The daddy of spies
Alias's Victor Garber turns agent Jack Bristow into a classic

Scott Feschuk
National Post


CREDIT: ABC, CTV

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Sunday's episode of Alias (ABC/CTV) clinched it: Jack Bristow, the CIA agent played by Victor Garber, has officially become my Favourite Character on Television.

Jack is a secondary player on the spy drama, a fact that won't change so long as Jennifer Garner -- who plays Jack's daughter, Sydney -- remains attractive, her wardrobe remains clingy and the vast majority of the male population of Earth remains heterosexual. Sydney usually gets most of the screen time. Sydney gets to cry and laugh and make out and kick henchmen in the face, often simultaneously. In this fictional world, there is no global threat so menacing that it cannot be subdued by Sydney slipping into high heels and something that reveals her thighs. Jack, meanwhile, gets to wear blue dress shirts, be frequently berated by various government officials and sometimes get caught and tortured so his daughter can have some henchmen's faces to kick and/or make out with.

But Sunday's episode began with Sydney being led to a jail cell by a team of black-clad National Security Council operatives. The head of the NSC is Robert Lindsey, and let me tell you: Television hasn't seen a so-called-good-guy-who's-actually-really-evil of this calibre since Uncle Bobby went off the air. Lindsey was eager to obtain certain information by coaxing Sydney out of her amnesia, in this case by subjecting her to, in the words of one character, "surgery that will render her brain dead" -- though, happily for the show's ratings, still able to wear a bikini.

Back at the office, Jack was already thinking rescue. Mounting a mission to free Sydney would mean "breaking at least a dozen federal laws," he said gravely, this being one of two ways he says things, the other being quite gravely. A dozen laws? This was cause for concern about Sydney's future: Jack is such an old pro that he typically declines missions on which fewer than 18 federal laws will be broken.

It's not so much what Jack does as the way that he does it. He is not flashy, nor does he quip, zing or otherwise deliver pithy one-liners. Rather, he is the master of spy talk -- not the tiresome double entendres of James Bond nor the techno-malarky of Tom Clancy, but good, classic spy talk, the sort of talk that makes you wish you were a spy so you could talk like that and not get laughed at or, depending on your audience, pelted with herring. At one point, Vaughn, another CIA agent and Sydney's former boyfriend, declared that he wanted in on the rescue. "Meet me in the parking garage in three minutes," Jack said. Later, the rescue plan needed to be put into action. "Meet me at this address in two hours," Jack said. Like a good spy talker, Jack is always telling other people where to meet him at some other time.

Jack also has the ability to gaze meaningfully at people in a way that's so meaningful it's impossible to discern the meaning. We saw this in Sunday's instalment, when the episode's director actually resorted to slow-motion to emphasize a locked gaze between Jack and Lindsey. The look on Jack's face said: "I will one day make you pay for what you have done, you bastard." Actually, it might not have said that. It might have said: "I am trying to remember where I left my car keys." The reason for the confusion is that Jack basically has only One Facial Expression -- the sad-eyed, doleful countenance of a middle-aged man whose wife had just dragged him to Mamma Mia! You wouldn't want to play poker with Jack Bristow. That said, if you did express interest in playing poker with Jack Bristow, he would affix you with his One Facial Expression and declare: "Meet me by the green felt table in eight minutes."

In the span of a single episode of television on Sunday night, Jack beat a really smart guy at chess, took fewer than 90 seconds to find and hire an elite strike force of well-trained commandos, obtained weaponry and $3-million in cash (strike forces ain't cheap) from his own top-secret storage locker and armory, arranged for at least two men to meet him at some other place at some other time, successfully adopted a crude, working-class accent to obtain access to a well-protected government facility, performed delicate surgery on a bullet wound to a colleague's torso, infiltrated a heavily guarded National Security Council interrogation facility and, in just the nick of time, shot a doctor with a tranquilizer dart before he could "remove the cap of (Sydney's) skull and begin neural stimulation" -- which, interestingly, is a new method that Hollywood is considering to medically force people to laugh during Eddie Murphy movies.

Jack did all this without flash, without bombast, without changing his facial expression or, if memory services, his shirt. Want to see a good actor have a lot of fun with a very cool character? Meet me next to the television in five days.