Quick and cool crossover between two great shows.

   J.J. Abrams made a huge splash in 2001 with his funky spy show for ABC called Alias. In your typical spy show or movie you have amazingly cool and aloof super spies going on dangerous adventures with super complex plots. Alias had the action and the super complex plots. The difference was with the spies. Instead of aloof and hardened these spies were real people. The central character Sydney Bristow could go out and kick the bad guys in the arse and then come home and at the same time have her heart broken. To even try to sum up the whole series would be too complicated to even attempt. But here's a taste just from the first episode: Sydney is a college student who is also secretly an operative for a branch of the CIA known as SD-6. She makes the mistake of letting her fiance know she's a spy and as a result her bosses have him killed. So then she has to keep working for the people who murdered her man. Then she finds out SD-6 isn't a part of the CIA at all! They're the bad guys. So she starts working with the real CIA as a mole in SD-6. Not only that, she discovers her estranged father is also a spy and is also working as a mole for the CIA in SD-6! So together they have to pretend to work for SD-6 and go on missions for them while at the same time secretly working the CIA's angle on the same missions? While this is all going on, Syd also has to keep her normal personal life going. Follow all that? It only gets more complicated - and fun -from there.

   Alias became a big cult hit but not exactly a top 10 show. Still it was so good and had SUCH a following that J.J. Abrams became quite the golden boy of TV shows. In 2004 he proved he wasn't a one hit wonder when he created another freaky funky show for ABC called Lost.

   At the time CBS had a long running hit with its reality series Survivor. If YOU have been living on a deserted island for the past decade, Survivor is a show that traps a dozen and a half real people on a deserted island to compete for around a month to win a million dollars.

   The folks at ABC thought it would be a cool idea to try and do a fictional twist on the Survivor premise. They wanted to make a drama based on the idea of people trapped on an island together trying to survive, none of whom are named Gilligan. J.J. Abrams and his cohorts were given the chance to pitch what THEY would do with the premise. And the rest is TV history. Lost became the story of a group of people whose plane crashes on a remote island. Only this is no regular tropical island. Something about this island is just not right. There are giant monsters. People have vivid freaky hallucinations. There are polar bears running around from a previous crashed ship! There is a crazy French woman living on the other side of the island. One character who was crippled off the island finds his legs work just great on the island. There is more drama to the show than just, "Will these people be rescued?" You also have the question of, "What the heck is going on on the island???"

   And also, "Who are all these people?" Every episode bounces between the continuing drama on the island and flashbacks explaining slowly but surely the backstory of all the major characters. And the producers have promised no one is safe. Any of the characters might end up dead before the end. Welllll... not all the characters. It has been stated that the character of Charlie will not die. Former rock and roll star Charlie is played by Dominic Monaghan. Seeing as he was the star of a small film series called The Lord Of The Rings that made a billion dollars, he's kind of the shows biggest name. Ya don't want to go killing him.

   And that dovetails nicely into the crossover. Like I said, before the crash, Charlie was part of a rock band called Driveshaft. Let me be very clear here: Driveshaft is a fictional band. It only exists in the world of Lost. And it also appears to exist in the world of Alias. The second episode of Alias's fourth season had Syd throwing a birthday party for one of her friends. The music playing at the party was the song, "You All Everybody," by the band Driveshaft. That being the case, Alias and Lost share a fictional band and so also share the same fictional world.

   I also think J.J. Abrams should get some sort of bonus points for managing a crossover with a show about people trapped on an island. That has to be a crossover difficulty of at least 9 on a 10 point scale.

   But wait! The subtle crossover connections continue. The flight that crashed and stranded all those people (thus allowing for Lost to be a longer and more interesting show than if it didn't crash and all the characters just went on their merrry ways) was an Oceanic Airline flight from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, California. Oceanic is a fictional airline that the producers thought they created just for Lost. In another 4th season episode of Alias titled "A Clean Conscience", Sydneu and her sister go to pick up a plot complication... I mean a friend... at an airport in L.A. A sharp eared reader pointed out to me that while they are in the airport, at one point you can hear on an airport loudspeaker the announcement that, "The Oceanic Airlines nonstop flight to Sydney is now ready for boarding at gate 17." Hmmmmm.

   Now on its own I actually wouldn't count Oceanic Airlines as a full on crossover connection. Here's the thing. Remember I said the producers thought they made the airline upi? Well technically they did. But before they made it up a whole bunch of people also made it up. Turns out if you are making a movie or TV show where you want to make bad crap happen to a plane, Oceanic Airlines is one popular fake airline name. You know in Rain Man where Rain Man wants to fly the Australian airline Quantis because they are the only airline that never crashes? Yeah, well apparently Oceanic is picking up the slack in deaths on flights to Australia and all other points of the globe you will never reach. I guess the names Amelia Earhart Air or Disaster In The Sky International were either already taken or were just so on the nose as to put off ticket buyers. Now the thing is it is clear that the repeated use of the name in these other projects is a fluke coincidence and not proof of a real connections. But with Lost and Alias it is one more thread connecting these shows. On its own the name wouldn't be so much proof. But with the musical connection and the airline actually flying to Sydney. Not to mention one of the cast from Lost walking by in the background muttering, "I'm off to my doom! The flight back is a death flight!!!" Okay, I only wish that last part had happened.

   One final side point having nothing to do with crossovers but so weird I feel compelled to share. On Alias, Sydney's cold as ice super spy dad is played by the super cool Victor Garber. Here's his picture...

   Now, some time back, my folks forwarded me copies of some very old family photos. early 1900's era stuff. One was a large group shot of my grandmother's side of the family...

I about had a heart attack when I saw one particular face in the crowd...

Jack Bristow: the reaaally early yaers. Exactly how old is Victor Garber??? Check 'em out side by side.

   Weird or what? The really weird part is I don't even think Victor Garber's family ethnic background is anywhere close to my family's. So its not even like, "Oh well they both have family from Hungary and so similar facial feature pop up. Nope. Uh uh. He could not be from a more different background if he was an Eskimo.

   My belief is this must tie into the big Rambaldi plot on Alias. On the show Rambaldi is a man from the distant past who had knowledge of our times. Clearly it has to be Victor Garber who will travel back in time and, for God knows what reason, stop off for a snap shot with my Grandma. Hey, Alias has tried weirder things!

Other Alias Crossover Links
Alias and Eli Stone

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