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. Forest. To differentiate from the L.A. sets, they have owls hooting in the background instead of crickets. Sydney pulls up a loose section of the floor and yanks out a Nokia phone. She dials a special code, only to get hooked up to her father. Sydney asks where Vaughn is. Jack says he had the number forwarded. Man. Whatever long-distance plan the CIA has, I want it. He asks if Shepard's with her. She glances at Shepard, who, in his ever-present hooded sweatshirt, is huddled morosely by the fire. She says yes. Jack tells her where to go to pick up a flight out of the country.
Sydney sits with Shepard by the fire. It's all very romantic, except for the fact that Sydney's telling Shepard about needing the DNA of a dead man to break some FTL code. Poor John Hannah gets a miserable speech about how he came to realize he was an assassin, the crowning touch being a line that says, "I feel like I've been stolen…from myself." Poor, poor John Hannah. It's lucky that he's a good actor and has an extremely charming Scottish accent. He manages to sell it. At the end of his pleading speech, he slips up and asks Sydney to help him -- by name. Sydney, remarkably quick on the uptake for once, asks him how he knows her name. He confesses that he was the one to kill Danny, and we see it play out in black-and-white: There's Danny, in his charming apartment, running water for a bath. Manchurian Candidate-esque music plays as Shepard creeps up behind him and shoots him point-blank.
Back to Romania. Shepard apologizes. Sydney's face -- sigh -- crumples and she runs outside, arms flapping, nose running, eyes tearing. She looks like a duck having hysterics. Also, enough with the cryin' already! I feel like the producers randomly filmed a handful of scenes of Sydney crying in the woods, just in case.
Romania. Owls hooting. Shepard curled up fetally by the fire. Sydney enters. She haltingly tells him the WHOLE GODDAMNED STORY of her life: Man you were ordered to kill was my fiancé, I told him about my life as a spy "because he was the one part of my life I couldn't stand to be a lie." Couldn't she have just shown him the exposition montage? Then she tells him that the man who programmed him was named McCullough. Then she admits that she knew all along that she was putting Danny in danger, since SD-6 never lied to her about what would happen if she told him the truth. Argh. Then. Why. DID SHE DO IT? Sydney then confesses that she's a double agent for the CIA. Shepard asks if finding Parkishoff's body will help with her ultimate mission in bringing down SD-6. She says yes. He tells her he left Parkishoff's body buried in the marshland on the Louisiana-Texas border. This is all fascinating, but I believe I have some mold cultures I'm growing that need watching.