Jennifer Garner’s Kids Should Watch Alias

On Tuesday, Allure dropped a new profile of Jennifer Garner, the award-winning actress and baby food entrepreneur. The photos are great! But one section of the profile jumped out at me, a noted longtime Garner fan: Garner’s children don’t watch her work. They only like watching Ben Affleck.

“They don’t mind watching their dad, but they kind of want me to be their mom. They don’t want to see me upset and women cry more in what we do,” she told the magazine. “And they don’t really want to see me in a romantic thing.”

Well, have I got great news for the Garner-Affleck kids. Their mom’s best work, Alias, has everything they could want in a Garner-viewing experience: Minimal romance and enough wigs to make them forget that they’re watching their mom.

This spy thriller primetime television show was created by J.J. Abrams—who was fresh off his run as co-creator of Felicity—in September 2001. (To our younger readers, these words probably make sense in that it’s an English sentence with correct grammar, but to people of a certain age that set of facts will make your head spin.)

Yes, there is some romance because it couldn’t just be a show about a double agent for the CIA working to bring down SD-6, a worldwide criminal network. But it’s mostly about spying and friends.

And Garner committed to the bit as Sydney Bristow. There’s a reason this is an award-winning show (according to the Golden Globes) led by the multi-Emmy-nominated Garner. She knew what she was doing. And honestly, I think a lot of the reason is because Garner knows how to wear the hell out of a wig.

So here are my wig-based reasons for watching your mother’s seminal work. Happy Alias-bingeing!

This is the wig from the premiere. They couldn’t get the exact shade right and eventually ended up buying “a few hairs” from a girl off the street that had the perfect color. Producer Sarah Caplan told the story at ATX Festival in 2017:

I go to the girl, “Would you mind, can I take a little snippet of the bottom of your hair? We’re looking for this certain color. The director thinks yours is the perfect color.” She looks at me and she goes, “No.” I said, “Really? Why not?” “Well, I’ve grown this hair and that hair has been with me for 14 years.” “I only want a few hairs. Well, we’ll pay you for the little bit of hair.” By now she’s sitting down with her friends. She’s very smart. Finally, she agrees that we can buy a little bit of the hair. I don’t have any money on me, J.J. doesn’t have any money on me, so I wrestle $39 off various members of the crew.

The hair on this show has been nuts since its inception.

While wearing this wig, our dear Sydney figures out she’s actually been working for a worldwide crime network instead of a dark-ops CIA department. We find her on a mission to Moscow—in this incredible blonde wig—to recover stolen files. It’s her first mission as a double agent, actually working with the CIA to bring down SD-6, the aforementioned criminal syndicate.

What Russian hotel maid doesn’t carry a briefcase and four poorly folded towels to clean only one room on a floor? Soon after she’ll discover that the money she’s searching for is fake! And she must race through a club to switch the floppy discs!

Here we have Sydney in Spain, retrieving a sketch...I think. Honestly, who cares if this is what she looks like? But again, it doesn’t look like Jennifer Garner at all! Does it Garner-Affleck kids?

Kids, your mother put on this wig and acted the HELL out of it. All dearest love to my mother but she could not pull off a wig, let alone this wig, this dress, and the boa while trying to save her friend/handler/man she loves, Vaughn (her CIA handler played by Michael Vartan.)

This stringy red number doesn’t exactly look great, but luckily Garner’s bone structure and stunt work make up for its weird inclusion in this Cuba-set episode.

Garner wears this little number to either Mexico or Japan while also dealing with the fact that the man she loves won’t leave his wife aka a spy who was just using him!!!!! Again, there’s some romance because romance is necessary to life, but mostly it’s about Garner kicking ass in increasingly ridiculous get-ups.

You’re telling me you do NOT want to know the context of this photo of Garner and Bradley Cooper portraying rock stars??? Couldn’t be me. To give you a taste: This is from season 3, episode 10 when Cooper’s Will is brought back into the fold from witness protection so they can...you’ll have to watch to see

This wig is so transformative I almost missed that this is Garner!

The show could do understated looks too! I just prefer when they’re absolutely over-the-top...

Blue! Hair! Bondage! Attire! This show could blend Garner—who is as apple pie beauty queen as a girl can look—into any environment as long as they have enough spirit gum. In the season 1 finale, Garner and Vaughn are trying to save Cooper and must go to a club in Taipei to do it.

Bleached blonde wig? Cool bomber jacket? Enough eyeliner to make Billie Joe Armstrong jealous? This just screams SPY, and not “my mom, Jennifer Garner.”

This one isn’t a wig, of course, but yet another unhinged costuming choice. More than getting the Garner-Affleck kids to watch Alias, I really just want to look inside the minds of the show’s costume designers. Kids, watch the damn show, and then maybe your mom will give all of us their contact info.