ALIAS: SEASON TWO

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: sexual content, violence, language

Rated:

And you thought your family had problems! Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is a double agent working for the CIA as a mole in the terrorist organization SD-6 which passes itself off as an authentic CIA division to its deceived agents. The head of the agency is Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), a heartless assassin who will go to any lengths to achieve greatness in the Alliance, an elite terrorist operation based in central Europe... even if it means killing his own wife. He wants a seat with the Alliance and will purchase it at any cost. Working against him is his most trusted business associate and friend Jack Bristow (Victor Garber), also a double agent recruited to SD-6 during the Cold War. Through their covert missions to bring down the Alliance, Jack's relationship with his daughter Sydney has been improving by leaps and bounds. But dark secrets still stand between them.

Sydney has completed her mission to recover her friend Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper) and destroy the Rombaldi artifact the Alliance hopes to use as a weapon of mass destruction. She and her handler Agent Vaughn (Michael Vartan) were separated when the building flooded and Sydney fears he may be dead. But she has more pressing problems. Captured and detained by Russian emissaries, she is horrified to learn her mother Irina Derevko (Lena Olin) is in charge of the operation. A member of the former Soviet Union sent to the US to infiltrate and betray the CIA, Irina married Jack Bristow and then faked her own death to fool the government... but not until after murdering twelve of the CIA's top agents. Sydney manages to escape but is forced to abandon Vaughn for dead. Will is also in for rough waters when he must discredit himself to avoid being killed by SD-6, since an editorial he wrote about the undercover agency was printed after his disappearance.

Arrested for heroin abuse, Will loses his job as a reporter and is forced to undergo recovery therapy. While undercover in France, Sydney discovers Vaughn in the basement of a private residence and smuggles him back to the agency. After speaking at Emily Sloane's funeral, Sydney receives shocking news. Irina Derevko has turned herself in to the government, offering to share information in return for a lighter sentence. Jack doesn't trust her but Sydney is enthralled with her mother and eventually begins to be drawn into her web. A series of covert missions leads Sydney into the heart of danger, manipulation, and even romance. At SD-6, things are also heating up. Sloane believes his wife may still be alive. Someone is stalking him, leaving poison-laced wine in his house, cutting security wires, and signing in under Emily's name at their favorite hotel. This could threaten his relationship with the Alliance and make everyone at SD-6 a target.

The first season of Alias proved an emotional roller coaster of excitement, never breaking its momentum even at the heart-stopping finale. If possible, the second season is even better, bringing in more of everything we loved the first time around and throwing wrenches in the emotional works as we deal with various unanticipated surprises. Even the villains get moments in which the audience feels a form of empathy toward them. Sloane is one of the most brilliant nemesis ever created. Entwined with the high-tech equipment and spying missions is a futuristic sci-fi theme tied to the artifacts of a 15th century prophet. These objects may be part of Armageddon if they fall into the wrong hands. Though morally flawed, each and every character has a drawing point. Sydney and her emotional struggle between work and her family. Michael as he deals with loving her but being unable to express himself. Sydney's clueless coworkers at SD-6, her intelligent but dangerous father, even the CIA's therapist has a few quirks.

Sexual content is about level with the original season and is more teasing than graphic. Sydney is shown being de-toxified by agents (apparently nude with her arms crossed over her breasts). She and Vaughn do eventually sleep together; they do some making out before the episode ends. (Close-up kissing leads into a far-off shot of them fooling around on a bed through a camera concealed in the television in her room.) The next episode opens with them laying side by side in bed. Unfortunately many later episodes show portions of this scene as a flashback ("last time on Alias..."). Episode 21 opens with them stripping; the camera pans out after they're partially undressed. In the same episode Sydney and Michael infiltrate a "sex club," and she lures a man into a back room by pretending to be a S&M girl. She ties him up stripped down to his boxers and smacks him with a whip a few times before revealing the setup. She also goes undercover as a hooker; she slinks out in alternating red and black lingerie and makes a come-on to her client, only to turn on him and knock him unconscious.

Many of her outfits are cleavage-bearing, short, tight, and immodest. We see women in their bras as they change clothes (Sydney takes off her jacket in an airport to show off a leather bra as she walks through the security scanner). She's seen partially taking off a bikini in order to lure a terrorist. None of the characters are married but all have intimate standings. Will and Francine kiss and are shown sleeping in the same bed. Michael is thrilled because Sydney offers him the middle drawer one evening while they're hanging out in her bedroom. He wakes up beside her numerous times. Still-married Jack and Irina kiss on one of their missions and probably sleep together (it has a surprising twist). A female coworker asks Marshall if he's gay. Sydney asks Francine if she's slept with Will yet. On their first date Michael asks Sydney if she wants to take advantage of a room key. She agrees but they're nearly killed in a crossfire and the date's off. Sloane is seen several times with his shirt off.

Language isn't a major problem, but many uses of "hell," "son of a ..." and several a** are thrown around. Sydney is called a "b*tch" in one episode. There's a great deal of punching, kicking, and other combat. People are mowed down with machine guns and shot at point-blank range with occasionally bloody results. Prisoners are tortured and mistreated. Often morphine is withheld in order to make them talk. Injections are graphically given to both good and bad guys. Sloane has a tracking device shot into the back of his neck. A box is opened to discover a severed ring finger. There are references to murder, poisoning, and other graphic forms of violent torture (a man is electrocuted, another threatened with ingesting broken glass). A woman beats a man over the head, knocking him unconscious. People are shot with tranquilizer darts. A virus has gruesome results, causing bleeding from the victims' fingertips. Characters show up with bruises, scrapes, and bloodstained arm bands after combat. A man is knocked into a propeller; others are sucked into airplane holdings, causing the wings to explode.

The final episode's showdown gets brutal between two women as they fight it out in an apartment, throwing each other over counters and through glass doors. One of them is shot several times with bloody results. Bodies with bullet wounds and slashed throats are found. A bloodstained bed has a gruesome glimpse of a body with its heart taken out. The CIA (and one private individual) often use a mild form of hypnosis in order to force people to remember previous events. They're usually seen in or coming out of this trance. For lovers of James Bond-esque adventures with plenty of action, dangerous missions, enough humor to elevate teeth-clenching torture scenes, and lots of wonderful aliases, the show is a good bet. The largest disappointment is its reliance on premarital sex and the concept "everybody does it." The series loses much of its romantic tension after the leads become intimate. There's no longer the wonderful "Will they get together?" question mark hanging over their heads. In this case, writers may have done themselves a disservice by rushing the romance along.