Episode Report Card Manimal: C+ | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Color-Blind
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.24.2001
Romania. Sydney. Big tank o' water and various electrodes wire her up. Didja see what they did there? With Sloane and the hot water and the cut to Sydney in hot water? Didja? Didja? Dr. Ratched tells her they know she works for "Ezz Dee Seeeex," and that they know her entire mission. Sydney blinks a lot. Dr. Ratched asks if she's succeeded in finding the location of Parkishoff's body. Sydney asks who he is. Dr. Ratched threatens her. Another goon starts cranking up the electroshock machine. Sydney starts yelling that she doesn't know where Parkishoff is buried. She's still yelling as she gets zapped. It is not pretty, kids.
Cut to a steaming wok in a dimly-lit Chinese restaurant. Jack is greeted by the generic Asian man of menacing situations, who tells him that his usual table is waiting for him. He leads him to a backroom, where Vaughn is waiting for him. Jack pulls a gun and has Vaughn pinned to a wall in about two seconds. Vaughn babbles like a brook: He's Sydney's handler and cleared the meeting with Jack so they could talk about her situation. Jack sneers, "Is this a special occasion?" Vaughn tells Jack that they think K-Directorate had an agent waiting for Sydney in the hospital. Jack says blandly that SD-6 had no confirmation of such a fact. Vaughn says that the CIA does, and that he wants to pull Sydney out of there. Jack takes a seat. He then tells Vaughn that he's a young upstart, because even a "minimal extraction" team can't guarantee Sydney's safety. They make Sydney sound like a rotten tooth. They argue back and forth over the merits of having her safe and unable to work as a double agent for a bit; then Jack points out that the thought of taking down SD-6 is the only thing that gets Sydney up in the morning, or did Vaughn think it was her secret meetings with him? It's amazing how Victor Garber can sneer without moving his lips. Vaughn, voice all but cracking, asks what his problem is. The Kettle Drums Of Doom play as Jack says that Vaughn pulling his files is a big problem for him. Vaughn tells Jack flatly that Sydney thought he was KGB, and what was Jack doing? "Checking up on me -- checking up on you." Man, was that a dumb line. Jack thinks so, too, because he says that the meeting is over and walks out.
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.