I am – Hercules!!

This post exists mostly to keep fans of “Alias” from clogging up the all-important “Lost” talkback.

“Alias” began with Sydney Bristow’s boss, Arvin Sloane, ordering the execution of Sydney Bristow’s fiancé - because Sloane discovered said fiancé had learned of Syd’s secret superspy identity. During the balance of that first season we all watched, terrified that someone else close to Syd would discover Syd’s secret identity. And that Sloane would kill that someone else. It was amazing.

Midway through season two, Syd destroyed Sloane’s evil faux-CIA construct, SD-6. It was thrilling, one of the best hours of television ever broadcast.

And then the series lost its way. The tension drained away. Syd somehow, at some point, for some reason, stopped dedicating her life to the escaped Sloane’s destruction. Instead, Syd agreed at the beginning of this season to work under Sloane. Who killed her fiancé. What the fuck.

They can bring back Rambaldi’s toys. They can bring back Syd’s mom. They can bring back Anna Espinoza, McKenas Cole and faux Francie. They can even throw in a good episode, like the recent one with Michelle Forbes as the barefoot scientist tormented by Joel Grey. But I will never regard season four as anything but a betrayal of investment.

Were I King of “Alias”? “Season Four: Arvin Sloane Must Die!” Syd, Jack and Dixon – all seething with vengeance - would have brutalized, tortured and enslaved new and former enemies in their season-long quest to kill an increasingly genocidal, depraved and Syd-obsessed Sloane - before Sloane could use the technology of the coming centuries to transform himself into something unassailably powerful.

Of course, some may believe that’s not as much fun as giving Syd a long-lost sister with an evil nanny. And that, my friend, is why Al Gore invented talkbacks.

10 p.m. Wednesday. ABC.

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