Episode Report Card Manimal: B | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Truth be told -- over and over again
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.29.2001
Sydney's apartment. She plays the "oh my God, we're a cute, spontaneous couple!" message, and once again my fingers cramp, refusing to transcribe it. She sniffles as she drinks some wine and changes the outgoing message on her machine. Ouch. Okay, I can see how that would be a nice touch -- if I cared, at all, about them as a couple.
Obvious cut. "She loved a man, and she lost him," the professor says. He's talking about a Tennyson poem, but it, like, TOTALLY relates to what we just saw with Sydney and her boyfriend. I sure hope all y'all out there like the melodious music of falling anvils, because we're going to be hearing a lot of it. Sydney gets paged mid-lecture with the message "SLOANE -- 911."
Sydney and her East German swimmer arms are on display in a sleeveless purple turtleneck. Dixon stops her. They hug. They share yet another glass of that fine beverage known as expository dialogue. I've heard 2001 is a particularly bad vintage, but these kids just keep drinking like there's no tomorrow! Dixon shakes a warning finger at her (figuratively) and tells her the agency only gave her one month off, and she's taken three. He tells her that the Mueller device is finished, Quintero's dead, they need her active, and "if they don't have confidence in someone who's in as deep as you are, they'll…fix that problem."
Restaurant. Cute couple in luuurve. Sydney watches wistfully as she dines alone. Everyone hear that? It's The March Of The Falling Anvils in D minor.
Parking garage. Sydney walks to her new red pick-up truck and activates the alarm. She climbs in and puts on her seat belt. Oooh, that noise was very menacing. I mean, it actually was really menacing. Sydney's head turns. We see a red beam travel along the truck's length and focus on Sydney's enormo forehead. From her POV, we see two guys in a nondescript government-type auto. Bullets fly. Sydney ducks out of the way, starts the truck from that position, and pulls the truck out, but the government car slams her from behind. She gets out and starts running; the SD6ers chase her. She hits a dead end, then ducks behind a truck.
Sydney pulls out her bright-red Nokia cell phone in all its non-subtle product-placement non-glory and calls Best Friend. Best Friend starts complaining about her crazy day. Oh man, when Irony wants to make himself comfortable at J.J. Abrams's house, he just pulls off his pants and does it! No pauses, no "how was your day, J.J.?" -- just settles right in. Sydney asks her to ring her cell phone, since she thinks it's not working. Best Friend thinks it's weird, but does it.
In the garage, one of the gun-wielding Josie and the SD6ers hears the familiar, incredibly annoying Nokia ring (I'm sorry, I'm bitter -- I had a Nokia for about a year, and the sound quality was terrible and the antenna broke constantly. The sucker did have the battery life of a Supreme Court Justice, but what's the point when everyone you talk to sounds like they're in a wind tunnel?). Oops, sorry -- anyway, the phone rings, an agent runs over -- but it's just the phone! No Sydney!