Alias -- A Better Show Than You Think
Novel-writing observation number 3:
Writing dialogue, while possibly the best way to develop character, sucks. I don't mind writing just regular dialogue -- It's the punctuation and quotes I hate. They make no sense to me. They need to be more logically defined and laid out. "Who's the man?" said the other man. Should there be a comma there? Should "Said" be capitalized? Nobody knows. Well, some people know, but I don't. I should have paid better attention in school.
The thing is, I could just do whatever I want and have it be ok, but then some English freak would come along and say, "This is improper." Well, I'll tell you what's improper: comma rules. I sound like David Brent from "The Office" right now. I hate comma rules. They hurt me so. But then again, we need those rules to help things flow better. All I'm concerned about is the flow. Flow control.
This is just fruitless complaining, and I'm sorry about that.
In other news, we rented from Netflix the first DVD from Alias and watched the Pilot and the first two episodes. I remember the original ad campaign and thought it would be a show I could watch, even if it was made by the same dude who was responsible for Felicity. The thing is, it does have boring Felicity-esque parts, but those just serve to break up the manic action and kickboxing setpieces so far. For those who don't know, the story of the show is this:
Thin, ample-lipped, and cute Jennifer Garner plays Sidney Bristow, a grad student by day who goes all "Avenging Angel" (or more accurately "La Femme Nikita") at night as the member of a supposed offshoot of the CIA generically named SD-6. Seriously, she tells her friends that she's going to San Diego for her job at some Bank and then she goes to Singapore and wears stylistic and inappropriate clothing and goes on missions and goes home. And her friends (even her hot fiance', a doctor with an accent of some sort named Daniel) never figure this out. It allows the show to be two (two) shows in one, as Sidney is two (two) babes in one.
So Sidney tells her fiance' about her double life and SD-6 kills him dead, and Sidney goes crazy and then SD-6 tries to kill her too, and then her dad shows up and tells her the SD-6 is evil, not good, and that her spy career has actually been helping the very people she thought she was fighting against, and she still hates her dad, and eventually SD-6 gives up trying to kill her when she puts on a Ronald Mcdonald-Red wig and goes to Singapore and steals some artifact and gets tortured and gets away and brings the artifact back to her boss, a bearded scum named Sloane. That pretty much covers the pilot.
Of course, she still pissed at them and she contacts the CIA for real and they set her up as a double agent (like her dad is) inside SD-6. So, the show is going to be about her going on SD-6 missions and then giving the info to the CIA. This is the good part, the spy part. Also good is the insistence of the producers to try to put Jennifer Garner in the most ridiculously titilating get-ups since Baywatch. Seriously, they have the Felicity parts for the women and the rubber dress and action parts for the men. It's amazing. My wife and I are so sucked in at this point. The funny thing is, at the end of the 2nd episode Sidney and this enemy agent named Anna (they have a catfight earlier -- I'm kinda surprised it wasn't in some sort of jello factory or something, the way this show thinks) are opening up this briefcase together to see what's inside, and they open the briefcase and their eyes get wide, and then the show ends. Wait unit the next disk, says the DVD player. Aaaah! So yeah, we're sucked in.
Maybe later I'll do a compare/contrast with the various incarnations of La Femme Nikita. I guess the most important difference is the double agent thing, as well as the fact that Sidney is an innocent Grad student and not a theiving skank. That makes it better, IMO. And Jennifer Garner is really good, in probably the meatiest and craziest female role on network TV right now. For the show to work, she has to pull off both "sweet, innocent, studious" and "hard, ruthless, resourceful, karate, cool". It works, amazingly. It kind of inspirational, since neither she nor the director had ever done anything like this before. And then they had Thirtysomething megahack Ken Olin direct episode one, and he commented on how he had never done anything like this either. It's weird, man -- all these spares coming together to create something that is not so spare. I'm excited to see where the show goes from here. I hear it changes in season two just as it's getting monotonous. For my enjoyment, I don't really want to know much more than that.
Maybe I'll rate the Alias episodes based on how fun the plot is, action time vs. felicity time, quality of outfits, and continuity errors. That might be fun.
Writing dialogue, while possibly the best way to develop character, sucks. I don't mind writing just regular dialogue -- It's the punctuation and quotes I hate. They make no sense to me. They need to be more logically defined and laid out. "Who's the man?" said the other man. Should there be a comma there? Should "Said" be capitalized? Nobody knows. Well, some people know, but I don't. I should have paid better attention in school.
The thing is, I could just do whatever I want and have it be ok, but then some English freak would come along and say, "This is improper." Well, I'll tell you what's improper: comma rules. I sound like David Brent from "The Office" right now. I hate comma rules. They hurt me so. But then again, we need those rules to help things flow better. All I'm concerned about is the flow. Flow control.
This is just fruitless complaining, and I'm sorry about that.
In other news, we rented from Netflix the first DVD from Alias and watched the Pilot and the first two episodes. I remember the original ad campaign and thought it would be a show I could watch, even if it was made by the same dude who was responsible for Felicity. The thing is, it does have boring Felicity-esque parts, but those just serve to break up the manic action and kickboxing setpieces so far. For those who don't know, the story of the show is this:
Thin, ample-lipped, and cute Jennifer Garner plays Sidney Bristow, a grad student by day who goes all "Avenging Angel" (or more accurately "La Femme Nikita") at night as the member of a supposed offshoot of the CIA generically named SD-6. Seriously, she tells her friends that she's going to San Diego for her job at some Bank and then she goes to Singapore and wears stylistic and inappropriate clothing and goes on missions and goes home. And her friends (even her hot fiance', a doctor with an accent of some sort named Daniel) never figure this out. It allows the show to be two (two) shows in one, as Sidney is two (two) babes in one.
So Sidney tells her fiance' about her double life and SD-6 kills him dead, and Sidney goes crazy and then SD-6 tries to kill her too, and then her dad shows up and tells her the SD-6 is evil, not good, and that her spy career has actually been helping the very people she thought she was fighting against, and she still hates her dad, and eventually SD-6 gives up trying to kill her when she puts on a Ronald Mcdonald-Red wig and goes to Singapore and steals some artifact and gets tortured and gets away and brings the artifact back to her boss, a bearded scum named Sloane. That pretty much covers the pilot.
Of course, she still pissed at them and she contacts the CIA for real and they set her up as a double agent (like her dad is) inside SD-6. So, the show is going to be about her going on SD-6 missions and then giving the info to the CIA. This is the good part, the spy part. Also good is the insistence of the producers to try to put Jennifer Garner in the most ridiculously titilating get-ups since Baywatch. Seriously, they have the Felicity parts for the women and the rubber dress and action parts for the men. It's amazing. My wife and I are so sucked in at this point. The funny thing is, at the end of the 2nd episode Sidney and this enemy agent named Anna (they have a catfight earlier -- I'm kinda surprised it wasn't in some sort of jello factory or something, the way this show thinks) are opening up this briefcase together to see what's inside, and they open the briefcase and their eyes get wide, and then the show ends. Wait unit the next disk, says the DVD player. Aaaah! So yeah, we're sucked in.
Maybe later I'll do a compare/contrast with the various incarnations of La Femme Nikita. I guess the most important difference is the double agent thing, as well as the fact that Sidney is an innocent Grad student and not a theiving skank. That makes it better, IMO. And Jennifer Garner is really good, in probably the meatiest and craziest female role on network TV right now. For the show to work, she has to pull off both "sweet, innocent, studious" and "hard, ruthless, resourceful, karate, cool". It works, amazingly. It kind of inspirational, since neither she nor the director had ever done anything like this before. And then they had Thirtysomething megahack Ken Olin direct episode one, and he commented on how he had never done anything like this either. It's weird, man -- all these spares coming together to create something that is not so spare. I'm excited to see where the show goes from here. I hear it changes in season two just as it's getting monotonous. For my enjoyment, I don't really want to know much more than that.
Maybe I'll rate the Alias episodes based on how fun the plot is, action time vs. felicity time, quality of outfits, and continuity errors. That might be fun.
posted by Mike Pape @ 8:47 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home