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Don't be fooled by the wig that she's got, she's still Jenny with a Glock...
My name is Sydney Bristow. Seven years ago I was recruited by a secret branch of the CIA called SD-6. I was sworn to secrecy, but I couldn't keep it from my fiancée. And when the head of SD-6 found out, he had him killed. That's when I learned the truth: SD-6 is not part of the CIA. I've been working for the very people I thought I was fighting against.
—Sydney Bristow, opening narration
Hip Spy Drama (2001-2006) by JJ Abrams about Sydney Bristow, an agent for SD-6, black-ops division of the CIA, who discovers that, whoops, it wasn’t a black-ops division of the CIA so much as a faction of a powerful terrorist group called The Alliance; so she becomes a double agent. She then discovers her father, a supposed salesman, is also a double agent for the CIA. Sydney then has to divide her loyalties between a team of good men at SD-6 who simply don't know their boss is the devil, and a team of mostly good men and a few pricks at the real CIA.
Pretty much a show full of Impossible Mission episodes, with a twist — Sydney must perform her mission for the CIA, while appearing to be performing her mission for SD-6. There’s also a large element of soap opera though, as she learns all kinds of secrets about her parents and their Mysterious Past.
Unusual for its willingness to embrace a fanciful Story Arc about a centuries-old prophecy. The first four seasons all featured a subtle, never explained Myth Arc about an Italian inventor with a penchant for odd drawings and fanciful words. Some how this 15th century prophet is still relevant today. His designs have been implemented and his writings dissected. And apparently the global intelligence community has nothing better to do than go to war over every piece of technology he might have even glanced at.
Also notable for the fact that the show was ReTooled three separate times. Each time, character relationships and roles changed in fundamental ways.
One of the leaders in Wig Dress Accent.
This show provides examples of:
- A Team Firing: For the first season and a half until the fall of the Alliance. Sydney does not kill anyone until this point, apart from a rather contrived situation in which an assassin falls on a knife
- Aborted Arc: Originally Irina was supposed to have more of a role in Season 4, but the actress playing the character wanted a salary the show couldn't afford; they scrapped their plans for her character and ultimately started the show down its Jump The Shark path
- Action Girl: Mainly Sydney, but also Irina, Lauren, Nadia, Rachel, Anna Espinosa and Allison Dorren.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Averted. The suave international terrorist Sark clearly has eyes for Sydney, but she'll have none of it.
- And I Must Scream Sloane's ultimate fate.
- Attending Your Own Funeral: The Covenant forces Sydney to do this as part of their brainwashing.
- Back From The Dead: In the series finale Sloane is shot and killed by Sydney. Luckily, his body fell into a vat of special Rambaldi liquid that healed his wounds and brought him back to life.
- Bigger problem though. He was stuck under a collapsed pillar when Jack blew himself up.
- Bad Ass: A basic requirement for being a regular character on this show.
- Bad Guy Bar: A staple trope in Alias.
- Beard Of Sorrow: Jack grows one during the year that he was held in solitary confinement for working with unsanctioned sources to learn the truth behind his daughter's apparent death.
- Because Destiny Says So: Sydney is The Chosen One according to prophecies of Milo Rambaldi and try as she might she can't escape her destiny. Ah well, at least it's not predictable.
- Black Best Friend: Sydney gets two, Francie and Dixon
- Bound And Gagged: See Attending Your Own Funeral.
- Boxed Crook: Inverted. Sydney works for the government, but is abducted by criminals to perform certain high-risk jobs for them in Season 3.
- Changeling Fantasy: Nadia, who discovers her parents are actually Irina and Sloane
- Character Development: Everyone, mostly.
- The Chessmaster: Arvin Sloane.
- The Chris Carter Effect
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Irina, Sloane and Sark.
- City Of Spies: Los Angeles is home to both SD-6 and the CIA. It also attracts a few other freelancers, such as Sark.
- Cliff Hanger
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: "You beat death, Arvin. But you couldn't beat me."
- Death By Origin Story: Syd was perfectly happy with her job(s) and life and had no interest in digging up dirt on SD-6 — until she told her fiance she was a spy for the CIA. He lived maybe 5 microseconds after that.
- Death By Sex: Francie.
- Deep Cover Agent: Sydney becomes one of these in the Pilot, after learning SD-6 is not the CIA. Also, her father.
- As well as Lauren in season 3, a villainous example.
- Die Hard On An X: The season one two-parter, "The Box" featured spooks taking over SD-6 while Sydney and her father were just arriving. They immediately start a Die Hard plan to eliminate the enemy spies.
- Double Agent: Most of the cast, at some point
- Sydney and her father worked for the CIA, posed as SD-6 agents
- Lauren worked for the Covenant, but posed as an NSA agent
- Sark is always claiming to work for someone or other, but is usually just out for himself
- Dysfunction Junction: There's dysfunctional and then there's the Bristow family. The dysfunctionality certainly extends past the Bristows though. Most of the characters lives a marred by the death and/or betrayal of loved ones. It certainly doesn't help when our heroes are forced to work with the bad guys and double-crossers or the people they thought were dead but actually weren't.
- Failure Is The Only Option: Goal: Take Down Sloane.
- Fake Defector: Sloane
- Fake Nationality: A lot of it
- Fake Russian: Sark is a Russian man with a fake British accent portrayed by American actor David Anders.
- Actually, Sark's father was Russian but he grew up in Britain, so his character's accent is legitimate. Makes him more of a Fake Brit.
- False Gunshot
- Fan Nickname: Fans nicknamed the nameless recurring scientist and torturer "Suit and Glasses". Jack Bristow is also often referred to as "Spy Daddy" by fans.
- Once Frannie was killed, and her identity assumed by an identical imposter, she went by the name Evil!Francie.
- Fanservice: Done, very much with a wink, in "Phase One"- the opening shot of the episode is Sydney in her red underwear and holding a whip. This episode, by the way, was right after the Super Bowl. However, there is many a straight example.
- Fetish Fuel: Sydney is a veritable Fetish Fuel Station Attendant.
- Don't discount Sark's effect on the ladies, either. His baby blues had many a fangirl squeeing.
- First Episode Spoiler: to the point where Nothing Is The Same Anymore after the pilot.
- Flak Jacket
- Good All Along
- The Handler: Vaughn entered the scene as Sydney's handler. Eventually, they become more like partners.
- Dixon often took the role of handler, too
- Heel Face Mole: Irina at first
- Heel Face Revolving Door: Sloane and Irina both qualify.
- And Sark has self-stated "flexible loyalties".
- Hello Boys: "Phase One"
- How We Got Here: done several times
- Ho Yay: Between Vaughn and Sark mostly. Though Sark also managed to get his yay on with Marshall at one point.
- Weiss and Vaughn were also a very popular pairing. Check out the below exchange for proof:
Weiss: Okay, whenever you want to have that talk...
Vaughn: What talk?
Weiss: About the cologne or whatever the hell you're wearing.
Vaughn: I'm not wearing cologne.
Weiss: Well, something's going on. No man naturally smells as good as you do right now.
- I Have Come Too Far
- I Have Your Wife
- Impossible Mission
- Incredibly Obvious Bug: averted. Marshall loves to show off bugs that look like paper clips or pens, or in once case an actual cockroach
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The show juggles with its Rambaldi devices, ancient conspiracies, modern spy dramas, and family problems. There's an overarching Myth Arc, but by the fifth season there are too many pieces and they don't all fit it in the same puzzle.
- Jumped The Shark: Most people think this of Season 5, by gloriously abandoning and then reviving the Myth Arc, replacing various integral characters with annoying alternates, and swapping genres from a Spy Drama with slightly surreal tones to veritable Speculative Fiction what with the zombie apocalypse in Moscow.
- A large amount of people would say Season 3 was the jump point, but after Season 5 it definitely got worse.
- Killed Off For Real
- Very few people, surprisingly. Danny, in the very first episode, then later the Iceman. Being a love interest other than Vaughn seems to be deadly. But for almost everyone else, Death Is Cheap.
- Kudzu Plot
- Letting Her Hair Down: Sydney.
- Lingerie Scene: "Phase One," Notable in that this aired literally seconds after the Super Bowl, but a year before the Janet Jackson incident so the Moral Guardians didn't make too much noise.
- Love Triangle: Sydney, Vaughn and Lauren.
- The Lab Rat: Marshall
- MacGuffin: What exactly was Rambaldi trying to achieve again?
- Mata Hari: Most of the cast
- The Man Behind The Man: Literally named, "The Man"
- Mind Screw
- The Mole: Major part of the show
- Moscow Centre: Irina Derevko was originally a KGB agent, posing as an American to gain the trust and confidence of Jack Bristow and steal secrets from the CIA
- Mysterious Parent: Both of Sydney's count
- Mysterious Past
- No Holds Barred Beatdown
- Obstacle Exposition
- Papa Bear: Do not mess with Sydney or you'll be dealing with Jack, and you will not be in good shape after.
- Parental Abandonment: During the first season we learn that Sydney's mother apparently died in a car accident when she was six. However, at the end of the Season 1 finale, we learn that she faked her own death and now leads a criminal organisation. Upon meeting Sydney for the first time as an adult, she proclaims, "You must have known this day would come. I could have prevented all this, of course. You were so small when you were born. It would have been so easy.".
- Part Time Hero: Sydney tries this for a few seasons, but over the course of the show all of her non-Spy friends have either also become spies/gone into witness protection, or they are murdered, cloned, or cloned and then murdered, so she's pretty much forced to go all-in.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Marshall
- Pretty In Mink: In a few undercover missions
- Ransacked Room: Sydney comes home to one of these after she tells her fiancé what she does for a living. Turns out SD-6 staged a break-in and had him killed.
- The Rashomon
- Seasonal Rot: Some say this of Season 3, 4 and/or 5.
- She Fu
- Shell Shocked Senior: Jack
- Shipping: Sydney/Vaughn was prominent, followed closely by Sydney/Sark and Vaughn/Sark
- Sinister Surveillance
- Spot The Imposter (via Project Helix)
- Spotting The Thread: Happens several times, given the villains' tendency to clone people close to Sydney and send them in as spies.
- Spy Drama: Kind of self-explanatory
- Spy From Weights And Measures: While working for SD-6, Sydney and associates ostensibly work for Credit Dauphin Bank.
- Spy Versus Spy: This show is one of the few, non (intentionally) uses of the trope. In the beginning, it was CIA versus SD-6. And SD-6 also had enemies in K-Directorate. Then it became CIA versus the Covenant. And then CIA versus...well, that's when it started getting complicated.
- Storming The Castle: Bringing Down SD-6
- Story Arc
- Stuffed Into The Fridge: Danny, her fiancè, in the pilot. Kind of subverted, because it actually is her fault.
- Taking You With Me
- Tear Jerker
- Terrorists Without A Cause: Sark routinely changes his alliances, and his true allegiance seems to be only to himself.
- The Teaser
- The Generic Guy: Rachel Gibson and Thomas Grace were two characters added in the 5th season who would have done okay as guest stars, but really had no purpose outside of being another pair of agents for the main characters to throw at the bad guys. They seem to succeed, although this is probably due to Villain Decay or Lowered Monster Difficulty.
- Techno Wizard: Marshall
- Time For Plan B
- Time Skip: Almost three years between seasons 2 and 3
- Trash The Set
- Trickster
- Trigger Phrase: In season one, there was a Manchurian Agent who could be activated by reading a specific poem. He turned from sweet, mild mental patient to master-assassin upon completion of the piece
- Western Terrorists: Sark
- Wham Episode
- Wig Dress Accent: Sydney's favorite method of disguise, occasionally used by other agents.
- WTH Casting Agency: Wait, is that Ricky Gervais playing an Irish terrorist?!
- What The Hell Hero: Sydney felt that since Danny was going to become her husband, she just 'had' to tell him 'everything' about herself; even the things she had 'sworn' to keep ''secret'' and been told '''repeatedly''' that her failure to maintain secrecy would mean death for her and everyone around her... How to destroy a lead character's credibility in the pilot.
- Xanatos Gambit: Many, throughout the series. Arguably the best was Sloane's throughout Season 1 and 2, in which he got Sydney, her father, and the CIA to take down the Alliance so he could found his own terrorist network.
- Sloane is the master of these in general. Whatever you think he's planning, he's probably got another plan under that, and maybe a few more for good measure.
- You Cant Fight Fate: The prophecies Rambaldi dreamed up cannot be averted, but they can be misinterpreted.
- You Cant Go Home Again
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