsolete as a show can be, but it gives the spy-fi genre a great treatment, with larger-than-life (and meaner) characters, enigmatic loyalties and some beguiling questions.
STUFF THAT ALMOST KEPT US FROM TUNING IN: No show is perfect, though "Alias" has some quirks which nearly abuse the privilege. Needless celebrity guests (since they're stars, the show can't do that much to them or with them), too much important dialog spoken in quick and hushed tones, too much info spoken straight out ("subtext" anyone?), too much gratuitous footage of Jennifer Garner's bod or of Syd in suggestive clothing (Yes, we know she's mega-hot, but that doesn't mean we should be treated like we're a bunch of stalkers) and too many artificially-emotional scenes with extra-sappy music playing in the background (if you're wife is a bigger fan of "Grey's Anatomy" or "October Road" than you are, you know what I'm talking about).
That aside, "Alias" is still a fun ride that sends the spy-thriller genre out with a bang. Lena Olin is coolly sexy as the evil/motherly Derevko, while Victor Garber and Terry O'Quinn vie for the title of "CIA's meanest", while Ron Rifkind chews up the scenery as an archvillain in an age where such men are thought extinct. The show is like one of Sydney's disguises, a sheath of artifice over a compelling and inescapable reality.
nice boxed edition I paid 49.00 when it was first released. Great to catch up on missed episodes. Too bad the show ended.
!!Amazing!! I love Alias, in this season, every chapter is very interesting, and you always end up wanting to watch the next one, rather than wait one week to see the next one.
This is the only show I want to watch, the whole five seasons of it.
A must buy!!
Sydney Bristow is so fabulous. LOVE ALIAS. Great season...probably the best of the 5. Love Sydney...love her mother...love the season.
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