I love the premise of this show. Sexy, capable woman kicks ass and takes names, making the world a safer place. That said, tonight’s two-hour installment did not thrill. A spy show has to thrive on secrets, yet any audience could have predicted the outcome to most of the plot twists on this first episode of the season.

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Sydney Bristow, played by Jennifer Garner, resigns from her job at the CIA. A cover of course, for her new job, that of - can you guess? - CIA agent. Black ops, of course. Sydney goes to work and meets her new team. Same as her old team! Sydney reunites with Michael Vaughn and Marcus Dixon and her dad, Jack Bristow. She won’t like the surprise in store, though, because she has issues with her new boss. Who could that be? Arvin Sloane, who else? The same former boss who manipulated and betrayed Sydney and used her to gain money and power during the first season under the ostensible banner of a black ops CIA group.

In spite of the lack of surprises, the action scenes did thrill and seeing the team work together again brought on a sense of nostalgia. Unfortunately, the writer(s) concocted a mostly lame story.

In a nutshell, some new badass, this one from Russia with a Japanese front man, prowls the world. Sloane, played by Ron Rifkin, tells the team of the imminent peril. He dispatches Sydney and Vaughn, played by Michael Vartan, to a train in Russia to capture a rare isotope and the man scheduled to purchase said isotope. Things go badly, Vaughn knocks a very large man about the head with a metal teapot, and then barely makes it to save Sydney from falling off the train. At the last second, of course. Later, the agents pursue the bad man, finding out something troubling about both the bad man and his employer.

For our heroes, getting along won’t be easy - at least not until the end of this episode. Jack’s in the doghouse with Sydney, Vaughn has lost some of his marbles after the death of his evil wife from last season, Sydney doesn’t want to give her heart away again, and no one likes Sloane. But, Sloane’s the boss and he sends them on a new mission to make the world a safer place.

Sydney must steal a sword from a British museum using lots of Mission Impossible gear. Okay, so our bad man, who considers himself some kind of modern samurai, either needs a sword or the audience needs to see Jennifer Garner use a sword, I’m not sure which. After stealing the sword, Sydney gets captured. Her sister Nadia turns up to help Sydney escape certain death. The manner of Sydney’s supposed demise brings up visions of James Bond suspended over a tank of sharks. Then Sydney kills the pretty Asian bad guy with aforementioned sword, but not before he reveals something momentous. Most of you can probably guess what happens next. I know that I could, and that disappoints me.

Alias: entertaining, but predictable.