I watched it with 5 other newcomers and we all plan to stay on. I hope that helps.

I was really impressed with how entertaining it was. If I enjoy it for the rest of the season and am able to catch up with what's going on, I'll even buy the first season DVD set when it comes out.

I'll echo what most others said regarding last nights episode though: WOW!

It really made me mad though, with all the post-game filler BS that was on before the show started. ABC could have gotten a lot more people to watch it, if it hadn't started at 11 pm eastern time.

My parents missed the show because they went to bed early but are bigs fans. ABC re-airs the show at 6 pm on Sundays right?

I think Marshall is the most delightful character on TV today--every episode he says something that's both hilarious and endearing. If they wrote him out of the show, I'd pull a Cartman ("screw you guys, I'm going home." ) I'm pretty sure they'll keep him though--the show needs some comedy, and his high IQ dorky mutterings are too funny and unique to write out (I hope).

I'm pretty excited about the new direction the show is taking though. I thought it was getting stale, but now everything's so different, I'll have to keep watching to see how the supporting cast adjusts to being brought up to speed on the realities of SD-6.

That's the WB. Your best luck would be online (I don't think tips are allowed here) or waiting until a repeat, which could be months away.

Oops, my mistake. Must be thinking of Smallville and 24.

I NEED to find this episode because my folks can't watch next weeks without seeing last nights...

You mean Smallville and Everwood. (I just can't stop correcting you, can I? )

Recaps, if not already out, will be out soon. Television Without Pity has the most in-depth recaps, but I also have a shorter re-cap of the episode, if you need. I know how to cut and paste!

That, and if there had been a non-blowout game

Actually, they CAN. Next weeks episode actually PRECEDES last nights. They pushed last night's episode up by 2 weeks when they decided to use the superbowl to promote it. However, they planned it (supposedly) so that even though next week's episode precedes last night's, it won't seem out of order. I take that to mean that next week's is more a side plot rather than part of the main story.

ok, now i guess i will throw my .02 into this discussion. i didn't watch this last night because i was so pissed off that the after-game just wouldn't end that i just threw in a tape and went to bed. so anyway, i got around to it tonight and of course the first few minutes was very

My overall impressions of the episode was similar to what many others have said and that is . they managed to cram so much into this episode it was unreal. now one thing that kinda bugs me is that they just kinda seemed to havea second series premiere to try and get new viewers into the fold which i can understand but what about those of us who have been here since the beginning? however, i think that i can forgive them if they keep up the quality writing. while the whole "oh wow, it's a nice day. let's take down sd-6" thing was very abrupt, i think that the new direction that the show seems to be headed in could very possibly work.

from now on, i think that it is just going to be a personal war between sloane and the bristows which could very well get tedious but handled correctly could very well work. of course they will have to have awhile for syd and the good guys to figure out that sloane is now singlehandedly responsible for and in charge of the bad guys. all of that coupled with the "death" of francie which syd will no doubt want revenge for, should make for an interesting rest of the year and no doubt beginning to next year.

now for the supporting characters...while she was not in it very much, if she is indeed gone, then i felt really bad with the last shot and francie. i don't know why i just did. i do hope that they figure out some way to bring back dixon and marshall but i figure that shouldn't take too long. they are too good of characters to simply write out or waste.

the only thing i wonder about now is what is sloane's motivation? at least when they had the alliance, they had a common goal, but now what is arvin motivated by? he has his wife back and a seemingly happy existance.

well, i guess that is all my thoughts for now. bring on next week!

Wow. For awhile there I thought I was the only one that liked Francie. Or perhaps i'm confusing looks with character...

Also, hahn brought up a good point about the CIA's storming of SD-6. I'm guessing they didn't want to take a chance on letting someone who wasn't innocent get away...

Or maybe they just wanted a dramatic background for Syd's and Vaughan's first [& hopefully last] kiss...

It was my impression, and I could be wrong, that most of the people who got shot were shooting at the task force. Anyone else who got shot just happened to get in the way of the bullets. Remember, I think it was Vaughn who specifically said most of the people who worked there were just office workers and didn't know what was going on, so the task force wasn't just spraying gunfire everywhere, they were returning fire in self defense.
Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned for the new viewers the significance of Sydney shooting the baddie at the end. That was a huge moment since Syd has never actually killed anyone, right?

I dunno. When she, her mom, and her dad were shooting up all those Indian (or was it Pakistani?) soldiers who had ambushed them on the way to the prison a few episodes ago, I'm guessing she racked up a kill or two. Maybe it is the first time that they definitively showed her killing someone... I know that she's had two times (I think) where she could have killed that Asian Dentist character, but instead, she just smacked him around. I wonder if the whole killing/not killing thing is because if she killed all the bad guys she came up against, a lot of the cool villians wouldn't be able to come back for other episodes.

Finally caught the show on tape last night. Awesome! Like others, I cringed thinking we were going to see Will with that last shot, and thinking "there's no way Francie could have been an agent all this time". Francie being replaced is even more delicious, if sad.

With the exception of the 'waiting for e-mail' portion, the show was fantastic in how it built from start to finish. Everything made sense (well, everything except the Alliance not finding out their server went down. Literally). Oh, and that the CIA would use a force of 12 or so to take down SD-6.

What's great is that even with some of the loose ends tied up, there are many more directions to go:
1) Dixon/Marshall's feelings toward Sydney for not cluing them in earlier; can you imagine finding out you killed dozens for the wrong cause?
2) Will's relationship with Francie2. Does Francie2 know Will and Francie1 might be an item?
3) Irina's role in the whole shebang.
4) Sark's loyalties.
5) Whether or not K-Directorate will be resurrected.
6) More Rambaldi fun!
7) More Sloane, the greatest villain in TV today.

I think it's a relief that Jack/Sydney no longer have to play the double-agent game. It will be hard to keep up the same sense of danger, but I'm sure they will succeed.

I am glad that they will be able to move in a new direction, too.

Does anyone think that Dixon and Marshall could be in on Sloane and Sark's little scheme? Dixon might have acted surprised to Sydney, but he could possibly have been told by Sloane to help her take down SD-6. Does anyone else think that Marshall might not be as a naive and nice as he comes across? Could there be an evil genius lurking beneatht the skin? I don't know, I guess w/ the twists that occured in this ep that it my mind began spinning where they will take these two great characters. I just think it would be kind of cool if they were in on it w/ Sloane all along. Or Dixon and Marshall could help the CIA and Sydney bring down Sloane and Sark, either way, I am excited about the possibilities of the show.

Nah, don't think Marshall is on on it (remember when he was captured and made to hack by the Dentist?) Dixon could go either way (since he is a spy).

That's true in regard to Marshall, I just think it would make an even more interesting plot twist. If Dixon is in cahoots w/ Sloane and Sark though, I will not be the least bit surprised.

Just because it happened to have worked out so that Sidney couldn't come in to check the code, and she had to get Dixon to do it? I hardly call what Sloane and Sark did a plan, they basically just dropped a few bits (the erased e-mail and the server info) and hoped it would work. Dixon's phone call to his wife pretty much proves he's a good guy.

From what I have seen, two things will most likely happen at the end of this season.

1) Sydney's mother turns good for her daughter.

2) Sydney turns evil. (Having a bad guy as the main character would be the ultimate swerve for a series to take IMO. )

Sydney turning evil would be pretty wicked indeed.

I actually think a lot of people would be surprised if Irina became one of the good guys for her daughter, it seems as if everyone is almost convinced that she is going to be a major baddie by the end of the season. It would be a different twist if she became good while Sydney goes bad.

Just watched the episode on tape last night... wow, it pulled in a ton of viewers, at least if the traffic in this thread is any indication. Very condensed story, and a bit disappointing since a lot of things that have been building in the series were solved in one fell swoop. But then the twist at the end... ah, that's more like it.

I missed the episode before this... did something happen to Irina? I mean, she wasn't in this episode at all...

I highly doubt that Irina willl turn good, since one of last season's plot twists was that Irina is the one specified in the Rimbaldi document that would cause the end of the world, or some such thing.

I think it would be much more effective if Marshall and Dixon weren't double/triple/whatever agents. It's much better to have Dixon have to deal with the feelings of betrayal without him being K Directorate or Sloan's lackey. And turning Marshall would just be contrived (I was really scared that they were going that way with Francie's sudden turn, until we saw the body)

So does the CIA hold the majority of the Rimbaldi artifacts now, or did Sloan get away with them, too? I like the revelation that he knew about the Bristows... though I can't see him planning so far ahead as to tip off Rutger to them. It really just complicated his plan to overthrow the Alliance.

As far as Sydney's killing toll... they don't show her killing people in cold blood, since she's still the protagonist. But she pretty much killed the body guard and the computer guy by messing the plane up earlier in the ep. So it's not such a big deal to have casualties... it's just a big deal when someone like Jack murders someone else in cold blood.

• Quoth fujishig •<HR SIZE=1>I missed the episode before this... did something happen to Irina? I mean, she wasn't in this episode at all...<HR SIZE=1>

I think the simplest explanation is the "new viewer" plan of attack. Her character adds so many layers of plot and emotion that I guess they decided having her in the ep was just too much for the new people to handle; plus, considering how much stuff was packed into the ep, there probably just wasn't enough room in the script to explain who she is and why's she's in a CIA maximum security holding facility. In a way, it also enforces that they only "use" her when necessary. They really didn't need her help on this issue (yet), so there was no need for Sydney to relay the story of her first kiss in exchange for valuable data on the history of mankind from Irina.

das

Spy Jinx?

Behind ''Alias''' shocking Super Bowl Sunday revamp -- Needing a ratings kick, ABC's underdog starts virtually from scratch, fueled on sexy new twists by Dan Snierson ew.com

And on the seventh day, he laid to rest everything we knew. ''Alias'' creator and executive producer J.J. Abrams may have unleashed a greater surprise during ABC's Super Bowl Sunday festivities than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers routing the Oakland Raiders, or even a lucid Snoop Dogg cohosting ''Jimmy Kimmel Live'': In a single high-profile episode, he seemingly put a bullet in the heart of the cult spy serial and then resuscitated it on the spot, generating enough watercooler convo to boost Poland Spring's first-quarter revenue. The hour-long adrenalized rush -- which featured a gun battle in a disintegrating airplane, a murder of a sweet supporting character by her evil doppelgänger, two first kisses, and Jennifer Garner slinking around in lingerie sets black and red -- abruptly resolved the show's central story line, kick-started a few new plots, and earned its best ratings ever with 17.4 million viewers.

So what's the rub? This highly promoted episode -- aptly titled ''Phase One'' -- generated the lowest post-Super Bowl numbers since at least 1987 (an 11:01 p.m. start on the East Coast didn't help). More significantly, not since ''Roseanne'''s blue-collar clan won the lottery has an executive producer so brazenly revamped a show on the fly. With Abrams touting a new and improved ''Alias,'' it's time to ask: Will the Super Bowl episode help usher in a new beginning for this critically beloved but Nielsen-challenged series? Or did ''Alias'' just jump the shark with the die-hard fans who put the ''cult'' in ''cult hit''? Our intel-gathering mission begins here.

Why isn't ''Alias'' a hit already? While Fox's ''24'' (ranked No. 46), a similarly respected, equally complicated sophomore spy drama, is up 22 percent in viewers this year from last season's average, ''Alias'' (No. 65) has sagged 6 percent. The Sunday-at-9 p.m. time slot is tough. But ABC's promotional efforts haven't always captured the show's spirit (selling it as a soapy love triangle?) or its hipness (describing Sydney as ''Double-oh-yeah...with a kick''?). Speaking of promotion, ''24'' got a whole lot of it when last season's episodes were released on DVD in the fall -- a move that Fox believes was partly responsible for ''24'''s ratings burst. ''Alias''' first season won't be out on DVD until September, two years after its premiere.

Why the sudden dramatic shift? Abrams says ABC didn't pressure him to make a ratings-boosting gambit. Rather, he was beginning to feel boxed in by the ''good guys posing as bad guys pretending to be good guys'' paradigm. ''If we did another story in which Sydney was almost found out, I was going to kill myself,'' says Abrams. So in December, he penned an episode that was ''like a new pilot,'' in which our heroine, CIA double agent Sydney (Garner), takes down the Alliance, an international crime syndicate, and finally kindles a romance with her CIA handler Vaughn (Michael Vartan). ''She seems to finally have solved her problems,'' sums up Abrams. ''But she's fallen into a trap and this whole [Alliance] thing was a manipulation.... I got very excited about that idea.''

What the heck happens now? Above all else, Abrams urges you not to panic. ''I think you can tell by the way the show ended that we're not going to suddenly be in simple-story-land,'' he says. Translation: The Rambaldi mythology still lingers. Also, Sydney hasn't seen the last of slippery ex-SD-6 chief Sloane (Ron Rifkin), who'll morph into a greater enemy. ''He is far more active and more insidious,'' says Abrams. Slightly less insidious (we hope) will be an outbreak of romance in CIA HQ: ''We've earned Sydney and Vaughn becoming a couple.''

Will the post-Super Bowl exposure boost the show's ratings? The 11:01 p.m. start time seems to be yet another blunder in the handling of the show, but ABC Entertainment chairman Lloyd Braun insists his hands were tied because of the network's NFL commitments and overindulgent sports division. ''I was spitting blood,'' admits Braun. ''If I controlled it, I would have thrown 'Alias' on during the third quarter.'' Braun believes the series can grow into a ''monster hit.'' Alas for ABC, series rarely see long-lasting ratings jumps following Super Bowl showcases, observes Stacey Lynn Koerner, analyst at Initiative Media. (''Malcolm in the Middle,'' which aired after the 2002 Super Bowl, is down 21 percent from last year's average.) ''I think if we haven't seen it yet,'' she says, ''we won't see it in the future.''

Forget that ratings stuff. What's up with Francie? Last May, Abrams told actress Merrin Dungey to begin training. The reason: She now plays an evil Francie double. Offering only a hint of what's to come, Dungey says, ''I kill soon.'' Okay, at least tell us if she can run Good Francie's restaurant? ''I don't think she's had time with all the killing to get her Betty Crocker on.'' (Additional reporting by Lynette Rice)

I really don't think Dixon is a double-agent. He has always been portrayed as someone who seriously believes he is fighting for good. Like when SD-6 got attacked and he sent a message to Langley. He really thought he was a good American working for the CIA.

I would not buy him a double agent now. Although it would be funny if he worked for another gov't agency like the FBI, who was trying to keep tabs of super-secret gov't organizations. That would also explain how shocked he was that SD-6 wasn't a real government agency.

Dang, JJ's had this planned since last May? Pretty impressive.

J.J. Abrams was on the Kevin and Bean morning radio talkshow today, and went over the last episode. He did give a lot of good reasons why they wrapped it up the way they did:

1. It is confusing, even for long time viewers, to like and want to root for people like Marshall and Dixon when they're really helping the bad guys.
2. The change in the show allows him to grow the characters in different directions. Although he didn't mention this, I think the new status quo will have more for Dixon and definitely Francie to do, much like how the change-up last season helped Will's character to be more likeable.

One of the DJs mentioned that they had set up the Alliance as an organization that was so well-organized that they could never be taken out in the span of just one episode. J.J. replied that if the show had aired without the last 2 minutes, he would have agreed, but the Alliance considered it unthinkable that one of their number would betray them. Plus he mentioned that Sloan is going to try to start his own Alliance, and go from being a cog in the machine to the leader.

In general, I agree. Although I loved the action-packed pace of the show, there was a feeling that they're just trying to get rid of the complexity by starting fresh, and dumbing down the storyline. The last two minutes really changed that feeling.