J.J. Abrams: Please Report Back To Alias...STAT!

For those of you not up to speed as to what's happening on Alias, here's a quick recap: Sydney Bristow gets a job out of grad school with SD6, a CIA offshoot operation. SD6 is headed by Arvin Sloane, a fervent follower of Milo Rimbaldi, a long dead philosopher/inventor. Sydney's father, Jack, also works for SD6, and eventually tells her that SD6 is actually a terrorist organization, and that he is a double-agent working for the CIA to bring down SD6. SD6 is eventually brought down, but not before Sydney is reunited with her mother, Irina, who was exposed as a KGB spy when Sydney was a child. Sloane escapes during SD6's takedown, and goes on a quest to hunt down the lost "Rimbaldi artifacts". During the manhunt for Sloane, Sydney is put into a coma by the clone of her dead best friend, Francie. When she awakens two years later, her former lover and CIA handler, Vaughn, is married to an NSA agent named Lauren, and Sloane has been found, but turned "state's evidence", and now heads a relief organization. During his quest for Rimbaldi artifacts, Sloane comes to find out he has a daughter, Nadia, with Irina, and that she may hold the key to some of Rimbaldi's secrets. Vaughn, meanwhile, discovers that Lauren is actually a double agent working with Sark, one of Sloane's former SD6 cronies, which makes him mad enough to kill her, which he does.

There. That about catches it up for three seasons worth of episodes. If it sounds like a lot to take in, you have no idea: I've left out a dozen or so plot lines, because I just don't have the space to type them all. It's probably the most densely plotted show with this small of a cast. (Shows like ER and The West Wing have more plot, but they also have 5000 cast members each.) It's a show I've enjoyed since I started watching late in Season One.

But I've noticed something odd about this season. Whereas, in past years, there were about a million things going on in one episode, this year, the show's plots run like this: Sydney and the Scooby Gang are given a mission; they go do the mission; they return home to hugs and kisses. Wash, rinse, repeat. Thirteen episodes of basically the same show every week. So, why does an incredibly complex show suddenly stop being complex? What happened?

Lost happened.

J.J. Abrams, the creator and producer of Alias, is also the creator and producer of ABC's new tentpole show, Lost. Lost, as well as being one of two shows keeping ABC out of fourth place (Desperate Housewives is the other), is also the lead-in for Alias. In fact, Lost did so well at the beginning of the season that ABC actually moved Alias to follow it. "But what does ABC moving a show have to do with a show's decline in quality?" Nothing, actually. But notice I kicked this off by saying that Abrams is the producer of both shows. While I have only seen a couple episodes of Lost, it appears to be more complex than Alias, with a cast twice as large. So, if you're making an incredibly complex show that you want to do really well for the network and draw a lot of people, what happens to the other complex show you also produce? You throw it on the backburner.

Since the beginning, Alias has always had a full seasons worth of episodes (about 30). This year: 14. And its first episode didn't air until January, five months into the current TV season. Why? Because who has time to come up with new ideas for some spy show when you're coming up with new variations of Lord of the Flies every week; it's easier to just cut-and-paste old Mission: Impossible scripts together. (Truth be told, Alias has recently been coming up with some things that appear to have future payoffs; shit, there are still things from previous seasons that haven't paid off yet.)

There's a reason why David E. Kelly only has one show on TV now: you can't produce multiple serialized hour-long shows without out having at least one suffer. (Kelly had Ally McBeal, Boston Public, and The Practice all on at the same time; all suffered from Kelly's divided attention.) You just can't sustain the creative pace needed to keep multiple shows interesting. The only person who has been able to pull it off is Dick Wolf, creator of the Law and Order empire. But his shows succeed because they are stand-alones: you don't have to have seen any previous episodes to enjoy them. There is no character development, no story arc; just an interesting plot every week. Unfortunately, this is what has become of Alias. After investing three years into these characters' lives, suddenly, it's just about some people going on a mission (and about Sydney dressing in a costume: a feature that has annoyingly been incorporated into the credits), and that blows.

Here's what Abrams needs to do: Pick a show and go with it. Give another creative team your notes for the other, and let it go. If you have to pull a "Kelly" and shitcan one of them, so be it. But do something, and quick. This two-show bullshit seriously fucks with my Alias enjoyment.