By season three of Alias, everything changed. Actually, everything had to change. It's quite common for network shows to go off in different directions or change their structure part-way through. This is because the network demands it for various reasons. And this is basically what happened to J.J. Abrams's masterful spy drama, Alias. However, there was something else at play. A real reason why Alias went from a strictly serial (continuous, and arc-like) show to one that was far more episodic with closed beginnings, middles, and ends. Thanks to a fantastic article by TV Line, we know exactly why the show made the major change. Let's take a look...
Major Shifts Happened On and Behind The Screen
Without a doubt, Alias is the show that launched Jennifer Garner's fascinating career. While Jennifer is up to a lot more than just acting now, she owes her impressive career to the success of Alias; a show, by-the-way, that was influenced by her first role on Felicity.
By the third season of Alias, Jennifer was more involved with the success of Alias than even J.J. Abrams was. This is because J.J. had handed over most of his control to the writer's room so he could develop his next show, Lost.
Up until the third season, J.J.'s initial vision was executed upon. The Rambaldi plotline dominated the first two seasons of the show, as did the constant arc of Sydney Bristow's struggle with Sloane, her romance with Vaughn, and her insanely complicated relationship with both of her parents.
"The first two seasons were what I wanted the show to be," J.J. Abrams told TV Line. "And then [ABC, the network behind Alias] said in Season 2, 'This is the last season you can make it serialized. It has to be a standalone show.' And so Season 3 began the season where it was episode-to-episode."
It was also the first season with Bradley Cooper or Merrin Dungey (although she did appear in the series finale). It also introduced Mia Maestro as Sydney's half-sister and Melissa George as Vaughn's new wife, Lauren Reed.
But actors weren't the only ones leaving or arriving to Alias... There was also a major change among the producers, writers, and other creatives.
"At the end of Season Two, Bob [Orci] and Alex [Kurtzman] were leaving, Josh [Appelman] and André [Nemec] joined," executive producer Jeff Pinkner told TV Line. "[Producers] Alison Schapker and Monica Breen joined right around the same time. All those people have gone on to phenomenal careers. Rick Orci, Bob’s younger brother, joined at a certain point. [Producer] Drew Goddard came in for the last two seasons. But I ended up running the show in the last couple years."
What Did The Cast And Crew Think About The Show Becoming More Episodic?
It definitely seems as though most of the cast and crew preferred how things were when J.J. Abrams had more say in the direction of his spy series.
"It was always about the saga of Sydney Bristow, the whole world that was created," co-executive producer Josh Appelbaum stated. "I think in a nice way, what that mandate forced us to do was to tell standalone stories within the mythology. There’s always the mythology going, but it was nice to feel like to some extent each episode had its own individual satisfaction and the show wasn’t just this one long run-on sentence."
Jennifer Garner was one who definitely preferred it the old way: "I preferred the more serialized version. Now, people would binge-watch it, and that would be OK. J.J. was… ahead of his time in some ways."
The fact that Bradley Cooper left the series also contributed to the change as they couldn't always rely on the same characters to play with. Bradley, by-the-way, wasn't a fan of being on Alias whatsoever.
"We weren’t coming up with things that were worthy of him, and he was sitting around in many episodes doing very little," J.J. Abrams said of Bradley Cooper. "It felt like that kind of relationship where you both love each other, but you both realize for various righteous reasons that it’s not quite working out. And you both come to a meeting with the same intention. That’s sort of what happened. It was very hard to go back to the domestic stories when there is a nuke in Los Angeles somewhere. It was a really tricky plate to spin."
The role that he was playing ultimately didn't challenge him in the way that Bradley needed (and waned) to be challenged. The crew and cast were fine with him leaving the series to go on and do bigger and better things in his career. But it did shake up the paradigm of the show itself. Therefore, it made sense for J.J. to give in to the network's demands and make the show more episodic as opposed to serial.
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