Television's Greatest Characters Review

Sydney Bristow, college student by day, superspy by night, is one of the greatest characters in television history.  The central character on ABC's "ALIAS" had a dysfunctional family life (to say the least) when growing up.  Her mother died when she was young, or so she was led to believe, and her father, Jack, a CIA double agent under the guise of an airplane parts salesman, was mostly absent....at least emotionally.   Sydney was recruited into the spy game to work for a covert branch of the CIA...but she found out that was all a ruse, once her fiance was brutally murdered by Arvin Sloane (her current boss and former father-figure) due to her revelation that she was in fact a spy.  She had been working for a terrorist cell called SD-6 which duped it's lower level operatives into thinking they were the good guys.  She tried to walk away, only to have them attempt to take her life, seeing her as a security risk.   Then she found out her father was a member of SD-6 as well.  His position had been classified from her knowledge.  She then decided to go back to work for SD-6, but secretly she went to the CIA and offered her services as a double agent.  And then she found out her father was pulling the same double duty against SD-6.   So she now had to work together with her long estranged father.

She found out her father had been in charge of a top secret project called "Christmas" where young children were being conditioned to be spies.   He tested the methods on her, ultimately "taking her choices in life" out of her hands.   Her mother was a KGB agent that had been posing as Jack's wife to get information about "Project Christmas".   Sydney's conception and birth were apparently "collateral damage."  And her mother, Laura (real name Irina Derevko) was extracted and her "death" a fabrication.    She came face to face with her very-alive mother, aka "The Man," and was subsequently shot by her in the shoulder.  Her mother turned herself into the CIA only to double cross Sydney and the CIA and escape, once again breaking Sydney's heart.  Syd's  best friend Francie Calfo was murdered and replaced by a genetically altered duplicate, Allison Doren.  Sydney was kidnapped, drugged into paralysis, forced to watch her own funeral from only a few feet away, and disappeared for two years, presumed dead.  During that time she had her eggs removed, was forced to become a mercenary/assassin, and had her memory erased.  When she "woke up" she found she had lost the second love of her life (Michael Vaughn) to another woman, Lauren Reed (he married when she had gone missing, presumably dead) who was an NSA agent who was eventually revealed to be working as a double agent, alongside Julian Sark, for a terrorist organization called The Covenant  (Vaughn killed her).   She found a long lost half-sister Nadia Santos (daughter of her nemesis Arvin Sloane) a spy in South America, and ended up "leaving" the CIA to go to work for a covert branch of the CIA (for real this time) headed up by the terrorist-turned-humanitarian Arvin Sloane, whom Sydney still despised and refused to trust.   She found out her mother put a hit out on her, and her father killed her mother in an attempt to stop the hit.   Both of her mother's sisters, Katya and Elena Derevko, at one point attempted to kill her.   Then she found out she was pregnant with Vaughn's child, who was killed a few days later.   She vowed to find the killer, all the while pregnant.   She was (again) kidnapped, this time by her mother, because she held a secret, information regarding Rambaldi's ultimate endgame.   Her DNA was extracted, and used to genetically alter her former nemesis Anna Espinosa so that Anna could, as Sydney, fulfill a prophecy in her place.   Sydney escaped, killed her double, went into labor after confronting her mother, who along with her father helped deliver her child, then vanished.   Arvin, in a state of madness, ended up killing Nadia...another in a long line of brutal losses for Sydney.  Sydney who by then had developed close ties with her father, witnessed his being shot and ended up tearfully leaving him behind for dead when he urged her to go stop her mother from creating a catastrophic event.   She confronted her mother, tried to save her (Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader) style but ultimately had to kill her.

 Through all the turmoil she encountered in her life, she remained a strong, powerful yet sensitive, optimistic, loving, caring, focused, moral individual.  She always fought for what she believed was right, and made sacrifices for the greater good.   She maintained belief in the power of family, and friendship, forgiving her father, her mother, her sister, her lover, her friends (and in some cases even her enemies), over and over again, even when they did not deserve her forgiveness.  The idea of a stable home life never left her long distance sight.   Eventually she was able to leave the spy game behind, for the most part, and settle down with her husband, Vaughn (Sydney and Jack faked his death, and hid him away to keep him safe) and their two children, Isabelle and Jack.