My 9-year-old son and I had just finished dinner last week and were doing the dishes when he uttered this odd question, “Who do you think would win in a fight, Voldemort or Sydney Bristow?”
The kid knows that I have a soft spot for the fictional, super-CIA spy Sydney Bristow from the TV show Alias. We’ve also, along with my husband, been reading the Harry Potter series together out loud, so his mentioning Voldemort wasn’t out of the blue.
But to combine Sydney Bristow with Voldemort in the same breath, well that took me by surprise.
I told him I thought that in a battle, Sydney would prevail, but I don’t really think she could beat Voldemort as he wouldn’t allow her to lay hands, or one of her vicious kicks, on him.
My 9-year-old then added a twist, “Who’d win if it was Voldemort vs Yoda?”
I'm not sure about this one. Yoda’s pretty quick for a little guy and he is pretty smart, smarter than Voldemort, I’d venture to guess. This one had me stumped but my choice would have to be Yoda.
His final question: What if the battle were between Dumbledore and the Emperor? Who’d win then? I said Dumbledore would but only because I like Dumbledore and want to root for the good guys. (Saying The Emperor would win is like rooting for Arvin Sloane or Bellatrix Lestrange.)
Who do you think would prevail in these battles?
(FYI – Speaking of Sydney Bristow, the AV Club is reviewing the entire Alias series, starting with its amazing pilot with Sydney Bristow’s crazy red hair.)
Image credits: ABC via USA Today, Warner Brothers via MTV.
Among the shows for which I have high hopes this fall is the new NBC drama Undercovers, created/produced/directed by J.J. Abrams of Lost, the most recent Star Trek movie and Alias. After reading about the show and seeing the preview I thought: Alias, minus Rambaldi, Jack Bristow, Arvin Sloane and baby Bristow/Vaughn.
The premise of Undercovers is like an after-Alias: These married caterers, who used to be CIA spies five years ago, are called back into the fray, just when they were looking for something to amp up the excitement quotient in their marriage. What better than espionage to get the juices flowing?
Several of the scenes in the preview reminded me of Sydney and Vaughn – which is good because I miss Alias – like seeing Steven and Samantha Bloom fleeing a building while wearing jump suits (I thought of Syd and Vaughn in the Vatican), Samantha in the black lingerie (Syd on the SD-6 plane with the master computer) and Samantha stomping on a guy (Syd in the pilot episode in the parking lot after she’d been pursued by SD-6 goons).
Last week, Coach Eric Taylor attempted to address some of the dire financial needs of his ragtag, upstart (0-2) East Dillon football high school team by organizing fundraisers and writing a personal check to cover the initial installment on the team’s new uniforms. On this week’s installment of Friday Night Lights, “A Sort of Homecoming,” Coach Taylor was trying to bolster the morale end of things, trying to rally the community behind his team, rendering him looking awfully, earnestly ham-fisted at times.
Who knew that ex-Panther booster Buddy Garrity would be his saving grace in luring former East Dillon players who’d won the State Championship in 1983, to appear at a pep rally/homecoming Eric organized? Or that Jess Merriweather would be the person who'd convince her former football star father to reluctantly offer up his restaurant for the rally? (Can't wait for more backstory on that family.) I loved watching how this all came together -- as well as the speech about a “pride” of lions -- knowing that nothing, it seems, is coming as easily for Eric as it had back in West Dillon.
The other two threads that interested me during FNL's new episode this week: Matt Saracen realized that perhaps he made a mistake in passing up a golden opportunity in Chicago in order to stay in Dillon with his high school girlfriend Julie, who's mulling college opportunities on both coasts, and Tami Taylor continued to endure all manner of harassment (character assassination on the radio, vandalism to her car) for simply enforcing the school rules by sending football star Luke Cafferty to the proper school.
As this season has unfolded, I’ve been wondering if Eric really understands the magnitude of the malice that's been directed his wife or whether she’s keeping a lot of it from him, as he’s been so completely absorbed with his job that he doesn’t see what’s happening with his own family . . . other than whether Tami would be willing to cook dinner for former East Dillon football champs.
A Retooled Alias?
I was a major fan of Alias. Became quite fond of J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber while watching this smart and thoroughly entertaining (in the first three seasons anyway) espionage drama which was at its greatest when Garner’s Sydney Bristow was working as a double-agent for the CIA while serving the evil international crime syndicate, SD-6, run by the nefarious Arvin Sloane. (The show launched not only Garner’s career, but Terry O’Quinn’s -- aka Lost's John Locke -- and Bradley Cooper’s, he of Hangover fame.)
When I got word that people have been buzzing about what they’re calling a “reboot” of Alias – an E! report called labeled it an “initial talk” about a newly revised Alias series, sans the Rambaldi element – I was skeptical. Abrams is already working on a new NBC show, Undercovers, that’s slated to begin next fall about a married couple who met while working as spies and are re-activated into the espionage game, adding a dash of excitement to their marriage, now that they're boring, staid caterers. Wouldn’t a new version of Alias be too similar? Would any of the old characters be involved? Could you really call it Alias without them?
EW Top 100 Characters List
If you were to sit down and make a list of the top 100 fictional characters from the past 20 years, who’d be on it? The editors and writers at Entertainment Weekly took up this challenge and put together a rather eclectic list. Why certain characters rank higher than others, and why certain ones were selected over others – like Tim Riggins making the list as representative of FNL and NOT the Taylor family? – remains a mystery to me. Kind of like the Lost finale. The EW top 10 of the past 20 years:
1. Homer Simpson
2. Harry Potter
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. Tony Soprano
5. The Joker (Heath Ledger’s version)
6. Rachel Green from Friends
7. Edward Scissorhands
8. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs
9. Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City
10. SpongeBob Squarepants
FYI: Some of my favorites made the list: Sydney Bristow (42), Jack Bauer from 24 (44), John Locke from Lost (63), Lorelai Gilmore from the Gilmore Girls (65), Don Draper from Mad Men (74) and Gregory House from House (84).
Sex and the City 2
I went to see Sex and the City 2 on Friday and dedicated this week’s Pop Culture column to it over on Mommy Tracked. While I’m not going to tell you that it’s absolutely fabulous – I called it an “over-the-top, junk-food-binge of a film,” a bad-good movie you can enjoy with friends and share a laugh – I was steamed by the language some reviewers used when writing about the characters and the women in the film, everything from “shrews” to “harridans.”
