After a three week wait, last night was the season finale of Alias. As I've mentioned before, Alias is The Greatest Television Show Ever™. About last night's superb episode, consider this review from USA Today:

Fans may not get everything they want in the Alias season finale, but what they get, they'll like.

Alias lovers have learned to live with that compromise. No one episode will give all the answers to the show's multiple open questions — and even when we do get answers, they lead to more questions.

It's precisely that frustrating conundrum that makes Alias so spectacular. Unlike self-contained dramas that complete their storyline in 44 minutes every week, Alias is not afraid to engage the viewer's intellect, at the same time trusting in the delicious ecstasy of posing new questions at the end of an episode. For suspending disbelief, the viewer is rewarded. I could pose my own flowery language here, but the USA Today review says it perfectly:

...there's pleasure to be had in the overly layered plots, in the talented cast, and in the silly, old-fashioned joy the show takes in dressing star Jennifer Garner in outrageous outfits.

Last night did not disappoint. Besides the normal quotient of explosions, chaos, and misdirection, last night's episode set the stage for Season 4 with the same level of "Wait, what happened, I'm confused" that preceded Season 3. We're left hanging as the now hopefully deceased Lauren inflicts her last emotional wound upon Sydney. Sydney, sitting in a bank vault in Wittenberg, reads a Top Secret CIA folder implicating her father in some horrible secret. Jack walks into the room as she's beginning to cry. We aren't told what the horrible secret is, but we have enough confusion to leave us pondering until September.

If only it were that simple. I'd expected to spend the next four months re-watching Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3 on DVD in anticipation of the inevitable late-September premiere of Season 4. It was a good plan.

ABC is delaying the start of Season 4 until January. The only consolation is that the entire season will run over consecutive weeks. This is a significant improvement over the random off-weeks caused by such event worthy television as The Crappy World of Disney. But still... January? I have to wait eight months? Eight months? Feck, feck, feck, feck, feck. Unlike delicious ecstasy, that is a blunt trauma to my patience.

Of course, ABC knows it has me. It could delay Season 4 until January 2048 and I would tune in. But this does nothing to attract me to the rest of the ABC primetime lineup, particularly the early season fill-in that will occupy the 9pm slot on Sundays.

I guess Jim Belushi kicked Julian Sark's ass in a Disney cafeteria grudge match.