Alias - Season IV

Anyone care to speculate about next year's episodes?

 

I thought that was the one where some scientists cloned Ripley so they could get the critter queen out of her. Boy, did that idea blow up in their faces.

 

Are lesbians involved? If so, I'll watch.

 

No.

 

Changed my mind. Maybe Lena Olin will return?

 

[font=Helvetica, Arial, Sans Serif] Alias Gone Until January

[/font] [font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]ABC announced that the fourth season of its cult hit spy show Alias will air without repeats next year, but that it won't begin until January, the Zap2it Web site reported. ABC made the announcement May 18 during its so-called "upfront" presentation to advertisers in New York.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Alias' location-heavy shooting schedule has made it difficult to deliver a large number of consecutive episodes, network executives said.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Stephen McPherson, ABC's president of prime-time entertainment, said that Alias creator J.J. Abrams came to him at the end of this season and said he wanted to "get back to some of the stuff that first inspired [Abrams] about the show," the site reported. "I think he saw [Alias star Jennifer Garner] in 13 Going on 30, and there was such joy and happiness in her face," McPherson said. "I think we really want to get some of that infused back into the show, and we want to have a good running start to be able to do that." The third-season finale of Alias, "Resurrection," will air May 23.[/font]

 

Alias Gets Back To Basics



[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif] BC's Alias will get back to basics when it returns for its fourth season in January, TV Guide Online reported. "We got so deep in the Rambaldi and Covenant [mysteries] that we lost sight of some of the stuff we fell in love with [in the beginning]," ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson told the site. Series creator J.J. Abrams "is talking about getting back to some of the joy that [Sydney Bristow, played by Jennifer Garner,] used to have in her personal life early on ... while still living in this crazy world." The show will reportedly have Sydney balancing her spy work with her personal life, as in the first season.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]For his part, Abrams told the site that he had an epiphany about Alias' disappointing third season while he was working on the pilot for his upcoming ABC thriller, Lost. "Going away to do Lost allowed me to look at Alias in a way that I could not have done otherwise: from the outside," he said. "And it was like an incredibly enlightening thing. I suddenly knew in my heart what I wanted and what I didn't want, and I saw what was happening. Not that I wasn't proud of what was there, but I saw some mistakes that I made and I thought, 'Oh, my God.'"[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]McPherson insisted that there's "not a chance" season four could be Alias' last. "It will be an asset for years," he said. How many, exactly? Cracks Abrams: "Exactly 100."[/font]

 

[font=Helvetica, Arial, Sans Serif]Lumbly Wants Action In Alias

[/font] [font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Carl Lumbly, who plays CIA director Marcus Dixon in ABC's spy drama Alias, told SCI FI Wire that he asked for more action scenes in the upcoming fourth season after spending most of the third giving orders from an office. "I think last season for me, moving from the field to administration, was a curve ball," Lumbly said in an interview during the network's fall press preview in Los Angeles. "I think as both an actor and a character, there was a struggle going on."[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Lumbly said that it was his own frustration as an actor that helped him understand the character's place on the show. "This past season, while I may not have been as thrilled with the role or the tasks that the character had, a lot came out of it for me personally in having to tackle that and in the idea that a lot of us have jobs that we don't love every day," Lumbly said. "You still have to do justice to it, and you have to do honor to it, and, especially in our case, you have to save the world and you have to be bigger than that."[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]The fourth season of Alias starts filming in July, but the new episodes won't be shown on ABC until January 2005 to avoid having to air rerurns during the season. For his part, Lumbly said he thinks the midseason, no-rerun approach will be good for the show in the long run. "I think the idea of airing it consecutively makes a tremendous amount of sense," he said. "Also, I think the idea that we are going to start shooting it at the end of July, but they won't start airing it until January, there will be a lot more work that can be done in that prelude period that will make each episode, I think, even better." Alias will air in its usual Sunday 9 p.m. ET/PT timeslot.[/font]

 

[font=Helvetica, Arial, Sans Serif] Alias Alters Course
[/font]
[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]J.J. Abrams, creator and executive producer of the ABC spy series Alias, told SCI FI Wire that he remembers the exact moment when he realized the show had gotten off track this past season. "I'll tell you exactly when," Abrams said in an interview at the network's fall press preview in Los Angeles, where he was promoting his new series Lost. "I was in Hawaii shooting Lost, and I watched Alias on television in Hawaii and just thought, 'Oh, my God. We've lost the show.'"[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Abrams went on to explain exactly what he felt went wrong. "The biggest problem is I lost Sydney," he said, referring to the show's main character, played by Jennifer Garner. "I totally lost Sydney. Sydney and Vaughn, there was no more hope in that story. Sydney and Jack, there should always be some child/parent conflict going on there, and there was none. Sloane was on the periphery. Dixon was given a role of authority, but with no consequence. It felt like everywhere I looked there were issues that I wasn't happy with."[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Abrams said he is grateful for a chance to make the appropriate adjustments to the show, which will return in January 2005 and will run without repeats for the remainder of the season. "I knew there were things I wanted to do, and luckily ABC picked us up again," Abrams said. "I just wrote the first episode, which I am as excited about as I have been about any episode I've ever done. I'm so happy that we get this shot. [We're] using what was working and going back to that in a way. You'll see what we're doing, and it's so immediately, for me, satisfying. I hope people like it. But I know that where I was really unhappy with it, I'm really happy now."[/font]

 

Sorry VOR. Lena ain't coming back.


[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]J.J. Abrams, creator of ABC's SF spy drama Alias, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming fourth season will refocus on Sydney Bristow's (Jennifer Garner) personal life and pick up from last year's cliffhanger, in which Sydney makes a shocking discovery about her father, played by Victor Garber. "Wait until you see what it is," Abrams said in an interview. "It's ... really cool. … We won't start in that moment. But what that moment was plays an enormous part in what this year is."[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Abrams added, "I can tell you that the show in a way realigns all the characters and their relationships that were in the first season and a half or so," Abrams added in an interview. "And I think that you'll find that you'll get more of a sense of who Sydney is as a real person and less of ... Sydney in the black suit all the time. I mean, I always felt that Sydney at rest was Sydney in jeans and Sydney in sweat pants and hanging out at home. And that we'd see her sort of go to work. ... Season three to me was Sydney at rest ... in her suit, and it just felt like we lost her as a woman first. And I think that's the biggest change."[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]The fourth season may also feature the return of Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper), who was last seen in the middle of the third season. "We're talking to Bradley right now about coming back, and a couple of other people from the first season, too," Abrams said.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]One person who definitely won't be back: Lena Olin, who played Sydney's duplicitous mother, Irina Derevko. "I'm very disappointed about that, too, because … she's so good," Abrams said. "And at the same time, [she] has no interest in returning. So I'm just depressed about that." But he added that he wouldn't recast the role. "I don't think I could. She's so good. I wouldn't want anyone else to play that part." Alias is currently shooting the third episode of the upcoming fourth season, which begins in January. The third-season DVD box set of Alias, meanwhile, hits store shelves on Sept. 7.[/font]