'Alias' Started 15 Years Ago What 'Lost' Got All The Credit For
Here is something I thought some members might be interested in reading.
When it comes to the golden age of television – where everything was steeped in serialization and mythology – the world at large credits the movement to Lost, the 2004 mystery series created by J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber. However, there’s a show that pre-dates Lost by three years. More importantly, it’s a show that, without it, there legitimately never would have been a Lost to begin with. That show is Alias.
Also created by J. J. Abrams, Alias starred Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow, a young college student who moonlights as an agent for the C.I.A… or so she thinks. In the first episode, Sydney learns the supposed agency outpost she’s working for, SD-6, is actually part of a global terror network. From there, the real C.I.A. recruits her as a double agent and we get five seasons of one of television’s greatest thrillers ever.
Like 24, which premiered a little over a month after Alias, the show was heavily impacted by 9/11, serving to give the viewers a true American hero that fought for the good of the innocent against global terror. However, unlike 24, Alias’ terror left the realm of grounded reality in a matter of weeks with the introduction of Milo Rambaldi, a 15th century prophet who may hold the key to humanity’s ultimate power. But, while cool, Rambaldi isn’t the most important thing that made Alias a success. What did that was its approach to storytelling.
Much like The X-Files, Alias used one-off missions to further its serialized mythology. Unlike The X-Files though, Alias’ missions didn’t begin with the start of an episode. They began in the episode previous. At the end of every episode after the pilot (particularly in the first two seasons), Sydney would be given a mission in the show’s final act, and be on that mission just as it turned in some significant way before the screen would go black and the credits would roll.
This ingenious use of cliffhanger forced audiences to return the following week to see how the mission would play out. By mastering the art of the cliffhanger, Alias was able to teach people how to watch serialized television – which would then aid in the success of 24 and, yes, Lost. Alias was doing episodic and mythology episodes, but it always made it seem like they were all connected in one neverending story through those cliffhangers – something The X-Files, even in its modern incarnation – never attempted.
Lost is always credited as being the originator of serialized television, but there’s a reason Damon Lindelof viewed Alias as “the coolest show” on TV and wanted desperately to work on the show, which lead to his fateful meeting with Abrams that spawned a phenomenon. Alias taught us how to accept mythology and one-offs as a singular unit all working toward a set endpoint (even if the writers didn’t have that endpoint fully realized when they conceived of the series). 15 years ago, Alias premiered, and TV was never the same.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2016/09/30/alias-15-year-anniversary-lost-24/#78a1d4e224fb
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It don't matter if it's raining
Nothing can phase me
I make my own sunshine
And if you think you can break me
Baby, you're crazy
I make my own sunshine
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