Episode Report Card Manimal: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Reckoning
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.17.2001
The Bass Drum of Doom continues to thump. Sydney lines up to get some grub. She walks through a room of twitching, biting mental patients and sits with Shepard, at the farthest table in the back. She says hi. Shepard looks at her. He looks scary. Scary, and nuttier than a Mr. Goodbar.
Fisher/Fontanetta sits in an office with Dr. Ratched. Dr. Ratched -- who has scary, dead eyes, by the way -- hands him some form. Then, exuding menace, he tells Fisher/Fontanetta that he checked with the consulate to thank them for the recommendation, but that they knew nothing about it.
Lunchtime! Cut to Shepard and Sydney. Shepard rasps, "Do I know you?" Sydney recites the Donne poem, and I was hoping against hope that it was something from "The Flea," but it's not. I forget what poem it is, but it's insanely famous, and it starts with, "No man is an island, entire of himself." It might be a Donne essay, too. ["It is an essay called 'Devotions upon Emergent Occasions,' and is excerpted here." -- Wing Chun] Shepard looks at her, and then goes for her throat, and starts choking her. He asks, "Who are you?" and Sydney wallops him. I wish people would stop choking her at the same time they ask her questions. She struggles to get his hands away from her throat.
Dr. Ratched and his scary, dead eyes watches the struggle on the TV screen behind Fisher/Fontanetta as the latter does a damned good job of lying on his feet, claiming that the consulate referred them to a health department, who gave them the clinic's name. Dr. Ratched flatly says, "Well. That explains it."
Lunchroom. Guards break up the fight and taser-gun poor Shepard. This episode is filled with non-lethal weapons, I must say. Shepard breaks away, but then they taser him again. Sydney struggles to breathe, but then the guards grab her, too. She tries to wallop them down, but there are too many.
Langley, VA. CIA. Sean/Weiss walks out, and a random agent walks up, looking for Vaughn. Sean/Weiss says that Vaughn's on funeral duty and snarks, "Why? You finally get a date?" Random Agent says that it turns out that Krushnik (I swear, that's what the man said), who runs the asylum, is with K-Directorate. Sean/Weiss is horrified.
Bucharest. Mental asylum. The guards have Sydney in a straitjacket, but she breaks away and runs down the hall. The strings here are frenetic, to say the least. It sounds like Tchaikovsky, but I am no classical music expert. For once, though, the music actually serves its purpose instead of being jarring and annoying.