Haha! That's hilarious, because my wife and I did the exact same thing! Season 5 of Alias is sitting in our DVD bookshelf, and we only watched about 4 episodes of it, despite the addition of Amy Acker to the show. We just thought,"why is this show still going? They wrapped everything up last season!"

I liked the show a great deal right up until the end of the the fourth season. I loved that they plotted out a course that slowly added more of the "mystical" stuff, eventually going all out with it. I felt that they did a good job of building everything to a head, but then it ended up VERY anti-climactically.

And yes, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out the similarities I guess it's because I haven't really thought about Alias since I last watched it about five years ago!