Episode Report Card Erin: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sloane's Dead! Long Live Sloane!
By Erin | Season 3 | Episode 19 | Aired on 04.17.2004
Dix's Office Of Man, Does Jack Kick Ass. Dix and Jack are just chillin' when Weiss and Marshall enter, full of excitement. They found out from Project Black Hole that "The Restoration" refers to documents written about The Passenger. So, the Covenant has these documents, but don't worry, they can't read them because they don't have the code key. But the CIA does. Woo! Dix, always the voice of negativity, declares that it's a stalemate. "Not if we're smart about it," says Jack. "Here's what we do." And here's where Jack, and this show, really start to kick ass. Because, instead of telling us, and THEN showing us, we get a voice-over of Jack outlining the plan as we SEE IT IN ACTION. We kill two birds with one gigantic cooler-than-candy stone and it ROCKS.
So. The plan. The plan is to call a briefing, making sure to include Moronen. The troops gather in the Conference Room of Endless Expositions. "Once she's there," says Jack, "you detail the following information…" We then switch back to Dix in the conference room. He says something about how Analysis has picked up some chatter on The Restoration, and it will only be a matter of hours before they locate these documents. As he speaks, the camera slowly moves in on Moronen's face, which is quietly taking on the look of the cat that's licked up all the cream. Once Dix is finished speaking, Vaughn slowly steals a glance at his wife, seeing that she's taking all this information in. Back with Jack, he's telling Dix to make sure he announces that the CIA is confident they'll get their hands on the documents, and that he has to detail what they'll do with the documents once they have them.
Once again in the conference room, Dix announces that Project Black Hole is delivering the code key today, and as soon as The Restoration is in their possession, Marshall will begin the decoding process. Then we see a shot of a silver briefcase sliding past the screen as Moronen hungrily looks after it. Back again with Jack. "In truth," he says, "Marshall will be receiving a bogus code key." Marshall looks nervous at this prospect. Dix says, "We should also remind [Moronen] that" -- and in the conference room, Jack continues the sentence -- "even if we do not recover the documents, we know that, without this code key, the Covenant will not be able to read it." Moronen slips a glance over to Jack. Careful, Moronen. Your eyeliner is showing. Heh. Back in Dix's office, Jack says that it's probable that Moronen will try to copy the code key. "That's where you come in," says Jack, looking over to an oblivious Marshall. Everyone looks at him. "Me?" says Marshall. "You have to act…completely normal," says Jack, realizing that he's asking for a monumental task to be accomplished here. Hee. Marshall swallows hard.
Marshall's Garage Of Geekiness. Marshall's sitting over a piece of plastic with some writing on it. He's looking at it through a microscope and dusting it for…fingerprints? I have no idea. Moronen bursts in, startling Marshall, and he totally flakes and fusses and generally falls all over the place. In other words? He's actually acting completely normal. Heh. Moronen blathers some lie about needing to detail the code key herself for the NSC. Marshall eagerly invites her to take a look. She puts her coffee cup down on some important disc of Marshall's, and he mildly flips out and removes it, saying he doesn't want to damage the computer geek disc he's putting together for his future geek of a son. Moronen just ignores his sputtering and runs her pen over the code key itself, asking Marshall what language it's in. I'm assuming, by the way, that her pen is copying the code key. "It's fourth-century Neapolitan Italian," says Marshall. "Which, I love saying, because it makes me think of ice cream. Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!" Moronen just smiles, says Neapolitan ice cream is her favorite, grabs the coffee cup, and leaves. "Really?" whispers Marshall. "Mine too."