  Kiefer Sutherland stars in 24, airing tonight at 9 p.m. on Fox and Global. Below right: Jennifer Garner stars in Alias, which ends its run tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC.
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Two espionage thrillers call it a day tonight -- one for good. On Fox and Global's 24, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) wraps up yet another season rife with terrorists, traitors and treachery. Who lives? Who dies? Who takes a bathroom break? We're not telling -- frankly, we don't want to know -- but it's safe to assume Bauer survives since the drama returns for a sixth season in January.
Not back next year is Jennifer Garner's Sydney Bristow. Her series, Alias, receives a two-hour send-off on ABC. Who lives? Who dies? Who will watch? Unfortunately, only a smattering of still-faithful fans -- explaining why the J.J. Abrams-created cloak and dagger series is being unceremoniously dumped with a deafening absence of fanfare.
By comparison, 24, also in its fifth season, has never been hotter -- basking in both best-ever ratings and critical acclaim. That the two shows -- one at the peak of its powers, the other being put down after limping along for the past two seasons -- should intersect tonight is keenly appropriate.
Both were critical darlings that managed to survive, despite initially low ratings, thanks to robust DVD sales. Both portrayed shadowy worlds of double-deals and double agents. Both were serials. And, most significantly, both arrived in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
With so much in common, why has only one thrived and the other not? In scouring for answers, we found a few good lessons for all future TV spy masters to consider:
BE RELEVANT
Both series, given their subject matter, had to adapt to a reality in which terrorists attacking the U.S. was no longer the domain of fiction. At first, 24 seemed skittish -- it wasn't until the second season when they chanced a viewer backlash by having a terror cell attempt to nuke L.A. The gamble paid off huge dividends, juicing the thriller with a jolt of bleeding-edge jeopardy. Jack Bauer himself became a compelling avatar for an morally-ambiguous era which pits civil liberties against national security. Now, three seasons later, Bauer's world hasn't come closer to our world; we've come closer to his. Alias never purported to represent reality, but with each season only grew more outlandish with plotlines befitting a Roger Moore Bond flick.
GRANT CLOSURE
Fine. You have to watch every week to know what's happening. But at some point even the most patient fan requires a resolution. 24 smartly tells its season-long arcs as self-contained stories. Few plot threads carry from one year to the next. When the second season ended on a cliffhanger -- a presidential assassination attempt -- even Sutherland admitted it was a cheat and their fans deserved a proper ending. That was something Alias fans probably won't even get tonight as the series long ago succumbed to what can be described as X-Files syndrome -- being strangled by your own loose plot threads.
LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES
24 took three seasons before hitting its stride. For the first year or two, as the producers coped with their real-time format, they were often guilty of spinning their wheels or dog-paddling along with needless subplots and characters. Now the show, ruthlessly aero-dynamic, never cuts away from the chase. The result? This past fifth season has ticked away with near-clockwork precision.
No amount of retooling, however, could save Alias. After two excellent seasons, the third proved unfocused. By the time the network realized emergency surgery was required, viewers couldn't be bothered to give it another chance. It didn't help either that for all the talk of revamped, streamlined stories, the series was verging on becoming narratively incomprehensible.
SPIES DON'T CRY
Alias tries to tug at your heart. 24 doesn't have one. This cold ferociousness makes 24 unique among even others of its ilk (such as Prison Break) because no one is safe -- aside from Sutherland, of course, who has inked a deal for two more years. Conversely, Alias has retained the same cast for its run. Kill somebody already!
YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR BAD GUY
Bristow's oily nemesis Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) pales next to the cancerous evil represented by 24's twin towers of villainy -- spectacularly corrupt President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) and his henchman, Christopher Henderson (Peter Weller). Weller, particularly, as Bauer's former mentor, makes for such a charismatic sociopath that you almost hope he'll be back for a sixth day.
GARNER MARRIED BEN AFFLECK
Surviving Christmas, Gigli, Reindeer Games, Pay Check, Pearl Harbor, Jersey Girl -- doesn't everyone in the world know by now the touch of Affleck is the touch of death?
