Episode Report Card Manimal: B- | 306 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Color-Blind
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 2001.11.25
Raging Electroshock Waters, Romania. Subtitles! Yay, subtitles! Dr. Ratched tells the goon to kill Sydney, since Shepard told her nothing. Sydney, sounding very stuffed-up, says that torture won't work on Shepard, since FTL trained him to forget everything he did. She then does a little Exposition Boogie, which is very game of her, considering she's been zapped by God knows how many volts. Anyways: Dr. Ratched works for K-Directorate, since Sydney can identify his Georgian accent, and she knows he's posing as a doctor to get Shepard's info. She says that she get can the info more accurately than he can. Dr. Ratched points out that Shepard already attacked her. Sydney spouts some psychobabble about "sealing his transference" and that working to her advantage, and either the good Doctor is as bored as I am, or he just wants her to shut up, because he agrees to let Sydney take another shot. Why didn't Sydney just say, "He's violent, and if you let me live, I'll take the risk of him attacking me to get your info"? Freshman Psych 101 doesn't exactly make for scintillating dialogue, and I have a hard time believing that an agent would buy whatever it was she was spouting off.
Dr. Ratched promises that if Sydney gets the info, she might just get to live out the rest of her life in a Chechen internment camp. And that she has until lockdown that night. Words to warm any woman's heart.
Shepard works at a lonely little garden patch housed in the open space between the institution's buildings. Sydney enters, wearing yet another boucle sweater from the Anthropologie catalog, one that I am sad to say that I think I own. It might be the same sweater; it looks different in the light, though. Shepard tells her to stay away from him. She says she wants to help him. He tells her he doesn't want her help. She says she knows what's happening to him. He says he's sure she does, since she's one of them. He approaches her, and she backs off. He says he's seen her somewhere else before. Sydney says he hasn't, then says she's about to tell him the truth, so he has to listen. Shepard turns around quickly. Sydney looks really scared, maybe because she senses that his acting chops are like a thousand times better than hers. I'm scared, too. She tells him they're going to be killed unless he escapes with her. Shepard tells her she does have a problem, since he'd rather die than live the way he is now. Sydney releases the breath she was holding while Dr. Ratched watches menacingly from above.