| Alias: It's All in the Family Spy series takes a dysfunctional realationship to a new level. By Kate O'Hare Zap2It Most of the time, television is all about the big tease, making viewers wait for that revelation or confession or moment of truth. But it's not that way for Alias creator J.J. Abrams. Last year, before he started the first season of the espionage-fantasy thriller -- which airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC -- Abrams knew where he wanted to go, and he was in a hurry to get there. He began with Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), a pretty grad student recruited by SD-6, which she thinks is part of the CIA. After becoming a superspy on the sly - a fact she kept from her pals Francie and Will (Merrin Dungey, Bradley Cooper) -- Sydney learned that, in reality, she was working for an evil organization that is the enemy of the CIA. Sydney turned double agent to bring down SD-6, only to discover that her father, Jack (Victor Garber), whom she thought was in airplane parts, was a double agent as well. Then there was the revelation about her supposedly dead mother, Laura (Lena Olin), who turned out to be a very alive Russian agent named Irina who killed the father of Sydney's CIA handler, Vaughn (Michael Vartan) -- among others -- and heads up an organization Sydney has been tracking for months. As this season opened, a violent confrontation between Sydney and Laura/Irina ended with narrow escapes for Sydney and captured Vaughn and Will (who is now painfully aware of Sydney's secret life). Just as Sydney began to cope with the fact that her mom put a bullet in her shoulder, Laura/Irina came in from the cold and turned herself over to the CIA. "I always knew that's what the story was," says the elfin, intense Abrams over lunch in the Disney executive dining room, where the china has a silhouette of Mickey Mouse's head. "In a weird way, the first year was necessary. People were saying, 'Oh, you could have waited, not had Sydney find out her dad was spying until the end of the first year.' I thought, 'You could, but my point is, I want to get to Mom.'" "To me, the show was always this family and how it's incredibly dysfunctional; tell a story of this fractured family in a genre where you never see that." "The metaphor is the divorced family, the child bouncing back and forth between parents. There are amazing moments that are entirely relatable, because it's about the kid feeling loyal to one parent, guilty about the other, hopeful about one parent and copping to the other parent about that." "There are these three people that have such baggage and agendas and concerns, and any dynamic between them -- all of them being opposed to the other; two of them siding against the third; one of them defending the other for the first time; all three of them against a current enemy -- any version of that is fascinating." "Sydney has been carrying around a lot of heaviness lately, in my opinion," Garner says, in between takes on the set. "I think for any child, choosing between their parents, you can never be sure what's right. You never know who to trust. You stop trusting yourself. You don't even know what you think about anything." While the Bristows sort out their relationships, Sydney may be making some progress on the romantic front. A fling with an old flame (Peter Berg) last year went bad -- because he was -- but fans know Sydney and Vaughn carry torches for each other. As for this season's spark potential, Abrams says, "There's going to be a little more of that. The romance between Sydney and Vaughn, to me, doesn't mean that they have to get together as a couple. The fun of it is watching them get together." "So we're doing more overtly romantic things between the two of them, in a way that's fun and funny. I just love watching them flirt. I love watching the frustration that things can't go further. I love it when they have arguments, but they still really care about each other." "It's a unique relationship. It needs to be more than just what it's been. It has to deepen and become more overt, so they're slightly more aware of it, so it's not just us watching and reading into things; they're getting it." "She's definitely in love with Vaughn," Garner says, "but that's such an impossible relationship. She values him too much as a friend right now to let that into her mind too much; to me, this is just in my world with her. But I think she's ready for a little romance. I don't know what it's going to be, who it's going to be with. Hopefully it will turn out better." However, if Abrams decides to pair Vaughn with someone other than Sydney, Garner says, "I have plenty of girlfriends who are willing to come in and play the role if they need them." Under the category of almost family is the relationship between Sydney and her SD-6 partner, Dixon (Carl Lumbly), who still thinks he's working on the side of the angels. "It's one of my favorite relationships on the whole show," Garner says, "partially because I love Carl Lumbly so much. He's such a good friend and a partner in the way that Dixon is to Sydney. Can you think of anything worse than the person you share everything with, you can't tell them the biggest thing in your life -- and the biggest thing in his life?" "That's what's so awful. She has to watch him think that he's being patriotic by helping SD-6 when really he's helping to kill people. I love that story." "It's a hard thing for his character," Abrams says. "At the moment, it has to be that way, but it won't be forever. We're getting to that place, and I can't wait to get there. |
| 4 december 2002 6:45 pm Central #0009 |
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