J.J. Abrams, creator and executive producer of the ABC spy series Alias, told SCI FI Wire that he remembers the exact moment when he realized the show had gotten off track this past season. "I'll tell you exactly when," Abrams said in an interview at the network's fall press preview in Los Angeles, where he was promoting his new series Lost. "I was in Hawaii shooting Lost, and I watched Alias on television in Hawaii and just thought, 'Oh, my God. We've lost the show.'"

Abrams went on to explain exactly what he felt went wrong. "The biggest problem is I lost Sydney," he said, referring to the show's main character, played by Jennifer Garner. "I totally lost Sydney. Sydney and Vaughn, there was no more hope in that story. Sydney and Jack, there should always be some child/parent conflict going on there, and there was none. Sloane was on the periphery. Dixon was given a role of authority, but with no consequence. It felt like everywhere I looked there were issues that I wasn't happy with."

Abrams said he is grateful for a chance to make the appropriate adjustments to the show, which will return in January 2005 and will run without repeats for the remainder of the season. "I knew there were things I wanted to do, and luckily ABC picked us up again," Abrams said. "I just wrote the first episode, which I am as excited about as I have been about any episode I've ever done. I'm so happy that we get this shot. [We're] using what was working and going back to that in a way. You'll see what we're doing, and it's so immediately, for me, satisfying. I hope people like it. But I know that where I was really unhappy with it, I'm really happy now."