I cracked up when near the beginning, Vaughn said "last year sucked!" as part of a sentence. Maybe it's me but it seemed like a JJ Abrams in-joke and wink at the audience.

i watched it last night and it was really good.....i will now be renting seasons 1-3

Okay it seems my few words of caution in that huge post didn't work...

I know that I may have exaggerated alot of things in that post and that's because I was just finished watching it and had alot of things on my mind and because this is my favorite show on television now.

So, let me clear a few things up...

I still love it. that 2 hours was probably better than all the episodes of almost all the shows this past season.

I have thought about Irina being dead as just a fake set up, but I don't think that's possible with how much they stressed her death. And for that, I am still pissed.

As for the mention that "just because some of the things I wanted answered arent going to be just cuz they didn't mention it in this opener".... well, I said that not because they didn't mention it or they didn't talk about it, but how they handled it. I mean did you hear when Sloane said when talking about what he found. It's not 2 years lapsed again for alot of secrets to be unveiled. this is a follow up and him just saying he handed the Rambaldi thing to the government didn't sound too promising.

I know that ALIAS is a waiting game and I'm up for a hopefully incredible 5 months, but I just can't help but worry with a so-so opener compared with the rest of the series.

I agree, the rating is great... I mean if they at least hang on to about 13-14 million of that each week, it's phenomenal!!

As for the Season 3 remarks.
I still whole-heartedly agree that the first half of Season 3 was its lowest point. However, the second half picked up ALOT and I noticed it only when re-watching them on DVD. the only thing that still sucked was the Vaughn/Sydney situation.... it's over, it's not gonna work anymore, so I hope the writers can get a hint.

Maybe it was because the Season 4 opener was ALOT like the first half of season 3 (the feel and atmosphere) that I thought the Season 4 Premiere could have been alot better.

Nontheless, I don't want people attacking me. I'm still a hardcore Alias fan, I was just letting out some 7 month waiting steam!

The one thing I will still stand by is how I feel about killing off Irina, if they actually did so.

I'm also a big fan, but I was dissapointed as well. I mean, it's nice to shake things up a bit in order to keep a series fresh, but did they really need to go that far? Bringing back Sloan was pretty shallow, and frankly, I'm getting a bit tired of Sydney annoying mood swings towards him, her father and Vaughn. Plus this is already the second time in its four seasons that the show undergoes a major make-over. It would be nice to have some flow. And will we ever know about the Rambaldi Prophecy?

Plus, didn't it seem like the show's budget got cut? The first three season's just seemed to have a slicker production with more expensive shots. I half expected to see the cast of Boston Legal walk on.

Rimbaldi was always kindof dull, he jsut amgic man who can defy thelaws of physics, so honestly i wouldn;t miss him, but hey did make abig deal outof badia role int he damn prophecy. But I can see dropping RImbaldi for awhiel to get new viewers. We need to see where this season goes, but as the last show I watch with any regularity on network tv, it this season turns out to be shit I may just stop watching.

LOL i think i just saw a commercial on CTV saying that they're airing it at 4pm on sunday in Canada.

4pm ??

I programed the premire on Wednesday, didn't watch it yet. I haven't seen much of Alias so I'm pretty afraid I'm going to get lost... I need to catch up.

The show has a bunch of problems:

- It is too mission oriented, instead of the plot developing naturally. Too many "Basil Exposition" moments.
- Carl Lumbley is taken for granted and underused, I'd much rather see him than Sydney's father, I'm tired of Papa Bristow.
- The crew is too limited, don't they have the budget for a few more people to be on the team?
- And for me the central problem is that the main people in the show, Sydney, Vaugn, Jack, are just boring and over-serious. I'd muuuch rather see Weiss, Dixon, Marshall and bring back Will. The moments with Weiss bantering with Vaughn were the most entertaining parts of the show to me.

Why is it that Sydney frequently talked about how important Dixon is to her yet the show hardly uses him at all? Makes no sense.

All in all I was surprised how low budget it looked, as if they could only afford a few sets and a dozen actors.

On the plus side, the fight on the train was fun, that was the action highlight to me, the train sequence ended with a moment of realism, throwing the guy off the train, that was almost out of character for the show.

I guess I expected more of a change, it seemed like same old same old, making the same mistakes as last year. Not a bad show but could be so much better.

Ya I agree with the above post.

It's not that the premiere showed that the series underwent a huge change, but that it just got reprocessed to the old formula but just like burning a cd or copying anything... the quality is a bit lower!

im not reading anythign in this thread because im UK and spoilerfree
Well apart from everyone ever ramming "Irina Derevko is dead" down my throat. Thanks a fucking lot America :evil:

But i did read the above comment and it should be noted that Alias season 4 has been designed to go back to the first seasons formula, which was by far the funnest stuff - and has went lighter on all that teenage girl angst that was so popular season 3.

The creators did also state that the first half of season 4 was to be designed to hook in the viewers, with rounded off, mission based stuff that dosent require an every episode viewing.

But they also said that second half of season 4 theyd go into more depth and detail - presumably after everyones hooked again.

my lovely sister stopped the recording so she would watch DVD in my room :evil: I only got the first 40 minutes

Well, if you want to be spoiler free, why are you scrolling through this thread?
And sorry if anyone or I, myself, ruined it for you, but it is only the first episode and within the first hour of the 2hr premiere when it was revealed, so it's not like we ruined everything. Plus, it was a given that at least for another year, Lena Olin wouldn't be coming back, so I dunno, take it as it is. Again, sorry!

I actually thought of putting spoilers before my analysis, but I thought everyone is talking about and revealing whatever went on in the episode, so it's sort of self explanatory.... don't wanna be spoiled.... don't go through this thread.

Btw, when does Season 4 start in the UK?

Its is a thread about Alias,, you should expect their to spoilers, we are here to discuss the show, skip over the thread, I mean honestly you have no right get to get annoyed/upset.

Learn not to click a bloody link. There are lots of movies/tv shoes I do not want to spoiled about, i do not go reading about them online...honestly.

Thanks for that pep talk - but i was talking about america in general

Its plastered all over nearly every story about Alias.

I sympathize, I oipend my EW after missing The Soparnos and they had a mention of the death of a character in their obits section.

If I were you, Id jstu avoid Alias articles, when I tape an epsiode and have to watch it alter I avoid the internet/news/etc like the plague.

We're bastards like that. Most weeks I tape Lost and watch it later, and I dont read stories about Lost or threads about it till I've watched the tape.

I cant believe i have to wait till April for season 4....

Oh well ive got Desperate Housewives meanwhile

I think it will get a bit to get used to the changes on the show, but that's it, I dont think its a bad thing at all.

Loved having Marshall and Dixon (especially him, though the scene with Marshall, the first one was pretty funny), looking forward to Willl...I miss Francey.

They can't get everything done in one (or two) episodes...but I'm looking forward to the rest of the season

I skipped past ALL messages to send you an important message. Check out the amazingly awesome avatar and signature for Alias, possibly my new favorite show (used to be second to 24), if 24 isn't up to par this season.

Over the past week and a half, I have been catching up on Season 3, a season I missed ENTIRELY. I felt so ashamed. After the last episode ended today, I can't help but wonder why so many hated it. Which gives me a new theory that anyone who enjoyed the last season didn't think a whole lot of the season premiere, but that isn't entirely the case. I found the season premiere to be a tad more bland than I wanted, but I still liked it a lot. There were many questions that arose over the course of my viewing of Season 3 that eventually got answered, so I think we all know that anything that appears unusual now will be answered.

One thing that I don't understand: why everyone believes Irina is dead. Yes, they said she's dead, and on first viewing, it would appear that way. But, I didn't see it, none of us saw Irina get killed, so how are we to know she is for sure? Hey, I'm not saying that evidence wasn't shown, but I've seen crazier things happen on Alias. It's too bad Lena Olin didn't come back at all. Meh, I don't know.

Another problem was the lack of Weiss in the show. I was waiting for him to recruited, which would have felt rushed and forced, but it would have made a better show, I think. Having Marshall right in there is great, and I'm glad. Here's hoping that the show still improves with each week.

Oh yeah...I forgot to mention that about Irina!!


I have no idea if she is dead or not, but I think that whole story-line is farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr from over. And this is Alias, secrets and lies and all...they could very well be lying about her being dead altogether.

I'm looking forward to where they go with that more than anything else pretty much this season.

I think just the fact that they made such a big deal of her death implies they won't go further with any Irina plotlines that pertain to the future. It might have been the creators way of saying they tried and failed to get Lena Olin.

Then again the monumental lvel of the attention they gave the death could also mean the monumental deception of Sydney if she is still alive.

The fact of the matter is, for all we know the creators could really have put her character to rest and suddenly if she decides to do aLIAS again, they just incorporate it back into the show.

As for Mr.X....

At the end of season I was one of the biggest advocates to how bad it was and what a step down from season 2 it had become.

However, as of late, I find myself loving every bit of Season 3.... though I have yet to re-view the first half of the 3rd season. I re-watched the second hal and LOVED it. And you're right I was tad disappointed with the premiere.

Well, I saw all of Season 3 over the past week or so, and I thought the season was really better than many gave it credit for. The first episode was a tad hard to watch, because I didn't think they could make up the lost time from 2 years, so I can only hope that it will be the same with this season. It will hopefully only progressively get better.

As for Irina, I think Raffiki is right, in saying they tried and failed to bring back Irina, but I think "never" isn't a word that JJ Abrams knows at all, so if the opportunity presented itself, I bet he would jump to get Lena Olin back.

And, is Will coming back? I thought his episode last year was really enjoyable to watch, because I thought he was great on the show. It was sad to see him go again, so I hope he comes back. Vaughn has always been "meh" to me. His only strong episodes were the last four episodes of the season, where he was out for blood with Lauren. That was what Vaughn needed, but I guess that's gone now. And what of David Anders (Sark)? Will we see him back at all, I wonder?

Another solid episode.

I felt at times that I was watching an early Season 1 episode, but without any mention of Rimbaldi. So it felt a lot like a stand alone episode that was only meant to serve 1.5 purposes. The first, and main goal was to get Sydney's sister onto to the team and have Jack get that whole Irina's death off of his back, and he did just that with the document. Now, sure I thought that maybe he would implicate Sydney in the death, but I guess that's just too out there for Alias V2.0. That little angle was mostly resolved (I'm sure Syd will have issues with it) when she shot the hell outta Bishop.

The other purpose, which I only gave a .5 too, because I didn't feel it THAT important, was letting Weiss in on the team. Sure the banter he provides is kind of comical, but I can go to Marshall for that, and I find it much funnier. So essentially its S1, except Vaughn and Weiss are working with Sloane, and there's not a lot of intrigue - yet. Still enjoy the show though, one of the better hours on TV.

Nothing real big, and we still haven't really received the 'home life' that Abrams promised...

But it was fun. The fake car crash and scenes with Sydney in the house with the Colin Firth look-a-like (am I alone on that one?) were top notch.

I'm just glad our Alias is baaaack.