Alias, Adieu

By Tony Buchsbaum

Well, it’s over.

Sydney Bristow knows everything she has to know about ex-boss and arch-nemesis Arvin Sloane, her mother Irina, her father Jack, her husband Michael Vaughn, and the ever-mind-boggling inventor/visionary Milo Rambaldi.

Alias, which has fascinated viewers for five years, has run its considerably complex course, and we have the DVDs to prove it. The complete series is now available is what looks to be a very over-produced box that looks like a gen-you-wine Rambaldi artifact, and in case you’re one of those people who’ve been buying the season sets year by year, Season 5 is now available, too.

As one of the season-set buyers, I can’t even begin to think about diving into the big box—nufty extras aside—but the Season 5 set is pretty spectacular on its own. All 17 episodes are here, and while the year had its clunkers, most of it is very good, solidly in the Alias expository tradition of misdirection, melodrama, abrupt plot reversals, and professional and personal betrayal.

The new set also includes the 100th episode and a decent collection of bonus features, to wit: a 100th episode celebration; a History Channel-style faux-doc on Rambaldi; an on-set visit with the newest agent, actress Rachel Nichols; a wonderful doc about series composer Michael Giacchino, one of the new guard of Hollywood composers, whose work brilliantly brings every episode to life; and my personal fave, the bloopers. What can I tell you? Alias is such a serious show that few of the characters ever smile, let alone laugh; the bloopers (and there’s a reel of them in each season’s DVD set) are a wonderful way to break the tension. Series creator J.J. Abrams was largely absent from the last season, which was one of the reasons it didn’t shine quite as bright as other seasons. (Hardly a slacker—the guy also co-created Lost—he was off making Mission: Impossible III with Suri Cruises’s dad.)

The series doesn’t fall to pieces, but it veers perilously close to severely overwrought self-parody. The final episode, in which there is great and significant revelation and death, as well as a healthy dollop of hope, seems rushed; it should have been a two-hour epic, but in the end no one saw the need to spend all that dough on a series that was on its way out. Alias was the kind of television program that was so wonderful so often that you have to wonder what happened? Was it Abrams’ exit? Lead Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy? Or was it just too much of a grind? It was the kind of show whose life depended on thrills on a fairly constant basis. In terms of thrills-per-minute, it fell somewhere between a good 007 movie and 24.

I, for one, loved Alias, and I always will. What with every moment preserved on DVD, I’m not as torn up as I was when, say, The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended. But I’ll miss the series’ unique, innovative, addictive format, which always hinged on the conflict between spycraft and familycraft—between the art of hiding in plain sight from people who’d just as soon see you dead and the art of hiding in plain sight from people who’d just as soon see you at Thanksgiving dinner.

Endless Talent

By Tony Buchsbaum

It’s been 24 years, and The Who is back. Sort of. With the release of the new CD Endless Wire, it might be fair to say that the band should have used the name Who’s Missing, because present here are only Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey. Listening, I kept wishing Daltrey’s voice has held up as well as Townshend’s boundless talent, his bottomless well of ideas.

That said, Endless Wire is a real showcase. It features some incredible songwriting, more of Townshend-as-singer than earlier albums, and a mini-opera, to boot.

And that’s the real draw here. Wire & Glass is about an aging, sanitarium-bound rock star (Ray High) who's visions of a band comprised of two young men (Moslem and Jewish) and one woman (Christian). (This was excerpted from a blog created at the end of last year called "The Boy Who Heard Music.") Pretentious? Could be. But in the end, all that matters is that this is great stuff, if no “Tommy.”

In addition, the disc boasts a few acoustic songs that feature Townshend and Daltrey doing just what they know how to do—and do so well.

For anyone expecting more of the present-day touring band, they appear only intermittently, on the most Who-sounding songs on the disc. Elsewhere, Townshend plays piano, bass (!), drums (!!), and strings (!!!), and handles some of the orchestration.

The package comes in a CD-only version, but the one you want also features a DVD of live footage shot in Lyon.

If anything, Endless Wire is not as much of a Who album as it is a super-deluxe, very well-staffed Townshend solo album. But of course, even that’s rare enough to be considered a gift from a rock and roll god.