Just some weeks ago I finally watched the last episodes of this season of Alias. And I was shocked. Skipping two years in the story is like telling the audience: "OOPS, you missed 44 episodes and they won't air EVER"

I think one of the worst mistakes you can make with a tv show is to completely destroy character developement. This is why I hate amnesia. In many shows they just decide to give one character amnesia and start him/her from scratch again.
I mainly watch tv shows for the small storylines, the social develompent between the main (and some side) characters. I don't pout if a main character dies but if he/she stays on the show and just becomes someone else I get angry.
The Alias finale disappointed me that much because they gave the protagonist amnesia and (as I've heard from spoilers) all the side character stories have come to rather interesting points WITHOUT any development because it was just skipped due to her 2-year-amnesia.

I'm not familiar with the show, but that does sound like some pretty cheesy storyline. It sounds like just taking a show and not keeping what's going but starting it off randomly in a totally new direction. Sounds soap opera like to me, and all know.

<font color = lightgreen>Amnesia as a plot device is a sure sign that the writers started with a good idea and couldn't figure out where to go from there. [img]graemlins/laugh3.gif[/img] Either that or the original writers were fired and the new writers are asserting their control.....</font>

I saw the title of this thread and thought of "Hmm... How to kill a tv show... Easy. Make it a high-quality show, start a great story arc, fill it with interesting characters and sit back and wait for the idiot network your on to cancel it."
This has happened to me many times. I find a great show, get into it, have a cliff-hanger season finale and find out it was cancelled and it's not coming back, even for a movie just to wrap up the unfinished story... I could just scream thinking about it.
I have had several shows that I like get cancelled over the past few years, because the networks want it to be a smash ratings success from the first episode, or they'll dump it to replace it with a mindless sex-comedy show that requires one brain cell to understand.
I looked through TV Guide today to read up on the new shows coming this fall. For the very first time EVER, I did not see even ONE that I have any interst in.
Sigh

Easy.
Kill main character. Revive main character. Repeat process. Repeat process. repeat process.
OR
Start new season with completely new rules and character relationships. Nikita anybody?
OR
Go back through time twenty(20) times. STAR TREK: Voyager barely escaped that end.
OR
Do an excellent episode. Do it again. And again. And again. And again untill the 20th season and the cast is completely different.

Just follow these recipes and you'll be killing shows left and right.

Make a bad show,people will dislike it and without money from TV or whatever there will be no more producers...
Somethin` like it...