Episode Report Card Erin: C | 1 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Blowback? Blow me.
By Erin | Season 3 | Episode 14 | Aired on 03.06.2004
Anyway, Sloane suggests that he and Dr. Nancy meet over a nice Chateau Haut-Brion and discuss whatever she may like. She's all, the what? I'm sorry, did you just ask me out to dinner? Sloane's all, what? Psychoanalysts don't eat? Come on! We'll have steak! It'll be fun! Dr. Nancy's all, dude? What is this, The Sopranos? I'm not going on a date with you, okay? Sloane's all, just think of it as an office with food. You can even bring a pencil and a pad of paper. Take notes. Get me coffee. Take my calls. Whatever floats your boat. He gives her the name of the restaurant, states that he'll be there at 8:00 PM sharp, and hopes she'll be there. She gets off the phone with a look of, okay, I'll totally let him buy me dinner, but I am NOT gonna let him feel me up. Oh, sweetheart. We've all been there. Trust me. Your boobs will have fingerprints on them by midnight.
Vancouver. I have nothing funny to say about it. At all. We're at some office building. The elevator opens, and Syd, dressed in a ridiculously short skirt and brainy black bob, exits, accompanied by some dude in a suit and Vaughn. He asks her if she's looking for alien life, and she blabbles something in this hilariously nerdy voice. What's she say? I dunno. S'not really important, I think. But Vaughn's eye-rolling reaction to Syd's over-the-top nerd is important. And hysterical. There's some more geek-to-geek back and forth between Vaughn and the Vancouver dude, primarily involving the storage capacity of the facility. Again, not really important. Vancouver Dude orders the guard on duty, "Luc," to do something to vault 2289 and assures his companions that, basically, this facility stores up to twenty years of data. I think this is supposed to tell us, the audience, that what the CIA is looking for is most likely somewhere in the system. Syd and Vaughn head into their storage room, and Vancouver Guy turns toward Luc the Guard. But Luc's disappeared. Wonder why. Hmmm…
In the storage room, Syd and Vaughn quickly set up their equipment, and Marshall tells them to tell him when they're connected to the mainframe. Marshall, it should be noted, has had approximately fourteen hundred cups of coffee. He also calls Syd on her geek impersonation, asking if it was based on him. She quips that it was based on his son. Hee. And, uh, sad, actually. I hope Mitchell doesn't turn into a girl geek with a scary black bob and a penchant for crotch-grazing miniskirts. Syd establishes a connection. This assignment seems to be a walk in the park. Syd starts downloading, and Marshall says he needs another 15 seconds to get the whole file. Suddenly, the walk in the park appears to have a fork in the road. Syd's screen goes blank. So does Marshall's. There's someone else in the system, according to Marshall, and that person is in Vancouver, because there's no other way to access the system. Marshall thinks this person just planted a virus. Syd surmises that the CIA mole must have linked the intel and beat them to Vancouver. Marshall tells Syd to disconnect from the system before the virus infects their copy. Or something. I dunno. Marshall's not sure if they got the shipping information; he'll have to reconstruct the data from what they've got.
Syd and Vaughn gather up their gear and head out. As soon as they exit the room, however, we see Vancouver Dude at the other end of the hall with a gun pointed directly at them. "Please!" he says, almost crying. "Please don't do this!" He doesn't seem to be saying it to them, however. Hmmm. Interesting. Finally, he closes his eyes and starts shooting. Syd and Vaughn fling themselves back into the room and pull out their guns. They hear all six bullets fire, a pause, and then another gunshot. They exit the room again, only to find Vancouver Dude dead on the ground with a bullet in his head. Syd hears a noise off-screen and declares that it's the shooter. They run after him/her. And there's running and chasing and more running and good God! I can almost see Jennifer Garner's underwear, her skirt's so damn short! Especially when they're chasing the shooter up the stairs. I mean, I have a girl crush on the woman and everything, but there are some things that really should be kept a mystery, you know?