Episode Report Card Erin: A | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Papa, can you hear me? No, seriously. PAPA?
By Erin | Season 4 | Episode 18 | Aired on 05.03.2005
Sloane sets up the situation, saying that she'll have a few seconds before Jack wakes up and then, once the illusion has been sold to him and the phone rings, she's supposed to give Jack privacy so he can talk to his handler about Liddell. Sloane continues to move stuff around, and the medical team wheels Jack in on a gurney behind him. "We'll get this over with as quickly as possible," he assures Sydney. She's ready. "Your mother used to call your father 'sweetheart,'" says Sloane. "It was her pet name for him." What an original pet name! What, "Binky" was taken? What about "Hunky O'HotStuff"? Or, my favorite, "Champ"? I just would have thought Laura and Jack were a wee bit more creative than "sweetheart," that's all. The med team lays Jack down on the sofa and Sloane leaves. The wall closes behind him and the illusion is in place. Someone sticks Jack in the neck with a syringe and Sloane tells Syd that he'll be conscious in thirty seconds. Syd just stares at her father uncomfortably as we go to break.
Apple Store. Sloane enters the Conference Room of Endless Expositions, where the rest of the Appleseed Gang has set up camp. He orders Marshall to turn on the television. On a monitor, we see Jack, lying on the sofa as if he's napping, and we hear the TV go on. The newscast is obviously supposed to be from 1981, because the newscasters are talking about the Reagan assassination attempt. Jack suddenly wakes when the TV turns on and he looks around, slightly confused. Syd's waiting in the wings. Jack turns off the TV and sits up. Vaughn tells Syd to do her stuff. She opens and shuts the kitchen door, pretending to enter from the outside. She calls out, "Jack?" He slowly gets up and goes to the kitchen, where he stands looking at his daughter dressed up as his wife. "Sydney?" he gruffs. Syd doesn't skip a beat, she just keeps unloading the groceries. "She's upstairs, isn't she?" says Syd. "Could you give me a hand with these?" When Jack doesn't respond, she looks at him. "Sweetheart," she says in a tone of voice slightly different from her own, "is something wrong?" Yeah, something's wrong, Syd! YOU'RE DRESSED UP AS YOUR OWN MOTHER. It's like a traveling troupe rendition of Chinatown or something. "I'm my daughter! I'm my mother! I'm my daughter! I'M BOTH!"
Marshall thinks it's not working. Sloane thinks they should give her a minute. Syd starts vamping, talking about how Arvin called and he and Emily invited them for dinner next week. Of course she said yes. There's a pause and then…"You could have just said we're busy," says Jack. "I know how you put up with Arvin for my sake." HA! That'll teach you to snow your ex-partner into thinking he's in 1981, Arvin. Marshall totally agrees with me, because he shoots Sloane a look that's like, "Dude! Irina didn't like you!" Sloane gets this look that's like, "Damn! I did NOT know that!" Syd just riffs that she's perfectly willing to put up with Sloane, seeing as he's Jack's best friend and all. You have to wonder if, at this point, Irina and Sloane were already doing the dirty deed, or if that didn't happen until later and oh my god, I'm getting sucked into the Faux Bristow Reality Show too and I don't even have radiation poisoning!