Simply amazing, from the second I turned it on to the last episode (after which I didn't know what to do with myself) I literally couldn't stop watching. I needed up staying up til 3am watching its immense. Such a strong female lead with so many twists and turns. A show perfectly done- the writing, the acting, the costumes, etc. I'm still hoping for a spin off.

I love this show. That being said, it has some flaws. You can tell when it went downhill is when J.J. Abrams stopped working on it regularly. Season 1 is great, Season 2 is great, Season 3 was OK, Season 4 not so great, and I'm going to pretend Season 5 didn't happen. I'd have to agree with some of other reviewers on here, it seems like they ended up with a bunch of different writers that lost direction or understanding of what the show was about and where it was supposed to be going. It started out as a spy show with a hint of sci-fi, and ended up the other way around which was just weird. It seems like the only person who really understood the whole Rambaldi thing was JJ. I think that the actors did a good job with what they were given. Watch Season 1-3 if you want to check it out. Its on Netflix as of 8/16.

College student Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is working for SD-6, a secret division within the CIA. Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) is the head and Marcus Dixon (Carl Lumbly) is her partner. Her friends Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper) and Francie Calfo are clueless to her double life. Then it's revealed that SD-6 is a vast criminal conspiracy opposed to the CIA. She gets Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) as her CIA handler. Her estranged father Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) is also a double agent inside to bring down SD-6.This is JJ Abrams' second big hit after Felicity and launches him on his way to being one of the biggest name in Hollywood. It's a simple concept of a hot supermodel 007 Jenny Bond in a secret worldwide spy organization. It's completely unreal fantasy. There is nothing but popcorn fun here. The problem is that as this fantasy universe gets rolling. It made less and less sense. The twists and turns lead to too many blind alleys. It's too serious and eventually, the show collapses under the weight of it's convoluted story. The good thing is that it introduced the world to Jennifer Garner and Bradley Cooper. Now can somebody tell me what happened to Michael Vartan?

This series had me gripped from the opening episode when our protagonist, Sydney Bristow discovers that rather than working for a secret branch of the CIA, called SD-6, as she believed she is in fact working for the sort of people she thought she was working against! When she learns the truth and tells the real CIA they tell her to keep working there but as a double agent. She does this but it isn't easy; she has friends there and she must now lie to them on a daily basis without knowing if they are innocent pawns as she once was or whether they know what SD-6 really is. The only person there she knows she can trust there is her estranged father who is also working for the CIA... it sounds complicated and this is just the set up introduced in the pilot! Over the course of the next five series Sydney will work to thwart SD-6 director Arvin Sloane as he seeks personal advancement first in SD-6 then apparently becomes one of the good guys; to be honest I lost track of how often he switched from being good to bad! All the while though he is obsessed by the works of Milo Rambaldi; a fifteenth century inventor and prophet.That is the basic premise of the show; each week Sydney will get sent on a mission somewhere in the world where she will inevitably have to trick her way in to a secure building, fight a load of minions before escaping with whatever she was sent to retrieve. Typically she will be accompanied by fellow SD-6 agent Marcus Dixon or her CIA handler Michael Vaughn. To assist with her missions she will typically be given pieces of equipment by Marshall Flinkman; the nature of these gadgets makes him 'Q' to her (female) James Bond.Having sat through all five seasons (more than once) it is no surprise that I really enjoyed this series; one has to suspend ones disbelief a lot though and expect characters to switch from good to bad and back again with a certain regularity. Jenifer Garner does a fine job in the lead roll managing to make it look believable that Sydney could take out a roomful of bad guys while barely ruffling her hair! The stand out performances though come from Ron Rifkin as Arvin Sloane and Victor Garber as Sydney's father Jack; they might not do the action like the younger stars but they bring an intensity, and occasionally a sense of menace, to their characters. While a TV show was never going to be able to film in as many locations as the characters go to the use of stock footage gives the impression that the show really is there; after all show us a clip featuring the Eiffel Tower then cut to an office block and we'll think its in Paris... although occasionally it doesn't work such as when a London police car looked like something form the 60s!Overall I recommend this to somebody wanting lots of action with a quality cast and a decent story line. Just be warned that some scenes aren't really suitable for younger viewers, although I'm sure the plot would be too confusing for them anyway.