I'm not thinking so much about its ratings, although there is cause for concern there, because the show has struggled to find an audience for a season and a half. And despite all those ABC ads featuring star Jennifer Garner decked out in black lingerie during Sunday's game, the episode drew the fewest viewers (17.4 million) of any post-Super Bowl show in 15 years.

But to fans of the show, the ratings were not the big thing. Rather -- if the e-mail coming to me is any indication -- they're concerned about what took place during the episode.

"I worry," said Leslie Wallech in an e-mail, "that we just saw the end of a really good series."

From its opening episode, "Alias" has been flashy, entertaining, well-written, fun TV with a terrific cast headed by Garner, an intelligent actress who can pull off action and drama with equal skill. So the failure of the series to draw a big audience has always been something of a mystery.

But one theory -- espoused, in particular, by ABC executives -- is that its plot lines and core premise have simply been just too byzantine for the average viewer.

For those coming in late, the driving force of the show has always been Garner's Sydney Bristow living a life as a CIA double agent working undercover at SD-6, a secret agency run by the evil Alliance. The twist was that most of the people at SD-6 thought they were part of the CIA and were the good guys. It could get very convoluted week to week.

That all came to an end Sunday when the CIA finally took out SD-6 in a blaze of gunfire. That leaves Sydney free to play a more straightforward spy and find romance with her CIA handler Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan). It also will allow the show's villain -- former SD-6 head Arvin Sloane, played with great glee by Ron Rifkin -- to be truly evil, no longer having to pretend he's a good guy. (Sloane not only survived SD-6's collapse; he set it up.)

But one of the great charms of "Alias" was its richly written and plotted world. Now, things promise to be simpler, but that's not necessarily a good thing for fans.

"The whole spy-vs.-spy, undercover thing was the core of the show. It always made you wonder who the good guys were," e-mailed Ed Mariotte. "What are they doing?"

We're just going to have to see.

"Alias" creator J.J. Abrams is a great storyteller. So I have some faith that when the show starts in a new direction this Sunday (9 p.m., Ch. 7) with an episode featuring Ethan Hawke as a CIA agent, it will be a good one. But there is this nagging fear that in an attempt to draw an audience to a fine show, ABC may have mucked up a series it was trying to save.

© Mercury News 2003

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