Sydney goes to Sydney

I will miss "Alias," if only because I doubt any new show will offer up picture possibilities like the one above.

So after skimming through the last two or three episodes in the hopes of getting myself up to speed for the finale, I watched the final two hours and was still completely baffled. "24" makes no sense if you stop to think about it for a minute; "Alias" makes no sense even as you watch it.

Sloane, having just acquired the secret of eternal life, wants to blow up several world capitols just so he can make money rebuilding them? Huh? Why doesn't he just contact Tony Soprano and buy out that heavy equipment leasing company from Johnny Sack? If I were suddenly granted immortality, I think I'd have other priorities beyond blowing stuff up and making money. For starters, I would go eat one of those Pizza Hut pizzas with the extra layer of cheese in the crust, because I wouldn't have to worry about cholestorol anymore.

Overall, the finale felt like a lot of missed opportunities. While I'm sure the producers had been waiting for years to do that "Sydney" location card, they had one last chance to put Jennifer Garner in some ridiculous costume, and they dress her up as a waitress? Really? Couldn't she at least have had to be a waitress with blue hair? Or horn-rimmed glasses? Throw us a bone, man! Please!

While the flashbacks did set up that scene at the end with Syd's daughter, I don't feel like it taught me anything new about the clan Bristow. Couldn't they at least have brought back Danny for one of the flashbacks? Or, even better, couldn't they have revealed that he's been alive the entire time and pulling all the strings, even Sloane's? Wouldn't have been any more ridiculous than anything else that happened.

I did like certain moments in the finale. Jack burying Arvin alive for all eternity (or, at least, until gentrification comes to that part of the world and that cave is excavated to build condos) was about as cool a dying act as I've seen a TV character perform. I will never complain about a Jennifer Garner/Lena Olin brawl. Marshall standing up while captured was a nice moment for him, as was his communicating in code by using the children's books. And Rachel busting out the snake to interrogate Peyton was a lot more effective than the Jack Bauer shout-and-shoot method. (As Rich Heldenfels said to me this morning, "They should bring some of the Alias people over to 24 just so they can say, 'Hey, Jack, have you ever thought about using a snake?'")

Goodbye, strange spy show. You were weird, you were unexpected, and you were a lot of fun for a while there, until the point when it became obvious that there was no there there. Sounds kind of like another ABC drama, doesn't it?