Episode Report Card Manimal: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Doppelganger
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.27.2001
SD-6. Kelvin drinks a glass of water. Marshall decodes the web site and gets excited. Sloane tells him to tell Analysis. I have a hard time believing -- well, frankly I can't believe one thing about this show: not the character development, the plots, the pacing, or the structure, but I especially have a hard time believing that a) the writers have set up Marshall as being beyond brilliant and he can't see a decoy web site and b) SD-6 would only have Marshall working on this.
Kettle Drums of Doom pound as Sloane walks in and quizzes Kelvin-as-Schiller. Sloane asks him to confirm the location of the plant that's building the inhaler -- then Kelvin-as-Schiller will get his dough. K-as-S has to all but pick his jaw up off the ground, and then does the worst job of covering up since I got caught driving my parents' car at age fourteen and I said that I had a "foot injury" and had to get to the hospital since no one was home to take me. He stutters that he wasn't privy to that information and that he has to think about it. Sloane tells him to think about it, and, in fact, to think about everything. For a minute I thought someone had given Ron Rifkin special-effects contact lenses to make his eyes go all flat, black, and lizard-y, and then I realized it was all Ron Rifkin. K-as-S looks like he's soiled himself.
Sloane walks up to Dixon's desk and asks if Sydney's change of route when she was leading Schiller out of the building was discussed beforehand. Dixon says she thought someone was following her, and flatly denies that Sydney could do anything wrong, despite the fact that Sloane is radiating such waves of menace that the cheap paint is peeling off of SD-6's walls. I love Dixon. He is my married, CIA-agent-with-a-double-life boyfriend. Sloane says, "I see," and walks away.
Sydney's Apartment Of Halloween Fun That Only Thinly Disguises Her Life Filled With Menace, Danger, And Wigs. She's dressed as Alice in Wonderland, and I have to give her props for not going the Ho-lloween route as so many women do. You know what I mean. This year I wanted to go as Devo, and not one of my girlfriends would go along with me, since they were all too busy dressing up as sexy nurses, hookers, Catholic schoolgirls, can-can dancers, meter maids, and what have you.
Sydney "'Tis a Far, Far Better Thing I Do" Bristow answers the door: it's Dixon and his gorgeous wife and extremely cute crumbsnatchers. Dixon -- who isn't in costume, and boo hiss on that -- immediately takes Sydney aside and says, "Syd. We've been working together a lot of years. I trust you. I trust you, and I love you." He tells her Sloane thinks K-as-S is a plant, and wants to know why Sydney changed the escape route. He asks her if there's something he should know. Sydney purses her lips, wrinkles her billboard-enormous forehead, and says no. Dixon looks relieved, but you can tell he doesn't quite buy it. Dixon fills her in on the interrogation, and points out that K-as-S has everything to lose by not telling them the location of the plant, and that it makes no sense that he would hold out. He says that K-as-S is in trouble, and that Sydney is, too. Did no one tell her that this was all a close-up? Since when is shifting your eyeballs left, then right, then up, and then down considered an acting technique? I think her blush emoted more in this scene than she did.