Episode Report Card Shack: C+ | 173 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Déjà Vu To A Kill
By Shack | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2002.03.17
Cut to the CIA offices, where Vaughn is trying to beg some information off of Agent Weasel. Vaughn thinks Weasel must know something about what's happening to Sydney because he's the department liaison to the FBI. Weasel claims that he's not in the thick of things, because the last thing anybody would do would be to keep the liaison between the two agencies up to date on a problem that affects both agencies or anything. Agent Apologetic admits that the two of them don't have the best relationship, but promises to change and begs for the two of them to start over. Weasel shoots Vaughn a sarcastic hello and repeats that he doesn't know anything about Sydney before clomping off snippily. Agent Sean (or Weiss, or whatever his name is. To me, he's Agent Sean) is in the background, looking through some file. After Weasel leaves, Sean tells Vaughn that a friend has seen Weasel eating at the Webster Rotunda, and that the smarmy little prick has the table manners of a child. What a surprise. Vaughn asks Sean if he thinks the prophecy is for real. Sean doesn't believe it. He thinks it's ridiculous that Sydney could take down the world. Really, she can't even complete a mission without screwing something up. Unless she ends up destroying the world by accident while trying to steal some weapon plans from Iraq or something. Vaughn recaps that Sydney has the biological signs Rambaldi pointed to. He further exposits that an FBI tribunal is flying into D.C. to question Sydney.
We cut to said tribunal members striding down a hallway to meet with Sydney. The main inquisitor is played by Terry "Hey, It's That Shadowy Government Figure!" O'Quinn. They've made him shave off his mustache and his hair so that he doesn't look so much like the four totally different (or were they?) shady characters he's played in three Chris Carter series. The other two members of the tribunal don't get so much as a single line between them during the whole episode, so it's really more of a unibunal. They enter the conference room, and Terry introduces himself as Special Officer Kendall. He introduces the other two, but nobody cares. He tells Sydney that she's being held under National Security Directive 81A (known in government circles as the "Fuck the Constitution" directive), and that they can bring charges up against her. If she doesn't cooperate, or if she demands a lawyer, she might never hear freedom ring ever again. Sydney says she has nothing to hide. Kendall starts by asking Sydney her name and how she got involved with the CIA. Sydney doesn't realize that this is going to be a clip show because she's been in custody, and asks if they don't have a file on her already. Kendall says he does, but they need some sort of contrived way to segue into the clips, so just talk already. Sydney got involved with the CIA from her work with SD-6. How did she get involved with them? Previously on Alias: Sydney was a grad student, and one day, some man just came right on up to her out of the blue and asked her if she wanted to be a spy. You know, I only got people asking me if I wanted to be saved and feel the love of Jesus, or asking me to help free Tibet. She thought the idea was ridiculous, but began to wonder if she could actually become a spy. She says that she hated her classes, wasn't talking to her father, her mother was dead, and she had no social life. So she joined. Wasn't this a storyline in Doonesbury?