The series is back on the right track, and creator J.J. Abrams clearly wants to lure back viewers who were put off by last season’s increasingly convoluted machinations.

Abrams isn’t afraid to put into words how a lot of “Alias” fans felt about the third season of the spy drama.

“Last year sucked,” says agent Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) early on in tonight’s two-hour kick-butt season premiere at 9 on WCVB (Ch. 5).

Vaughn is ostensibly talking about his recent monthlong psychiatric evaluation, required after the tortured path he and fellow CIA agent Sydney were forced to tread last season in their supercharged world of global espionage. But dedicated viewers can read between the lines.

Though “sucked” is too harsh, the plot twists veered dangerously close to daytime soap territory: “Sydney wakes up from a coma!” “Sydney has a half sister!” “Vaughn’s wife is a double agent and she must be killed!”

Loyal fans get their just rewards tonight in an opener that rights all that was wrong by going back to the template of season one.

With any other series, this clean slate approach could be seen as a weak attempt to recapture past glory. But “Alias” has such a strong core cast and construct that it’s invigorating when CIA Director Hayden Chase (Angela Bassett) assembles a team of familiar faces for a new ultra-covert “black ops” unit dubbed “APO” or Authorized Personnel Only.

Once assembled, the group – led by an unlikely, unlikable figure – is informed that this elite team will operate within the limits of U.S. law but will be “unhampered by the bureaucratic chain of command, with no accountability except to ourselves.”

With that free rein mandate, the gang springs into action to capture a shadowy terrorist who is selling a deadly chemical to the highest bidder.

This means trips to exotic lands and a variety of slinky disguises for Sydney as the team executes an almost flawless burglary of a London museum and dukes it out with bad guys on a fast-moving train in Belarus.

The group also tries to work out the kinks in their various relationships. Vaughn and Sydney tentatively dance around a romance, Sydney argues with her father, agent Jack Bristow (Victor Garber), about a bombshell regarding her mother and enlists the aid of half-sister Nadia (Mia Maestro, who joins the cast as a regular) both as an agent and as a sibling.

If that sounds like a lot to cram into two hours, it is. But Abrams and his cast execute their choreography with deftness, carving out moments of drama and zippy comedy.

Aside from the creative streamlining, the other good news for “Alias” is ABC’s bright idea to program it behind Abrams’ simpatico new hit “Lost” and to air all 22 episodes uninterrupted through May.