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     The ABC TV Series with Jennifer Garner  
  • Accidental Innuendo: Weiss' glorious line "If I find out you screwed Vaughn, your ass is mine!"
  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: The shot of the dead Francie, after the double takes over is heartbreaking.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: Elena Derevko. Irina takes her down with one punch, then unceremoniously shoots her in the head.
  • Better on DVD: Despite airing a decade too early, the show bears a startling resemblance to streaming service original series that release entire seasons at once, with a very loose story structure where subplots are introduced and resolved at points that have nothing to do with where an individual episode begins or ends, that fits a binging model very well.
  • Chris Carter Effect: Starting in Season 3 the fans really started noticing that there was clearly no real plan for the show. Some of the most obvious cases are Lauren's mother saying she truly believes that her evil actions are for the greater good never being explained, and Sloane violently killing someone who insults Rambaldi by saying immortality is all his endgame was about, only for the show to end up saying that actually is all he wanted.
  • Die for Our Ship: Lauren was hated by fans for getting in the way of Sydney/Vaughn, even before she turned out to be evil. Hell, fans were probably pleased by that revelation.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Many fangirls consider Julian Sark to be the sexiest male character on the show.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Sark was supposed to be a one-off character, a gofer for K-Directorate or Irina or the Alliance. Fan reaction to David Anders was so great that he became more and more high-profile, eventually taking over the Big Bad mantle in the series finale flash-forward.
  • Evil Is Cool: Sark is the epitome of this trope. He's young and attractive, he frequently wears expensive, elegant suits, and his dry sense of humour produces numerous amusing quips. Julian even sports stylish sunglasses to enhance his villainous awesomeness.
  • 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.
      • And Jack and Weiss. And Jack and Will. And Jack and Vaughn. And Vaughn and Will. And Will and Sark. It really got ridiculous.
    • Dr. Brezzel's assistant, Kaya, looked at Sydney (and everybody else for that matter) like she wanted to tear her clothes off.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Sloan crosses it in the first episode by ordering the murder of Sydney's fiance, but keeps going. Killing Dixon's family in retaliation for Dixon accidentally killing Emily is another. Accidentally throwing Nadia through a glass table and killing her is a third.
  • Narm:
    • Vaughn trapped in the compound in Taipei, during "Almost Thirty Years", complete with slo-mo drowning, and yelling at Sydney to leave.
    • Sydney going the full Wig, Dress, Accent route in the season 3 premiere for absolutely no reason. She develops a full alternate persona just to walk up and shoot a guy.
    • Sydney's drug-induced waking hallucinations in "Nocturne" become darkly funny once she starts imagining her father threatening to kill her, due to Victor Garber's performance being no more or less menacing than usual. Reaches its absolute peak when she imagines this exchange between him and Vaughn, with completely deadpan deliveries from both making it seem like they're discussing the weather:
      Jack: Sydney's about as trustworthy as her mother.
      Vaughn: I know.
      Jack: I'm going to kill her just like I did Irina.
      Vaughn: Good.
    • To anyone from England where "Love" is a common term of endearment, its being used as the distinctive thing that clues Jack in about Lauren is just plain confusing.
  • One-Scene Wonder: The show had many, many memorable guest stars. Quentin Tarantino, visibly enjoying himself as McKenas Cole. In Season 1, he's more of a Two-Episode Wonder, but when he pops up again in Season 3, he fits the trope perfectly.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • Wait, is that Ricky Gervais playing an Irish terrorist?!
    • Wait...Sônia Braga is supposed to be Russian? And so was Isabella Rossellini.
    • Melissa George had a very noticeable accent despite Lauren ostensibly being American, which the show later tried to sloppily explain away by claiming the character was born in Britain. This might've worked better if she had a British accent and not an Australian one.
    • Latin Mia Maestro as the daughter of the very white Ron Rifkin and Lena Olin.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Lauren gets this for interfering with the Sydney/Michael pairing, for showing No Sympathy for Sydney's struggles with amnesia, and for being incredibly petty and spiteful once it turns out she's evil. There was little complaining when she was killed for her treachery.
    • Marshall can be very funny and an integral part of the show, but his constant awkward yammering and Sloane/Jack/Dixon/Sydney/Vaughn/etc yelling "Marshall, get on with it!" got very, very annoying.
    • Not that everyone hated Francie, but she was easily the most boring character on a show full of badasses and Badass Normals. She never even got to find out about Sydney's secret life before she was killed and replaced by Alice.
  • Seasonal Rot: Some say this of Season 3, 4 and/or 5. Midway through season two, the "double life" element was dropped, and Syd seemingly had no life outside of espionage. Sloane became a Karma Houdini in a way that strained credulity. Most importantly, The Chris Carter Effect really set in here, as increasingly complex conspiracies and mysteries no longer seemed resolvable.
  • Shipping: Sydney/Vaughn was extremely prominent, followed closely by Sydney/Sark, Vaughn/Sark, and Jack/Irina.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: On meta level. Modern viewers may be put off with the show's continual hand-holding about its story arcs, with a lengthy opening narration on every episode, regular As You Know dialogue, and even a clip show within Season 1. However, at the time a lot of viewers really did find this necessary, being unprepared for having to remember so many details in a genre that tended to be just fun fluff for an hour, especially given that home video releases of TV shows (which made long-running story arcs easier to follow) were still a novelty in the early '00s.
  • The Woobie: Sydney and Nadia. Especially Nadia.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It would have made more sense if Emily Sloane had known about the affair between Arvin and Irina Derevko because she went to the CIA after she found out that Irina was still alive (which could have been made to seem like she thought that he was sleeping with her again), and went back to him when he had chosen her.

     The Comic Book by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Gaydos 

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