Episode Report Card Manimal: C+ | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Color-Blind
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.24.2001
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.
Credits.
Goon has Sydney in hand as he walks her down the hall. Sydney turns and watches as two orderlies unlatch the main door with a double-lock system; both orderlies have to insert two different keys at the same time. The goon leads her down the hall and into another room, where Shepard is drawing. Sydney approaches. Shepard is painting a desolate little landscape with a twisted tree and a yellow sky. Sydney comments on the sky color. Shepard tells her to get away, already. Sydney persists. Shepard tells her to piss off. Sydney deduces that he "can't see colors." Shepard asks who she is, if she's not one of the people who did this to him. Sydney tells him that she'll tell him what he needs to know, but he needs to help her escape. She fills him in on the dual-key lock. Shepard refuses to go. Sydney points out that they're both dead. Shepard points out that she wants him to believe her, but she ain't tellin' him doodly-squat. Man. I don't find John Hannah attractive, but a Scottish accent really goes a long way.
Sydney looks around frantically and shushes him. Then she tells him the story of Martin Shepard: The Littlest Programmed Assassin. Shepard, understandably, freaks out. Sydney tells him that when he carries out orders, he only sees things in black-and-white to distance himself, but now that he's starting to see things in color, he's healing. She's all up in his face. Shepard hollers, "Guard!" and gets pulled away from her yammering. The goon announces menacingly, "Lockdown." Sydney tells the goon that she has the info Dr. Ratched wants.