"Alias" grace

Some of the show's best moments, funny in a way that at first makes you gasp with shock, are when Jack resorts to violence to protect Sydney. Garber has worked primarily on the stage and intermittently in movies. (He was the only believable character in "Titanic.") Jack Bristow is the best role he has ever had. There's no actor on TV (and few in the movies right now) who can match Garber's particular brand of wit. Deadpan doesn't begin to capture it. Subterranean is closer to the mark. His performance is so quietly tempered that he makes you feel as if you should incline close to hear him -- which is just what Jack Bristow wants to do to put you within his claws' reaches. You never catch Garber winking to the audience. You just feel his comfort indulging in the darkest sort of humor -- and the fiercest kind of portrayal of parental love, one utterly lacking in sentiment.

It would require a blow-by-blow description of the turns the plot of "Alias" has taken over the past three seasons to capture all the nuances between Jack and Sidney. The constant is Sidney discovering some information that Jack, in the great tradition of parents of only children, has tried to keep from her; rejecting him because of it; then coming to realize his reasons for doing what he did. And that's where the resonance of the spy metaphor really comes to life. The nature of spying is that of secrets being revealed. Sydney, because of what she does, is put in the position of constantly experiencing the shock we all do when we discover something heretofore hidden about our parents -- and in the position of having to integrate that information into her picture of her father, working to accept him as a flawed human being, which of course means accepting her own adulthood.

It's not just the personal relationships that ring true in "Alias" but the workplace relationships. Get beyond the "Get Smart" façades for the various SD-6 and CIA workplaces "Alias" has shown us, and what you see looks a lot like the glass-walled, cubicled divides of any corporate office. And here, too, the spy metaphor proves potent, working as a metaphor for how jobs have come to consume our lives, to define us. In Sydney's case, her job isn't something she can leave behind because it requires her to keep up a masquerade in every area of her life outside work. And within the workplace she can't let her guard down.

Even when SD-6 got taken down, "Alias" couldn't let go of Ron Rifkin's terrific portrayal of Arvin Sloane. He's back now as a CIA consultant, a neat joke on the fact that there's no bastard bad enough for U.S. intelligence to keep from making common cause with. Sloane is the essence of the boss you wouldn't turn your back on, and I'm betting he strikes a chord even among watchers of "Alias" who don't work for evil geniuses.

Sloane gives himself away as untrustworthy when, as many bosses do, he talks about how he thinks of his co-workers as "family." (Those bosses are the ones who'll stab you in the back most viciously.) Sloane is a master businessman because he has learned to fake sincerity and warmth -- which is the most valuable asset for someone who wants to keep his motives hidden. Abrams has been generous enough to have allowed Rifkin some moments of real, open emotion in the scenes in the first two seasons with his wife, beautifully played by Amy Irving. But it's the fact that his motives are nearly unreadable, even when you know not to trust him, that makes Sloane not only a great villain but pop culture's current definitive personification of the boss from hell.

There are lots of other performances that have made "Alias" such a pleasure: Michael Vartan as Sydney's co-worker and lover, Vaughan; the wonderful Kevin Weisman as the CIA's techno übergeek, Marshall; and in the first couple of seasons, Bradley Cooper as Sydney's best friend, Will, and Merrin Dungey as her roommate, Francie, whose fate was perhaps the most baroque the show has come up with. And it has attracted an amazing gaggle of guest stars, among them Lena Olin, Isabella Rossellini, John Hannah, Quentin Tarantino, Faye Dunaway, Ricky Gervaise and Terry O'Quinn, who, after decades of sensational but unnoticed work, is finally getting the attention he deserves on the new Abrams hit "Lost."

But it's Garner's portrayal that's at the center of "Alias." Butt-kicking women have become a dime a dozen in pop culture, and tough and tender isn't an especially fresh combination (which isn't to say it can't still be a winning one). Garner's portrayal of Sydney brings a sweetness to the spy genre that it has never had. When Sydney reaches into her bag of tricks, it's not the hidden bad girl she's giving license to play, it's the good girl she is at heart, the one who wants to hand in that A paper, neatly typed and with no spelling mistakes. It's not to slight the way Garner can melt you in her dramatic scenes or the intensity of her emotional duets with Victor Garber to say that something about Sydney Bristow suggests what Mary Richards might have been as a spy. When she's going up against the baddies of the world, or even the traitors in her own midst, you have complete confidence in her. She might just break them after all.

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