Episode Report Card Manimal: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Reckoning
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.17.2001
Charlie sings as we see Sydney walking into SD-6 in slo-mo. She looks around contemplatively and shrugs out of her coat. Dixon walks up and helps her out of it. I love Dixon.
Conference Room. Sydney presses her thumb into one of the windows of the code machine she took in London. Marshall and Sloane explain that it can create code based on a person's DNA, and that's how the greeting cards worked: the encryption was DNA-based. Jack explains that the recipient of one of the cards was Gareth Parkishoff -- at least that's how I think it's spelled -- and that he was the leader of one of the FTL's cells in Rabat. Jack and Sydney exchange a look. Sloane tells them that they need Parkishoff's DNA, but that he's dead, and his burial ground is unknown. Sloane snaps, "Marshall," but he doesn't respond. Marshall mutters, "The system's a little sluggish." Sloane is the picture of impatience, and finally tells him to get Fisher. Marshall looks a bit disgruntled at suddenly being made into the office bitch; he snaps his laptop shut and takes off.
Sloane continues: Parkishoff was assassinated by Martin Shepard. Jack interrupts and fills Sydney in on Shepard's situation: how, à la The Manchurian Candidate, Shepard was programmed to kill if someone uttered a certain phrase, and his mind would be wiped clean of the memory of said act if you said it again. Dammit! I had all these Manchurian Candidate jokes I was going to make, and it's almost the end of the episode. Damn you, ABC! Damn you! Sloane hands a volume of John Donne's poems over to Sydney, saying that they've known the correct phrase for some time. Sydney is to go undercover as a mental patient in Bucharest in the same institution where Shepard checked himself in, and to utter the proper phrase and ask him where Parkishoff's body is. Shepard, by the way, is played by the excellent actor John Hannah, who did such a good job of pretending to want to kiss Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors.
Fisher and Marshall enter. Marshall asks whether Sloane would mind if he took off to investigate the bandwidth leak. Sloane tells him to get him a report by the end of the day. Sloane gets back to the biz at hand: Fisher, under the guise of Dr. Carlos Fontanetta, is checking Sydney in. Sydney looks at Jack, who has a look of deep disgust -- or something -- on his face. I have no idea why he would look disgusted, but there you have it.
Sydney. Street. Jack runs after her and tells her that since her handler's out, he's giving her the countermission: she's to get the coordinates of Parkishoff's body and relay them to SD-6, who will decode the message. Sydney butts in to tell him that her handler is at the funeral of four heroes. Then she tells him to go to hell. Jack stops her and says that her life and the lives of others are at stake. She walks off. Jack says, "What you think you know, you don't know." Sydney asks for an explanation. Jack says, "You don't have clearance." Sydney spits, "'Clearance.' To be told how my mother died." Jack: "There are rules, Sydney." Sydney: "Then you break them." Jack: "Think about what you're saying. Acting cavalier about breaking the rules. Think about the last time you did something like that." The Bass Drum of Major Burns starts up at this point in the speech. Jack continues, "I am not a perfect man, I know that. But I am smart enough not to draw simple conclusions and act upon them. I would think if anyone had learned that lesson, it would've been you." Sydney simultaneously tries not to cry, and to back away from the heat, because, DAMN! Can you feel that heat? Ouch! Ouch!