Episode Report Card Erin: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT If it ain't broke, Spy Daddy will BLOW IT UP.
By Erin | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.19.2002
WHAT? NO, I'M NOT SHOUTING. I AM NOT. OH, SHUT UP, VIGGO. I'm sorry. It's just -- you have NO idea what I go through every week when I have to recap this show. Yes, I love it but JESUS CHRIST! Watching this show requires more suspension of disbelief than watching Sandra Bullock's character NOT rip all your clothes off on that sofa during 28 Days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't integral to the storyline. Whatever, Captain Cheekbones. Just get me a goddamn raspberry smoothie. And this time put extra rum in it.
Sydney pulls herself out of the water, only to almost fall back through because she's just so damn cold. This little flail is supposed to make us believe that Syd is actually dangerously close to dying, as opposed to making us wonder why Syd hasn't croaked from hypothermia LONG before now. Dixon appears just in time and grabs Syd's hand, yanking her out of the water. He holds her as she breathes heavily and her teeth chatter together unconvincingly. As annoyed as I am by this ridiculous episode opener, I really must admit that Jennifer Garner makes non-hypothermia look extremely good. Hell, that blue lipstick they use on her to illustrate that she's just so chilly actually looks ATTRACTIVE.
Uncle Uh-Oh's Office Of Loop-Da-Loop La-La Land. Uncle Bonkers is lightly questioning Syd about the music box and how Sark got away with it. Syd, bearing no resemblance to the frozen snow bunny of the previous scene, calmly sips what I'm assuming is nuclear hot tea that's supposed to warm her up after such a chilling experience, and informs Sloane that Sark did indeed get away with the music box, but after five hundred years buried under the Siberian ice, the box was corroded. "Practically fell apart in my hands," Syd finishes, not noticing when the tips of her fingers start falling off due to frostbite. Captain Crackers isn't buying it. "It's odd," he says. "Milo Rambaldi. He's done this before, many times. Hiding information inside works of art. The clock. Sculpture. Hmm. This time, he chose to bury one of his most important innovations, the formula for zero point energy, inside a music box." Syd's all, yeah, well, the guy lived over five hundred years ago. Anything with the word "Rambaldi" associated with it seems rather screwy to me. Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to use the word "screwy." Go to your shiny happy place. Shiny happy place!
Agent Alley-Oop is all, yeah, right, make fun of the crazy man. Look, I'm not really questioning Rambaldi's methods of concealing his whacked-out ideas; I'm really more interested in why, if the damned music box was important enough to create secret catacombs in the depths of Siberia, Rambaldi would just leave the bloody thing out and exposed to corrosive elements. Just in case we were all too busy putting tinfoil on our heads and watching the rooftops for the impending arrival of little green men to actually WATCH last week's episode, we're treated to a flashback of Syd, spraying her little can of corrosive crap all over the music box. Back in Cuckoo's office, Syd just makes like Mona Lisa and says some bullshit about it being "another Rambaldi mystery." Sloane has no choice but to buy this load of horse hooey; he sees Syd's Mona Lisa smile and raises her a Cheshire grin.