I’m not going to bother with spoilers, since it’s already up for free on ABC’s website, and anyone who’s still interested in this show has probably already seen it.

As episodes of disposable television series go, it wasn’t all that bad. There were explosions, and stunt scenes, and espionage setups, and a teary dramatic moment between Sydney and her dad that was actually pretty well done. Still, the whole thing soured me on the series and was enough to make me kind of embarrassed I ever got into the show in the first place.

The deal with “Alias” was always that you go the sense they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew exactly how ridiculous their plots were, but damn if they weren’t going to give you the best CIA family drama with evil twins and zombies and explosions story it’s possible to make. When it worked, it was populist without being pandering, not taking itself too seriously but also not resorting to arch parody.

When you’ve got that balance, you can keep ratcheting up the action sequences without worrying about its getting too unrealistic — as long as it makes dramatic sense, you’re golden, ancient prophecies and sentient bee swarms and all. And you can throw in character drama without it devolving into melodrama or being just a whiny soap opera. But without that balance, it just lays bare the unbelievability of the plot and the characters.

That’s my problem with the finale; it just made it obvious that they didn’t know what they were doing. There’s really no excuse for it, either — they had a long maternity leave, and they knew that the series was going to end, so they had plenty of time to build up to a big finish. Instead, they dicked around for five or six episodes, and then tried to tie up everything in the last 15 minutes or so. I’m even fine with what they did, just not how they did it. It was like they had a bullet list of things that had to happen: these people have to die, these have to live, we’ve got to blow up headquarters, we’ve got to have clandestine picture-taking, two bomb countdowns, tie up the Rambaldi business, have dramatic death scenes, and tie up Sydney Bristow’s Personal Journey. You’ve got an hour and a half. Go.

It was all so by-the-numbers that none of it mattered, and it in retrospect, it made the whole series seem pretty stupid and cobbled together. The whole season has been like that — storylines like the one with Tom that just went nowhere. To get into “why can’t you be more like your brother?” territory — when “Lost” had its big shocking episode a couple of weeks ago, the episode of “Alias” that aired the same night technically did the exact same thing (killed off two major characters with one plot twist). But while “Lost” had me sitting on the couch feeling like I’d had the wind knocked out of me, “Alias” just had me thinking, “Well, that happened.”

The worst is that I can take their bullet list of things that had to happen, and come up with a much better scenario that would’ve worked and tied everything together, without even trying that hard: All they had to do is have the first hour be the build-up to a big showdown on Mt. Subasio. Most of the main characters get killed as Sloane does the “horizon” thing with the sunlight (skip the bit in Rambaldi’s tomb; that was dumb). Jack sacrifices himself to save Sydney and kills Sloane in the process. Sydney’s left standing there looking just like the drawing in the manuscript, then she decides to use the horizon’s power to “fix” everything. (In this version, it actually lets you control time and such, instead of some immortality juice that’s a huge let-down after five seasons of build-up).

The whole second hour is flashbacks/alternate reality type deals where she’s going back through series and saving people she couldn’t save before. Like her fiance, and Francie, and everybody that got killed in the first hour. But the whole time, she keeps being reminded that people choose their own path, and she can’t save everyone. When she sees the results of all her changes, it’s the end of the world, with the “stars falling from the sky” and all the other prophecies we were promised. Irina gives her speech about power being the most important thing, but Sydney tells her she’s wrong, because she has all the power in the world now and still can’t fix everything. Jack tells her he wanted to keep her safe from the whole spy business, but now he realizes that he didn’t control her; she made her own choices to save the world. With that, she goes back to the final showdown and lets it play out with most everybody surviving. Jack still sacrifices himself to save her, Irina and Sloane die, and we get the exact same epilogue we had in the “real” episode.

There. (If you want a better resolution for Sloane, he could be in a mental institution with Nadia and Emily haunting him for the rest of his life). That only took about 20 minutes, and even that is better than what they came up with after five months. You get all the stuff they were trying to say about power and choices and sacrifice, and you get all the cheesy sci-fi spy stuff, and you still get a semi-happy ending.

And that doesn’t count as “fan fiction,” so shut up.

If they can keep it up at this level, and the signs suggest they can, then I’ll be mighty pleased. They’ve got a good villain in Amy Acker and decent support cast with the two new guys and French lady with overbite. (And it’s kind of funny that cutting off somebody’s ear was horrifying and brutal in Reservoir Dogs, but now they show it not only on network TV, but on a network TV series that my mom watches).

The show’s already repeating itself, so it’s good that they can go out on a high note. They’ve always had kick-ass season finales, even before the big cliffhanger, so I can only imagine that a series finale that they’ve had this long to prepare for is going to be huge. I could do without the “somebody’s going to die” stuff in the teaser commercial, since they’ve already blown their wad, cast-member-death-wise, for this season. But still, should be interesting.

I can’t see getting all that upset about the show’s getting cancelled. I just got into it recently, but I could still tell that it was starting to wear out its welcome. And giving it until the end(-ish) of the season instead of yanking it immediately, gives them the chance to make a real close to it. According to the article, they’ve got something big planned.

In other news, here’s a fun fact: there are several cities called “Atlanta” in the US. The one in Idaho is apparently the one that’s having 30-degree highs all this week. Here in Georgia, it’s been around 60. Still chilly though! Or at least, I imagine it would be if I’d ever left my parents’ house. Skip wants me to go out with him for all the day-after-Thanksgiving sales, but I’m resistant. We’ve done that before, and the traffic is nuts and the crowds are unreasonable. And we never end up buying anything, somehow, even if we stay out the entire day. I think I’m doing my Christmas shopping online this year.

That’s because today is a special day: at last, my little obsession over the past few months is over, and I’m caught up with “Alias.” TNT finally ran the zombie episode. I’d been expecting a whole zombie storyline, but they didn’t show up until the season finale. And they weren’t really zombies. But still, it was pretty damn impressive as a TV show season finale. On par with the best season, season 2. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence, but what they both have in common is Lena Olin as Sydney’s mom. Kinda sucks when you make a show with one great, stand-out character that your staff really knows how to write for and makes for the best storylines, and you can only have her make guest appearances.

I do think it’s kind of funny that throughout the entire series so far, the only times they’ve showed Jack Bristow kissing a woman, it was with someone he was angry at or repulsed by. C’mon, dude — you’re an actor! And it’s Lena Olin and Isabella Rosselini for gosh sakes! Can’t you just take one on the chin for ABC, and put some passion in it?

So all that’s left is the two missing episodes from the beginning of season 4, but I already know what happens in those from flashbacks and such. Then I have to pick a new hobby. I do have these “Lost” episodes on DVD sitting around…

There’s some videogame website whose motto is “A moment enjoyed is never wasted,” and that’s been a useful rationalization for a while, but there’s no way I can justify my total lack of activity yesterday. I didn’t even manage to accomplish anything for my Sims. So I officially completely and totally wasted the day of October 16, 2005. Closest I came to an achievement was finally finishing that Terry Pratchett book (which was good but not particularly memorable).

All my time-wasting culminated in four straight hours of “Alias” reruns. Season 4 is like “Alias” on Paxil: the highs and lows are evened out, and it’s going forward as competent, dependable television. There are still solid episodes that are actually really good — the one with the ex-Soviet terrorist group training its agents in a simulated American suburban neighborhood was a well-done standalone episode. And last night I finally saw the episode where Sydney gets buried alive and Marshall has to gouge out the eyes of a bad guy with a spork; that was a good one. There’s just not much of the “oh hell no they didn’t just do that” anymore, although they seem to be taking steps in that direction by having Joel Grey as a Sloane look-alike.

Season 5 I’m still not sure about. I was really happy to see Fred show up, especially as a bad guy, and especially in what looks like it’s going to be a recurring part (at least until the next episode). They’re trying hard to get us interested in the two new characters who’re supposed to carry the series now, but it’s just not working yet. Granted, it’s better than the previous week’s, which had the action-packed climax on a plane with the super fighting team of a pregnant woman, a chubby guy, and a man in his early 50s taking on a terrorist cell. (But having the device turn out to be a body, not a bomb, was a nice touch).

I’m sure I’ll keep up with it at least until TNT starts showing the zombie episodes. After that, though, the new ones are going to have to pull off something pretty remarkable to keep me interested.

But then I checked an episode guide, and I found I’d started with episode 3. All the big changes that were confusing me so, had happened in the first two episodes. Damn! When they reboot a show, they don’t fool around.

Then I decided as long as I was confused, there’s no harm in watching both seasons simultaneously. So I went ahead and watched tonight’s premiere of season 5. Damn! When they reboot a show, they don’t fool around.

So as near as I can make out:

Everybody quit the CIA and told chubby agent Weiss that they’re going to work for a bank, but then Sydney’s sister turned into a zombie and then moved in with her, but Vaughn’s father changed his name and then died and then Sloane was leading this top-secret black-ops agency of the CIA from his jail cell but Jack killed Irina Derevko and then she got engaged to Vaughn but they broke up because he was upset about killing Lauren but then he got her pregnant and died so now it’s four months later and Sydney is planning revenge.

But there were also lots of explosions and some dude got freeze-dried and then shattered into a million pieces when he got shot. That was bad-ass. Who needs to understand what’s going on? They probably don’t understand what’s going on.

I can’t even tell if it warrants a “spoiler” warning, but whatever.

It was so important than her evil rival gave her the clue to find it with her dying breath. And so Sydney finds a bunch of a documents that reveal she’s the subject of a top-secret CIA operation. And the operation was led by Jack Bristow. And she looks horrified.

Even though she already found out all of that, like two seasons ago. It was called “Project Christmas.” There was a whole sub-plot about it. She told off her dad and everything. And then conveniently forgot about it and started working with him again like everything was fine. I thought it was weird that she forgave it so quickly, but I figured whatever makes the writers happy, and if they want to drop the story then I’m not going to press it. But now it just seems like nobody involved with the show has any short-term memory.

It’s not as if there wasn’t a metric assload of stuff they could’ve done with the climax. Sloane and Nadia doing something dangerous and evil. Vaughn going through a breakdown. Aunt Katya doing something evil. Lauren’s mom. The Covenant. Some new horrible discovery about Julia Thorne. Sydney discovers yet another sibling, like maybe Vaughn is her brother or Marshall’s baby is actually a spy cousin. But to resurrect a sub-plot that had already been forgotten? Weak.

I’m already somewhat spoiled for season 4, after reading the description on Netflix and wading through the obnoxious crap that is “Television Without Pity” to find out what went on in season 3. So I’ve already heard that they drop the Secret Files stuff pretty quickly and instead give the show another reboot. But I’m not all that excited about it. The DVDs for season 4 aren’t released until mid-October, and then I’ll have to decide whether I want to buy the set or rent them or watch it simultaneously with season 5, or wait until the DVDs for that is released, or what. And the annoying part is that the end of season 3 was such a let-down that I’m not all that anxious either way.

But still: zombies!

At this point in the series, it’s reminding me a lot of the TV series “Angel.” Not in the content or the tone, but in how I’m responding to it. “Angel” is my quintessential love/hate TV series — there were so many characters and plotlines that I just despised, and which annoyed me enough to just give up on the show over and over again. But when they did well, it was some of the best television ever made.

They had the lame “lawyers are really evil” and “LA is really phony” gags that they just never put to rest, and they had some really loathesome characters that were supposed to be sympathetic, like Lorne the demon guy and Angel’s son. But then they’d have a killer storyline like the one where Faith came back and had more depth to her character in those two episodes than in an entire year of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Or the whole fourth season of “Angel,” where they had basically written themselves into a corner and had to cover up a pregnancy, but came out of it with a great season arc that all fit together and had episodes which were genuinely scary (and I didn’t think TV could scare me anymore).

And season three of “Alias” is kind of like that. Most of it just shatters all the “I know it’s implausible and over the top, but it’s supposed to be” good-will I’d built up. All the plot twists and change-ups and revealed secrets just seem like bored writers in afternoon meetings, moving characters around on a grid without even trying to come up with real motivations for them. The characters have gone from being two-dimensional but lovable, to one-and-a-half-dimensional and so boring that even they seem to be bored with what they’re doing. Here’s yet another scene where Jack breaks the rules to save his daughter. Here’s another scene where Dixon encounters somebody behind bars and vows vengeance. Here’s one more scene where Sydney shows teary-eyed determination. Here’s still yet another girlfight with the evil Allison Doren (who got an extraordinarily anti-climactic send-off). I’m still fine with being earnest, but that will only take you so far if you don’t have an engrossing story to back it up.

And the big villain of the season was so completely obvious from scene one, that I can’t tell whether or not the reveal was supposed to be a surprise. There are still two discs left, and I’m sure that they’ve got more plot twists to throw at the story, but so far it’s been a real yawner. (Although I will say that as soon as she started playing evil, she became 1000 times sexier. What that says about me, I don’t know and don’t want to think about.) And granted, the whole bit about Sydney’s missing two years was getting stale, but instead of throwing in some twists to make it interesting, they just blew their wad and explained the whole thing away.

So that’s the hate; where’s the love? Well, this is also the season where they really got the big budgets, it looks like, and they’d built up enough reputation to attract even bigger-name guest stars. And they had the freedom to do interesting stuff that didn’t quite fit in with the formula. Like the episode with Ricky Gervais as an IRA bomber: pretty neat. And the one with David Cronenberg as the doctor who sent Sydney on that whole dream-sequence episode: very, very neat. And Isabella Rosselini as the superspy that helps Jack: pretty lame episode overall, but she gave a great performance, even though she looks even more uncannily like David Foley in drag the older she gets.

I’m still unspoiled for the rest of this season, so I have no idea what the big cliff-hanger is going to be. And considering that the next season isn’t available on DVD until mid-October, I’m actually going to have to wait to see the resolution of this cliff-hanger. It’ll be interesting to see how long I can hold out before begging people to tell me what happens in season four.

I watched the last episode of Season 2 last night. The big surprises from the Season 2 ending were already spoiled for me, so I didn’t get as big a shock as the first-time viewers. But I’ve got to say: even though I knew it was coming, that was one hell of a fight. I guess graduate students can only afford apartments made out of balsa wood. I’d heard about the big cliff-hanger/twist as well, so that wasn’t a shocker; I was just waiting to see how they actually did it.

Everything from here on out to the zombies is still spoiler-free for me, so I’m waiting to see what they do with Season 3. I’ve heard varying reports on teh internets. Netflix will show me the way, since I’ve already got the first disc queued up.

With these shows that I’ve gotten obsessed over in the past (“Buffy” and “X-Files”), they’ve always had episodes where it seems as if they’ve painted themselves into a corner, and then magically turned it all around to reveal a whole new room. “Alias” takes more of the brute-force approach — they paint themselves into a corner, and then demolish the house. But it keeps moving; you’ve got to give them that.

Another thing I noticed about “Alias” after watching the bonus features and commentary (since there were only 2 episodes on the last disc, I had to watch something): it’s really hard for me to maintain a healthy cynical detachment from this show. I realize that the show is formulaic and filled with ridiculous contrivances and plot-twists, but they all realize that, too. It doesn’t matter. It’s like a roller coaster — if you keep telling yourself it’s fake and there’s no way you can get hurt, it sucks all the fun out of it.

There was a bit of an interview with Jennifer Garner on there, where she said that during the filming of the finale she kept crying in between takes because she felt so bad for Sydney Bristow and what she was going through. She said, “I mean, I know that she’s a fictional character of course, but she’s real to me.” That’s the key to the whole show. You can either roll your eyes at that, or you can take it at face value and play along.

They’re all so dead earnest about the show, which is why you can hear about double- and triple-agents and ridiculous plot contrivances and DNA strands and retinal scans and not be distracted by the absurdity of it all. And you can really think things like, “Man, how bad would that feel to have your mother who you thought was dead but actually turned out to be a double-agent spying on your dad who was also a double-agent and now she’s stabbing you with a cattle prod because she’s working with the man who killed your fiance in order to steal ancient super-powerful artifacts that grant immortality? That would really suck!”

And because they’re so dead earnest about it, I actually liked watching the blooper reel, which I normally despise. It’s just fun to see them all get to smile for once. And I got a kick out of watching the rest of the promotional stuff, even though I know it’s all just marketed and manufactured to be a star vehicle for Jennifer Garner and show star-struck brainless TV-watching masses just how charming she is. But dammit, she is charming!

I’ve been tired of irony for a while now — everything trying to be all self-referential and “dark and edgy.” I’m getting a kick out of seeing something that just says, “Yes. We have zombies.” And they’re not afraid of looking stupid, and they’re not saying it’s some joke or a metaphor for something “deeper.”

I just finished watching the first episode on “Alias”, Season 2, Disc 4. There’s only one other time I can remember that I felt compelled to yell back at the screen during a TV show, and that was an episode of “Twin Peaks” where Bob crawls out from behind a planter in the Palmer living room. The only thing that kept me from screaming back “oh hell no you didn’t just do that” at the last 5 minutes of this episode is that I started watching it at 1 AM and I got neighbors. (Plus, I’m a suburban white guy, so I shouldn’t be saying that kind of thing anyway).

I know I said they don’t like to drag out plot lines, and instead just throw everything at you at once, but this is crazy!

Everything after this is a big SPOILER for “Alias,” so stop reading if you haven’t been watching the show and think you might want to at some point.

Damn! How could they do that to Francie? I’d seen bits of a couple of the episodes before, where Sydney and Francie were fighting it out inside their apartment, so I knew that she was a double agent. But I was fine with that. So all the time they’re super-best-friends and confiding in each other, I’m thinking, “Just you wait.” Sure, it’s odd that her cover is that elaborate, and that she’s not really doing anything double-agenty the whole two years they’re living together, but that’s far from the most incredible thing they’ve had on the show.

So Sydney tells Dixon the whole truth, and that’s fine, it’s about time. And then we see that Sloane knew that they’re double agents, and sure, of course, he had to — the show creators are hip enough to realize how ridiculous it is that their cover hasn’t yet been completely blown, and so they’re handling that well. And then she kills Rutger Hauer in the same episode that they introduce him, and I’m thinking that that’s a real waste of a character, but okay fine. And then she and Vaughn start making out, and the Alliance is shut down, and everybody’s happy but I know of course that that’s not the end of the series and they’ll find some clever way to keep it going.

So Sloane’s got a big plan in effect; yeah, we picked up on that. And Sark’s in on it, okay fine; he’s a boring character but whatever turns you guys on. And then he calls Francie and that’s cool too — here’s where we learn of her deception. And they move back to the kitchen and there’s blood all over the wall, and I’m thinking, “Hot damn! She made out with creepy reporter guy so she could get close enough to kill him!” And I’m all excited because I’ve wanted him dead for a while. But then they pan down and it’s not him!

It’s Francie with a bullet in her head! No! He killed her! J.J. Abrams killed his shallow, two-dimensional best friend character! Have you no shame at all?

Even knowing that she was a double, I didn’t see that coming! I thought, worst case she’s been a double all along, working for the Alliance to get info on Jack and Sydney. Better would’ve been if she’d been working for Irina Derevko, to keep tabs on Sydney after her “death.” Best of all would’ve been that somebody contacted her after creepy reporter found out everything, and recruited her to gather info to keep an eye on him and Sydney.

But to just shoot her in the head? That’s just cold. I thought that was the rule of this show: they don’t kill anybody you care about. And even knowing that she was a two-dimensional character who never really did much of anything, and that the sitting around the apartment talking about boys was the most boring part of the series, and that I thought she was going to turn evil, I still got attached.

Now I’m going to be up for at least another three hours to watch the rest of this damn DVD.