God, I despise Alias. But fortunately, I hate it on principle, in the same principled way I hate most things. It's not just the show's mediocrity that bugs me, it's that everybody else seems to love the damn show. First of all, when it came out in 1999, Alias was just another Buffy the Vampire Slayer rip-off, with all of Buffy's gratuitously hot violence but none of its wit sustaining the otherwise interminable story between the fights. But its bigger sin — aside from somehow getting nominated for an Emmy — was coming out at the same time as A&E was debuting the British show MI:5, an infinitely better spy show with developed characters and real storytelling, and no one watched it because they were too busy whacking off to Jennifer Garner.