Guest stars, part the deux

Alias has been turning in a fine season thus far, so says I, even if Jennifer Garner's very-pregnant-ness is a harsh reminder of the fact that she's married to someone other than me. Interestingly, the cast this year is growing even faster than that of the Garfleck family (who I hope decide on a baby name that is at least (a) pronouncable and (b) not the name of a fruit, superhero, or fruity superhero).

Joining the team within the first couple episodes was Balthazar Getty, a guy whose name totally makes him sound bald and Australian, but is actually as blandly American as you can get. I knew him mainly from the most recent Project Greenlight, which chronicled the nightmarish filming of a nightmarish film called Feast; he barely distinguished himself, but that's probably a good thing on a show that tends to give the most airtime to the biggest assholes and complainers on the set. He's playing a dull-yet-macho agent, the kind of guy who doesn't "play by the rules" or "walk the line" or "act all that well," but...

...who really cares? Alias has always been about watching a hot babe kick ass, and if said hot babe is too far into her knocked-up-ness to properly execute her superfly ninja moves, then clearly we're going to need reinforcements. Enter Rachel Nichols, former star of The Inside. You may have heard us mention this show once or twice or 286 times on the podcast. It was awesome. It was scary, it was funny, it was intelligent, and it was on Fox, so needless to say, it was canceled. After playing a hot young agent on that show, Rachel has moved on to play a grizzled old popcorn vendor on Alias. Except not so grizzled, and not so much with the popcorn, and... oh, hell, she's just playing a hot young agent again. But what's wrong with that? Nothing, of course. She looks pretty much the same as she did on The Inside, which is to say, really, really good. I think she'll do fine, at least for the time being. It'll kind of suck if she actually has to take on the lead role, as has been rumored might happen after this season, not just because it's not really Alias without Sydney, but also because I somehow doubt that she can do as many of her stunts as Jennifer "I'm A Black Belt, Ask Me How" Garner.

Wait, there's more! Not content to limit their canceled-show-raiding to just one hot babe, the producers of Alias have also roped in Amy Acker, apparently unemployed since the WB closed the doors on Angel in 2004. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, she played Fred, one of those characters who always treaded the thin line between cute and annoying and ended up on the wrong side of it at least a few times every season. Then they killed her off and replaced her with an immortal demon who used her body as a shell, which was absolutely not the weirdest plotline they ever tried on that show. Anyway, her introduction to Alias this week was fairly typical for this show, pretty-girl-wise: first she snuck into a chemical weapons facility in black Middle Eastern garb and committed multiple homicides; then later on, she was shown as a giggling technician in the same office as our girl Rachel. That's "office" without the capital O, meaning it's not an uncomfortable British sitcom but rather the headquarters of a super-evil criminal organization posing as a branch of the CIA. Amy seems to know that the place is evil, and happily goes along with it, but Rachel didn't know until just now, so their amiable co-worker relationship is destined to turn into mortal enemy-ness. Which, let's face it, is much hotter.