4 stars for the season, 2 stars for the dvd release
"Alias" is one of my favorite shows - even in its weakest it was excellent compared to nearly every other show on broadcast television. The fifth season, while reinventing the show again, is highly entertaining, exciting, and thrilling, and I recommend that anyone watch it.
However, I have serious, serious problems with this DVD release. I do not actually own it, because I bought the far superior Rambaldi box complete collection (all five Alias seasons in one). But I have seen the season five release and it's terrible. Out of all five DVD releases, it is the ugliest box. The promo picture is horrible, the green cover doesn't go well at all with the other seasons, and the big words "FINAL SEASON" is simply tacky. The box is nowehere in size to the other releases either, it's what feels like less than half an inch thick. This has been a major problem for me as well, with Alias - Buena Vista changes the packaging for each season. It's very annoying.
Also, the special features are nothing. A few interesting features, but overall the supplements are very weak for the final season. The entire thing feels rushed and botched, like no one CARED that this was the last season of such a beloved series.
If you can afford it, I highly urge you to invest in the complete collection. It's very well done and put together (although it DOES have it's flaws) and has a bonus disc of extras that are very informative and fun to watch. However, only 40,000 are being made so supplies are limited.
If you're not expecting to be blown away...
...then this is worth watching, given the good stuff mentioned in the other reviews. Some of the best and most creative parts of the season were inspired-slash-stolen from the Buffy/Angel-verse - this saved the season! Even though there were good things (especially our much beloved actors), it seemed like the writers just gave up on the ending, sacrificing character for plot. I LOVED Alias - so I WAS expecting to be blown away. What follows were my major disappointments (warning: ***SPOILERS follow***):
1. Irina. As a long-time fan of the show, I believed in Sydney's choices. Sydney repeatedly chooses to let her evil mom roam free, trusting that Irina has an "endgame" that justifies death and destruction ("truth takes time"). Lena Olin does a terrific job of portraying Irina's complexity. Because Sydney and Jack fundamentally trust Irina, the audience either also trusts her or feels like the main characters are dupes on a weekly basis. Fans wondered: is she trying to save Sydney, or is this an epic, slow-burn of a betrayal? Either would have been satisfying. However, it turns out that Sydney's mom was just...crazy? If you were like me, you were left feeling like: "huh?"
2. Vaughn's "fake-out" death. Nobody who watches Alias could believe that Sydney and Jack wouldn't have mourned Vaughn's death and executed some serious payback on his killers...unless he wasn't actually dead. Since everybody knew he was alive, it was just annoying that the writers of the show didn't let us in on Sydney and Jack's "secret." Plus, they set up this whole idea that people who were offically "dead" were in this evil-top-secret society. One couldn't help but wonder if Vaughn's plan was to fake his death to "earn" his way into this secret organization and find out what his father knew. (Which would have been about 50 times cooler if Sydney/Jack/audience actually thought he was dead.) But, sigh, no, he was just "healing."
3. Rambaldi. Uh, so...WHY did Irina want to bring about ultimate destruction? Was the prophecy even really fulfilled? Why would the bad guys risk Ana Espinoza/Sydney's double on a clearly unimportant mission to trick Vaughn? Why did Sydney and Jack and Nadia never take Rmabaldi seriously? They spent all of their time eye-rolling, instead of really trying to figure out what Sloane and Irina's endgames might be. If they had made an attempt to figure out what the allure was - using their supersmartness and game theory to forecast actions instead of just reacting to evil-doers, perhaps they wouldn't have been so dupable. WHY would Sydney go through with the prophecy after five years of Rambaldi-related-eye-rolling...without a plan?
4. Sydney's transition from superspy to spymom. Sydeny sits in the car and gets stuck behind a train while Vaughn is shot, stands around to let Sloane shoot her father, and dithers blankly while letting her mother crash through the window on the roof - she's losing her touch! Instead of whining about the restrictions of her pregnancy, why doesn't she teach the newbies how to be the next gen superspies? She just accepts Rachel's limitations and doesn't actually impart new wisdom. My feeling is that the passing on of the torch needs to offer new insight in order to avoid jumping the shark.
In spite of these disappointments, this is a fine season if you're not expecting to be blown away. It seemed like they were merely aiming to finish the series adequately to tie up some loose ends. If the choice was this effort or not finishing it up at all, thanks, guys, for seeing it through!
Good
While overall I did not like the first seasons that much, the series has improved quite a bit, especially during season 4 but here the quality is still high. OK, any season that integrates a leading actres's real pregnancy is going to suffer in the logics of the story-board but it is still fun to watch.
True to form, at the beginning of its fourth season J.J. Abrams' Alias proceeded to reinvent itself yet again--and the results looked quite a bit like the first season, but with a decided twist. Super agent Sydney Bristow (Emmy nominee Jennifer Garner) found herself once more working for a covert secret-ops group that was "off the books" and headed up by Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) as she was partnered with... Hey, wait, wasn't Sloane a bad guy before? Well, yes, he was, but having been "rehabilitated" from his evil ways, he's now Sydney's new boss--nevermind the fact that he's trampled all over her life in more ways than one--and head of the CIA's new super-secret division, APO (for Authorized Personnel Only), which also includes all of Sydney's old friends, as well as her... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 25 October 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $59.99 Your Price: $45.99YOU SAVE $14!
Buy it
Arguably the series' best season to date, season 5 of 24 literally starts with a bang and never lets up, with an intricate executive-level conspiracy to control Central Asia's oil supply. Piling crisis upon crisis in an escalating series of deceptions, twists, and deeply hidden agendas, the day-long ordeal begins with a devastating political assassination connected to a disgraced former CTU agent (Peter Weller) and a radical group of Russian separatists (led by British actor Julian Sands) threatening to release lethal nerve gas in Los Angeles to protest a U.S./Russian treaty about to be signed by President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin). As Logan's unstable wife Martha (Jean Smart), Secret Service agent Aaron Pierce (Glenn Morshower), and chief of staff Mike Novick (Jude... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 05 December 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $59.98 Your Price: $41.49YOU SAVE $18.49!
Buy it
CSI Las Vegas is the show that yields the true goods and its two spin-offs have not even come close to mirroring the quality of this stellar show. Season 5 was a good season (oh, heck... all of them were great...) but Season 6 was the one with the stories that seemed to affect our favorite CSI's more than before. Nick is still recovering from his tramatic expierience being burried alive and nearly eatedn alive by bugs and throughout the first half of this season, you see the effects it all has on him. His ordeal gets tied up midaway in "Daddy's Little Girl" which also features an intriguing investigation of a young woman who seems to have really bad luck with men... as in they either die or flee...
Warick gets married and in "Bodies in Motion" what viewers suspected for a while... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 14 November 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $89.99 Your Price: $67.49YOU SAVE $22.5!
Buy it
Season one of Prison Break is great television. Here's the set-up. Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) is framed and wrongfully convicted for assassinating the Vice President's brother. Lincoln's brother Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), who just happens to have designed Illinois' Fox River Penitentiary where Lincoln is on death row, hatches an elaborate escape plan. Michael's plan involves getting himself incarcerated in Fox River and smuggling the prison's blueprints by having them hidden in tattoos that cover his entire torso. Once inside, Michael must form alliances with a rogue's gallery of felons with their own sometimes unsavory motives. Meanwhile, on the outside, Lincoln's lawyer and one-time girlfriend Veronica Donovan (Robin Tunney), pursued by Secret... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 08 August 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $59.98 Your Price: $33.99YOU SAVE $25.99!
Buy it
What was in the Hatch? The cliffhanger from season one of Lost was answered in its opening sequences, only to launch into more questions as the season progressed. That's right: Just when you say "Ohhhhh," there comes another "What?" Thankfully, the show's producers sprinkle answers like tasty morsels throughout the season, ending with a whopper: What caused Oceanic Air Flight 815 to crash in the first place? As the show digs into more revelations about its inhabitant's pasts, it also devotes a good chunk to new characters (Hey, it's an island; you never know who you're going to run into.) First, there are the "Tailies," passengers from the back end of the plane who crashed on the other side of the island. Among them are the wise, God-fearing ex-drug lord Mr. Eko (standout Adewale... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 05 September 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $59.99 Your Price: $39.99YOU SAVE $20!
Buy it
