Alias and the disappointing ending

My partner and I just got through watching Alias. Yes, I know we're a little late to the game. We loved the first three seasons, but thought the show headed downhill in the fourth and the fifth. The show was cancelled unexpectedly in the middle of the fifth season, giving the writers just enough time to wrap up the story arc in a way that was faithful to their original vision. Unfortunately, the last eight episodes read more like a Cliff's Notes version of the finale rather than the finale itself.

The bones of a good story were there, but we feel the writers really neglected a lot of the potential they had going in. So we came up with a different ending. SPOILERS.

Rather than Nadia dying randomly from a collision with a glass table, Prophet Five's 'cure' should have made her awaken as a fervent Rambaldi acolyte and convince Arvin to take up his obsession again. The two of them should have gone together to Prophet Five. Then, during Sydney's confrontation with Arvin in the snow cave, she should have killed Nadia, cementing Arvin's drive to follow Rambaldi.

In Alias, Renée Rienne's 'father' has been in suspended animation for 30 years; when he awakens, APO discovers that his brain has been replaced by that of an evil scientist, Desantis. He is summarily executed by Renée and Jack in 'The Horizon'. This is a lot of effort put into a storyline that went nowhere. Instead of having Desantis's brain inside Renée's father's body, it should have been Rambaldi's brain. The whole thing should have been part of Rambaldi's plan for world domination by putting himself in hypersleep for 500 years while he waited for one of his plans to come to fruition--a plan involving the assembling of all the Rambaldi devices together into a giant weapon or something. Then, Prophet Five would actually be thralls of Rambaldi, his 'twelve apostles', trying to bring about his Second Coming. And Arvin would be his deluded prophet. It would all have a sense of symbolism and symmetry.

Rambaldi in Renée's father should escape from Jack and come back in the final episode. The final boss, who in Alias turns out to be Irina trying to destroy the world with nukes, should in fact be Rambaldi. What motivation does Irina have to blow up the world? None. That's silly. So, Renée should not have been killed ignominiously in an alley by Anna Espinosa; instead she should be killed nobly while helping stop Rambaldi's evil plan of blowing up the world with nukes. (These scenes figure Irina and Sydney, respectively, in Alias). They could still find the microchip in her body while she was still alive.

Meanwhile, Irina should not be evil. We have established that she's not trustworthy and that she's a really bad mom, and she cares more about her job than her family. But she's not evil. After Sydney left Jack to die in that touching scene, Irina should have showed up to help Jack defeat Arvin. Instead of Jack blowing himself up to stop Arvin, it should have been Irina sacrificing herself to save Jack. She has always loved Jack even though she betrays him time and time again. And this seems like it should have been her endgame all along, trying to stop Rambaldi even as Arvin tries to resuscitate him. This leaves Jack alive to be a part of Sydney's family--and especially her kids' family--in a way he was never able to be for Sydney, and would bring him redemption. He deserved a better end than he got, as did Irina. Arvin's end was fine though.

Finally, Sydney and Vaughn and the rest of the APO team should have been responsible for stopping Rambaldi, with Renée dying along the way to fulfill some vital function in a noble way. Sydney should be the one to finally bring him down, what with the prophecy and all, using a really great operation with disguises and hand-to-hand combat. Then, in the final confrontation where it's just her and Rambaldi, Sydney should beat him by using some final device given to her by Irina--maybe the Horizon?--to destroy one of Rambaldi's red energy ball things right when he's using it, blowing him up. Hooray! They ride off into the sunset, the end.

That would have been a better ending.

Oh, and torturing Kelly with snakes? Lame. Have her change her mind because of her former friend's persuasion, or because she has a change of heart when Rambaldi's evil plan is revealed, or something other than snake torture.