Jack Bristow
Encyclopedia
Jonathan "Jack" Donahue Bristow, played by Victor Garber
, is Sydney Bristow
's father on the television series Alias. Jack is widely referred to as "Spy Daddy" in Alias fandom
, and consistently ranks as one of the most popular characters on the show. Victor Garber has thrice been nominated for an Emmy Award
for his portrayal of Jack, and fans voted the relationship between Sydney and Jack the best non-romantic relationship on the show in the 2005 AllAlias.com Fans' Choice Awards.
and can be among the show's coldest and most brutal characters. However, his character's defining trait is his devotion to the safety of his daughter, Sydney. He is highly protective of her and is willing to do anything - torture, kill, even betray his country - to ensure her well-being. His relationship with his daughter has always been problematic, although it warmed and matured as the show unfolded. According to background information provided in the official Alias magazine, Jack Bristow is originally from Canada (reflecting the fact that actor Victor Garber is Canadian). A screenshot in a fourth season episode showed a laptop referring to his birth in London, Ontario
. Jack's grandchild Isabelle was also born in Canada, on a mission in Vancouver
.
Prior to the events of the series, Jack fathered Sydney with Irina Derevko
, a long-term KGB
spy who married Jack to get close to the CIA, specifically to steal the details of Project Christmas
, which Jack was developing for the Agency. She took the name Laura Bristow and built a cover as an English literature
professor. Once the FBI started to investigate against Irina, she faked her death in a staged car accident. Jack, suspected of being complicit in Irina's espionage, was detained and placed in solitary confinement. He named Arvin
and Emily Sloane
as Sydney's temporary guardians. Jack and Arvin became friends after they got to know each other in the early seventies, when both started their careers at the CIA. When Jack was finally cleared, he began drinking heavily and became more of an absentee father, leaving Sydney to be raised by nannies. About ten years later, Jack was recruited into SD-6 by Sloane when the Alliance of Twelve was founded, and was one of the few agents who knew the truth behind the cell. He was also Director of Operations at SD-6, and many in the Alliance believed he was a logical choice to take Sloane's place.
When Sydney was in college, Arvin Sloane had her recruited into SD-6 without Jack's knowledge. Jack reacted negatively to Sydney's telling him that she had gotten a job at Credit Dauphine, the front company for SD-6. However, Jack's reaction made Sydney more determined to be a part of the "CIA." Jack later revealed to Sydney that he had recognized her potential, but wanted to keep her away from this life, away from making the choices that he had to and eventually she had to as an agent. Sydney's recruitment into SD-6 also caused Jack's Friendship with Sloane to end, although, because of the clandestine character of Jack's work as a double-agent at SD-6, he couldn't reveal that to Sloane until years after.
Several years later when Sydney herself becomes a double agent for the real CIA, she discovers that her father has long been in the same position and they learn to work together to bring down SD-6. Jack often used his position as Sloane's chief of operations to structure missions to the CIA's advantage. When Irina Derevko makes her reappearance in Season 2, Jack must also deal with his unresolved feelings of love and bitterness towards her while continuing to perform his job at SD-6 and the CIA. With SD-6's destruction, Jack found himself finally able to grow closer to his daughter.
Sydney learns in season 2 that Jack subjected her to Project Christmas
, a project that trained and hardwired potential spies. Sydney initially believed that this programming had taken away her choices in life, but in Season 3 discovers that it had, in fact, protected her autonomy and made her immune to brainwashing by the Covenant
. During Sydney's two year disappearance between Seasons 2 and 3, Jack was again taken into custody, held in solitary confinement for a year because of his working with unsanctioned sources (including Irina) to learn the truth behind Sydney's apparent death. During Season 3, Jack acts as a far more supportive father figure to Sydney, in response to her depression and emotional isolation during that season.
At the start of Season 4, Sydney learns that Jack killed Irina. Even though he did it because Irina had hired a hit man to kill Sydney, his action causes yet another rift to form between Jack and his daughter, a rift aggravated when both agents are recruited by Sloane into the new CIA black ops agency, Authorized Personnel Only
(APO). By the second half of the season, this rift has begun to heal.
Jack Bristow contracts radiation poisoning
during the events of the fourth season episode "Nightingale" when he entered a radioactive area in order to save Sydney's life during a mission. He initially keeps his condition a secret from his APO colleagues except for Marshall (who figures it out and confronts Jack, although Marshall later revealed it to Sydney). Bristow is seen consulting with a doctor who tells him the condition is terminal. Not accepting this prognosis, Jack begins a painful regimen of blood filtering treatments in order to delay the inevitable, and appeared to be experiencing memory loss related to medication; he is also puzzled by the appearance of a mysterious implant in his hand, which his doctor said was designed to regulate the anti-radiation medication.
Jack's doctor and indeed his entire treatment regimen turn out to be hallucination
s, and that Jack, his mind affected by the radiation, had been injecting himself with a poison. Further investigation by APO reveals that the hallucinated doctor actually exists. He was a scientist who had developed an experimental treatment for radiation sickness. In the early 1980s, Jack had helped the man escape to Scandinavia
. Sydney impersonates Irina to get Jack to reveal the doctor's whereabouts; the man is located and begins a genuine treatment regimen for Jack. During the impersonation, Sydney learned that her father had planned to leave the CIA in order to be a better parent to her and would have done so if her mother had not been revealed as a KGB agent. This did much to assuage Sydney's longstanding concerns about her importance in her father's life.
Jack learns near the end of the fourth season that he had not in fact killed Irina, but had shot a genetically engineered impostor
. He subsequently reunited with Irina, who chastised him for being so quick to rush to judgment about her, yet also said that she understood why he had acted to protect Sydney. Following Irina's help in foiling the end game of her sister Elena
, Jack decides to let Irina go rather than return her to federal prison. Husband and wife parted with a kiss.
In Season 5, Sydney is expecting her first child. In the absence of Michael Vaughn
, the child's father, Jack attends doctor's visits with Sydney and helps her to assemble a crib for his grandchild's nursery. However, he is distracted by the presence of Arvin Sloane within APO, a presence he (as the new director of the black ops unit) has authorized; Sloane's behavior appears dishonest, and although Sloane has admitted some of his lies, Jack remains on his guard.
Jack becomes a grandfather when Irina and he assist Sydney in delivering her daughter, Isabelle.
In the final episode, Jack, Vaughn (recently returned from hiding) and Sydney mount an assault on Rambaldi's tomb in Mongolia
where Sloane is in the process of activating The Horizon. Jack and Vaughn are captured by Sark, and when Sydney refuses to surrender The Horizon, Sloane shoots Jack. In retaliation, Sydney shoots Sloane, apparently to death.
Critically wounded, Jack is taken outside and insists that Sydney leave him and go to Hong Kong
in order to stop the final player in Rambaldi's endgame - Irina - and his daughter reluctantly obeys. Later, he somehow obtains a belt of explosives and struggles back into the tomb, where Sloane, who has apparently become immortal, has been revived. Telling Sloane, "You beat death, Arvin. But you couldn't beat me," Jack detonates the explosives, killing himself, sealing the tomb and burying Sloane alive.
The episode ends with a flash forward in which Sydney and Vaughn, several years in the future, have named their second child Jack in his honor.
Victor Garber
Victor Joseph Garber is a Canadian film, stage and television actor and singer. Garber is known for playing Jesus in Godspell, Jack Bristow in the television series Alias, Max in Lend Me a Tenor, and Thomas Andrews in James Cameron's Titanic.-Early life:Born in London, Ontario, Canada, Garber is...
, is Sydney Bristow
Sydney Bristow
Sydney Anne Bristow , played by Jennifer Garner, is the main character and protagonist on the television series Alias. She is an American woman with Russian-American family background who works as a spy for the CIA....
's father on the television series Alias. Jack is widely referred to as "Spy Daddy" in Alias fandom
Fandom
Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...
, and consistently ranks as one of the most popular characters on the show. Victor Garber has thrice been nominated for an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for his portrayal of Jack, and fans voted the relationship between Sydney and Jack the best non-romantic relationship on the show in the 2005 AllAlias.com Fans' Choice Awards.
Character biography
Jack Bristow, a longtime agent of the CIA and former double officer with SD-6, is often emotionally distantEmotional detachment
Emotional detachment, in psychology, can mean two different things. In the first meaning, it refers to an "inability to connect" with others emotionally, as well as a means of dealing with anxiety by preventing certain situations that trigger it; it is often described as "emotional numbing" or...
and can be among the show's coldest and most brutal characters. However, his character's defining trait is his devotion to the safety of his daughter, Sydney. He is highly protective of her and is willing to do anything - torture, kill, even betray his country - to ensure her well-being. His relationship with his daughter has always been problematic, although it warmed and matured as the show unfolded. According to background information provided in the official Alias magazine, Jack Bristow is originally from Canada (reflecting the fact that actor Victor Garber is Canadian). A screenshot in a fourth season episode showed a laptop referring to his birth in London, Ontario
London, Ontario
London is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...
. Jack's grandchild Isabelle was also born in Canada, on a mission in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
.
Prior to the events of the series, Jack fathered Sydney with Irina Derevko
Irina Derevko
Irina Derevko , is a fictional character on the television series Alias, and a main character during the second season of the series. Irina, played by Lena Olin, is the mother of the central character, Sydney Bristow.-Biography:...
, a long-term KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
spy who married Jack to get close to the CIA, specifically to steal the details of Project Christmas
Project Christmas
Project Christmas is a fictional black ops project from the television show Alias. Developed by the Central Intelligence Agency and headed by Jack Bristow in the 1970s, the project was designed to identify and train children as sleeper agents to become future spies...
, which Jack was developing for the Agency. She took the name Laura Bristow and built a cover as an English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
professor. Once the FBI started to investigate against Irina, she faked her death in a staged car accident. Jack, suspected of being complicit in Irina's espionage, was detained and placed in solitary confinement. He named Arvin
Arvin Sloane
Arvin Sloane is a fictional character played by Ron Rifkin. He was the former director of SD-6 on the television series, Alias.-Background:...
and Emily Sloane
Emily Sloane
Emily Sloane is a fictional character from the American television series Alias. She was portrayed by Amy Irving.-Biography:Emily Sloane was married to SD-6 head Arvin Sloane for more than 30 years. Little is known of her life outside of her marriage to Arvin. She had worked for the State...
as Sydney's temporary guardians. Jack and Arvin became friends after they got to know each other in the early seventies, when both started their careers at the CIA. When Jack was finally cleared, he began drinking heavily and became more of an absentee father, leaving Sydney to be raised by nannies. About ten years later, Jack was recruited into SD-6 by Sloane when the Alliance of Twelve was founded, and was one of the few agents who knew the truth behind the cell. He was also Director of Operations at SD-6, and many in the Alliance believed he was a logical choice to take Sloane's place.
When Sydney was in college, Arvin Sloane had her recruited into SD-6 without Jack's knowledge. Jack reacted negatively to Sydney's telling him that she had gotten a job at Credit Dauphine, the front company for SD-6. However, Jack's reaction made Sydney more determined to be a part of the "CIA." Jack later revealed to Sydney that he had recognized her potential, but wanted to keep her away from this life, away from making the choices that he had to and eventually she had to as an agent. Sydney's recruitment into SD-6 also caused Jack's Friendship with Sloane to end, although, because of the clandestine character of Jack's work as a double-agent at SD-6, he couldn't reveal that to Sloane until years after.
Several years later when Sydney herself becomes a double agent for the real CIA, she discovers that her father has long been in the same position and they learn to work together to bring down SD-6. Jack often used his position as Sloane's chief of operations to structure missions to the CIA's advantage. When Irina Derevko makes her reappearance in Season 2, Jack must also deal with his unresolved feelings of love and bitterness towards her while continuing to perform his job at SD-6 and the CIA. With SD-6's destruction, Jack found himself finally able to grow closer to his daughter.
Sydney learns in season 2 that Jack subjected her to Project Christmas
Project Christmas
Project Christmas is a fictional black ops project from the television show Alias. Developed by the Central Intelligence Agency and headed by Jack Bristow in the 1970s, the project was designed to identify and train children as sleeper agents to become future spies...
, a project that trained and hardwired potential spies. Sydney initially believed that this programming had taken away her choices in life, but in Season 3 discovers that it had, in fact, protected her autonomy and made her immune to brainwashing by the Covenant
Covenant (Alias)
In the television series Alias, The Covenant is a large, powerful, and secretive intelligence/terrorist organization.The Covenant was a "loose affiliation of Russian nationalists" composed of retired KGB and former Central Committee members, all dedicated to the new world envisioned by Milo...
. During Sydney's two year disappearance between Seasons 2 and 3, Jack was again taken into custody, held in solitary confinement for a year because of his working with unsanctioned sources (including Irina) to learn the truth behind Sydney's apparent death. During Season 3, Jack acts as a far more supportive father figure to Sydney, in response to her depression and emotional isolation during that season.
At the start of Season 4, Sydney learns that Jack killed Irina. Even though he did it because Irina had hired a hit man to kill Sydney, his action causes yet another rift to form between Jack and his daughter, a rift aggravated when both agents are recruited by Sloane into the new CIA black ops agency, Authorized Personnel Only
Authorized Personnel Only
Authorized Personnel Only , is a fictional black ops unit within the Central Intelligence Agency in the American TV series Alias. It was formed at the beginning of Season 4 and is headquartered beneath the Los Angeles Subway system....
(APO). By the second half of the season, this rift has begun to heal.
Jack Bristow contracts radiation poisoning
Radiation poisoning
Acute radiation syndrome also known as radiation poisoning, radiation sickness or radiation toxicity, is a constellation of health effects which occur within several months of exposure to high amounts of ionizing radiation...
during the events of the fourth season episode "Nightingale" when he entered a radioactive area in order to save Sydney's life during a mission. He initially keeps his condition a secret from his APO colleagues except for Marshall (who figures it out and confronts Jack, although Marshall later revealed it to Sydney). Bristow is seen consulting with a doctor who tells him the condition is terminal. Not accepting this prognosis, Jack begins a painful regimen of blood filtering treatments in order to delay the inevitable, and appeared to be experiencing memory loss related to medication; he is also puzzled by the appearance of a mysterious implant in his hand, which his doctor said was designed to regulate the anti-radiation medication.
Jack's doctor and indeed his entire treatment regimen turn out to be hallucination
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
s, and that Jack, his mind affected by the radiation, had been injecting himself with a poison. Further investigation by APO reveals that the hallucinated doctor actually exists. He was a scientist who had developed an experimental treatment for radiation sickness. In the early 1980s, Jack had helped the man escape to Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
. Sydney impersonates Irina to get Jack to reveal the doctor's whereabouts; the man is located and begins a genuine treatment regimen for Jack. During the impersonation, Sydney learned that her father had planned to leave the CIA in order to be a better parent to her and would have done so if her mother had not been revealed as a KGB agent. This did much to assuage Sydney's longstanding concerns about her importance in her father's life.
Jack learns near the end of the fourth season that he had not in fact killed Irina, but had shot a genetically engineered impostor
Project Helix
Project Helix is the name of a fictional technology in the TV series Alias. The device is used to rewrite a person's DNA, effectively morphing them into a clone of the person from whom the replacement DNA was procured. The only way to detect a double is through a deliberate flaw built into the...
. He subsequently reunited with Irina, who chastised him for being so quick to rush to judgment about her, yet also said that she understood why he had acted to protect Sydney. Following Irina's help in foiling the end game of her sister Elena
Elena Derevko
Elena Derevko is a fictional character from the television series Alias, played by Sônia Braga.Elena is the sister of Irina and Katya Derevko. Considered to be the most ruthless of the Derevko sisters, Elena is the secret leader of The Covenant. She was first mentioned in the season three episode...
, Jack decides to let Irina go rather than return her to federal prison. Husband and wife parted with a kiss.
In Season 5, Sydney is expecting her first child. In the absence of Michael Vaughn
Michael Vaughn
Michael C. Vaughn is a fictional character on the television series Alias. Played by Michael Vartan, Vaughn is one of Sydney Bristow's co-workers and her ongoing love interest. He, like Sydney, is skilled in a variety of areas...
, the child's father, Jack attends doctor's visits with Sydney and helps her to assemble a crib for his grandchild's nursery. However, he is distracted by the presence of Arvin Sloane within APO, a presence he (as the new director of the black ops unit) has authorized; Sloane's behavior appears dishonest, and although Sloane has admitted some of his lies, Jack remains on his guard.
Jack becomes a grandfather when Irina and he assist Sydney in delivering her daughter, Isabelle.
In the final episode, Jack, Vaughn (recently returned from hiding) and Sydney mount an assault on Rambaldi's tomb in Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
where Sloane is in the process of activating The Horizon. Jack and Vaughn are captured by Sark, and when Sydney refuses to surrender The Horizon, Sloane shoots Jack. In retaliation, Sydney shoots Sloane, apparently to death.
Critically wounded, Jack is taken outside and insists that Sydney leave him and go to Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
in order to stop the final player in Rambaldi's endgame - Irina - and his daughter reluctantly obeys. Later, he somehow obtains a belt of explosives and struggles back into the tomb, where Sloane, who has apparently become immortal, has been revived. Telling Sloane, "You beat death, Arvin. But you couldn't beat me," Jack detonates the explosives, killing himself, sealing the tomb and burying Sloane alive.
The episode ends with a flash forward in which Sydney and Vaughn, several years in the future, have named their second child Jack in his honor.