Spy Vs. Spy

S01E03

The few scenes of Marshall doing his go-go-Gadget thing are interspersed with Sydney using the actual gadgets. So, here we go: Benegas's Museo Priveo de Auto. I made up that name, so no stealing now, kids. Sydney is wearing a strange floor-length gown whose color can only be described as faded tomato-juice stain. It's also deliberately cut too low by a hair, so the scalloped edges of her black bra peek out. It's like Heidi Fleiss and the makers of Starburst designed the dress. She's also wearing a long red wig that looks rather fetching. Jennifer Garner's face is really malleable and goes well with all the hair changes. Someone compliments her necklace. She says thanks.

Marshall. He gives Sydney "a normal-looking Spanish peseta" that's a sonic something-or-other. Sydney drops it near a window, as per Marshall's VO. Close-up of Sydney as she walks in slo-mo through the crowd. She turns to see Ana Espinosa dressed as a waitress, her hair drawn back in a low ponytail. Ana turns and Cheshire grins at Sydney. Sydney catches her breath.

Announcer unveils the latest car. Marshall VOs about the pen that triggers the sonic thingamajigger, and Sydney pulls it. The window shatters. Ay, caramba! Chaos. Flamenco-flavored techno plays, and once again, it's really not that bad. Kind of like the fat-free Jell-O I ate by mistake last night at dinner. Marshall tells Sydney that they'll need to disrupt the surveillance cameras' video signal, and shows her a remote modem. He says it again, as if the words taste delicious: "Remote. Modem." Museo de Auto. Sydney breaks into the necessary security blibedeeblah thingmagummy to attach the remote modem, only to see that Ana's already attached one, and deduces that Ana has back-up. She speaks into her transmitter to Dixon, and he tells her they'll piggy-back off Ana's signal, and to leave it there.

Thumps overhead. Sydney says Ana's in the ducts, and that Dixon needs to break the surveillance feed 'cause she's going in, baby! Security guards. Interrupted feed. Sydney exits the elevator to the chamber where the vault is. She stops at a glass barrier that looks like a phone-booth door, and attaches a descrambler. The descrambler has a nice, easy-to-read LED display that shows what percentage of stuff is descrambled so far. Suddenly, a red flare of light shoots up through the floor, lighting the bottom third of the walls pale red, and it's a pretty cool effect since the color is echoed in Sydney's hair and dress. So maybe there was a reason for that weird stained color. The descrambler is de-slowest thing ever. It's at thirty percent when the flare finishes cutting a hole in the floor and out pops Ana. K-Directorate and Ana deserve to have the sketch for common sense alone -- how much smarter is it to have someone go in as part of the waitstaff, especially when the waitstaff can wear pants and sensible shoes; plus, no one ever really looks at waitstaff. Unlike poor Sydney in her cast-offs from Le Tart's Boudoir.

Sydney's Apartment Of Emotional Rescue. The place is gorgeous, by the way. Sigh. I miss the space that's available in LA. Francie and Sydney are talking. Francie doesn't understand why her boyfriend Charlie isn't more excited about getting an offer from a super-prestigious law firm. Sydney reminds her that Charlie's probably nervous and scared about the job, since he's the first in his family to go to college. Francie says her dad told her the same thing, then expositions that it's weird when someone you love isn't telling you everything. Hold onto your hats, kids. I sense that that refreshing breeze of foreshadowing could possibly turn into a gale-force storm.

Sydney changes the subject and tells Francie how lucky she is to be able to ask her dad for advice. She tells Francie that she saw her dad recently, and it was empty -- or no, actually, it was full, full of awkwardness and lame pauses. Okay, it's too easy. Fishes, barrel, shooting; fox, henhouse, you get the drift. Pass. Sydney blathers about how she had hope that she and her dad could connect. Francie encourages her to try to forgive and make it happen.

Cut to Spy Daddy exiting his car. Sydney runs up to him. He tells her she shouldn't be there. Sydney says she has a thousand questions keeping her awake at night. And I have a show full of clichés to recap, so hurry up, missy. Spy Daddy grits, "Then take something." Spy Daddy is a very Valley of the Dolls kind of guy, I can tell. Sydney asks if he knew SD-6 would try to recruit her, and was her mother's death an accident. Spy Daddy bitches her out for approaching him so carelessly.

SD-6. The usual Gang of Four sit around the table. Sloane tells them that the Mueller project they stole from Taipei was actually based on a design from an architect/genius named Milo Rambaldi, who died in 1496 after being excommunicated for heresy. Sketches lost to history blah blah scattered all over the world blee blee no one knows what's left. Apparently, the dude was so advanced he was sketching schematics for a cell phone during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Sloane agrees that it sounds ridiculous, and tells them he's not a believer in the power of the pyramid and he's not a big granola fan. He says this kind of stuff makes him roll his eyes, and then he rolls his eyes. Kidding. He says he rolled his eyes until his eyes came across something that looks like machine code. He reveals a screen full of 0s and 1s. Marshall corrects them by explaining that the concept of 0s and 1s are as ancient a concept as…something else really, really, really old. Blah.

Sloane says they have to know what the rest of the code produces, since it's incomplete. They have one half, and the other half resides in the private collection of Eduardo Benegas, a Spanish venture capitalist. You know what? We don't even know what the first half of the code points to, so who cares? And does this relate to the Mueller project, or to something else entirely? I'm not really sure. I was trying to pluck my eyebrows when they were discussing this nonsense. They could save a lot of money by saying, "Hey, Sydney -- this week, why don't you go jump over a lot of self-consciously Byzantine obstacles using neat-o gadgets while wearing some knock-off gowns and Designer Imposters perfume. Sound good?" Bam. There's five minutes saved, easy. Anyway -- Rambaldi sketch. Benegas keeps it in a vault in his private museum. Marshall volunteers that Benegas owns the largest porn collection in Madrid. I bet Marshall knows all kinds of fun, vaguely depressing trivia like that. Everyone looks vaugely horrified. Marshall stammers that he thought it was interesting.

Sloane walks like an Exposition. I mean that literally. He's pacing during the entirety of his speech. He explains that K-Directorate has beaten them to the punch. Apparently, Benegas keeps the key to his preciousss, preciousss Rambaldi sketch on his person at all times, and he's surrounded by deadly bodyguards. This is VO'd over some gross slow-motion humping and Benegas's disturbingly shiny hairdo. Benegas is a gazillionaire and he can't afford an occasional bottle of shampoo? Close-up of a woman's hand with a tattoo as she reaches around Benegas's back -- and I just realized that he bears a disturbing resemblance to Steven Segal, by the by -- and yanks a necklace with a large rectangular pendant off of him. Oh, man. I don't even want to think about how humping incredibly sleazy and unattractive people as part of a spy's duty is going to play into this show. I bet a future episode will feature Sydney having to "make the toughest decision" and Vaughn getting pissy. You heard it here first.

Sloane says they don't know how K-Directorate got the key. Sydney says softly, "Ana. It was Ana, wasn't it?"

Outdoor table. Sydney fills out The Paper Bag Of "Previously." SVO sums up the SD-6 meeting by saying that SD-6 wants the code on the sketch, and that "the sketch is in a case. The case is in a vault. The vault is in a private car museum owned by Benegas." Did Dr. Seuss rise from the grave and take a job as a staff writer?

Sydney's Disturbingly Large And Spacious Apartment For A Graduate Student. Will helps her unpack -- waaaait a minute. How is she still not unpacked? According to the first episode, three months passed since Danny's murder, and she moved into this new place around that time, we can assume. Will blathers on about some mutated-cabbage story he's supposed to write that he doesn't understand. Sydney asks why the paper didn't give the story to the science correspondent. Good question. Almost simultaneously, her land line and her cell start ringing. Cell: Danny's old landlords telling Syd they have a box of his stuff. Land line: Joey's Pizza (a.k.a. CIA time, baby), which Will picked up. Sydney asks Will if he would mind picking up Danny's stuff, since she has to go to San Diego for the bank. Sydney asks Will about the call. He tells her. Sydney decides to go for a quick run.

Park. Sydney. Vaughn. Devlin wants Sydney to follow through on the SD-6 mission, since they're both after the same code. Vaughn says, "Da Vinci meets Nostradamus, I don't buy it." Spy blather about how to drop the info off in Barcelona. Vaughn wonders how the Russian underground found out about Rambaldi. Damn. It is so annoying how every character says the names slightly different; it can sound like Rambaldi, Rimaldi or Reynaldi. Phooey. Sydney says that he's the Intel guy; he should know. Her line reading there really sucked.

Vaughn asks Sydney to hum a few bars of that old favorite, the Exposition Waltz, and tell him about Ana Espinosa. Sydney speaks: Last of the Cold War babies; born in Cuba, raised in Russia. They had an encounter where Ana taped Sydney with an informant in Yugoslavia and then blew the informant's head off with a sniper rifle, just to let Sydney know she was out of her league. I think that's a pretty good signal, myself. Vaughn tells her to be careful. Sydney says she'll see him when she gets back. Vaughn breaks the news that he's no longer on her case, but that it was really good to meet her. Michael Vartan sure does make a specialty of looking sensitive and pained. He must get those expressions dry-cleaned regularly so they stay shiny and fresh, since he uses them in all his scenes. Sydney looks perturbed.

CIA. Vaughn. He's bitching to Sean about how no one knows what they're doing and that Lambert, the agent they've assigned to her, "may be senior, but he's junior [points at head], trust me."

The shores of Lake Overlap. Sean tells him he's gotten too attached and is jealous of Lambert; simultaneously, Vaughn yells at Sean to shut up and that that's Sean's answer for everything. Vaughn says he's genuinely scared since Sydney is out there with a renegade agent gunning for the same object. Sean tells him to chill.

Madrid. Ah, Madrid! Land of churros, cioccolate, y El Palac de Jamon y El Museo de Jamon. That whole city is pictures of Jesus, and ham. The people there sure do like to dance, though. What a country! as that poor bastard Yakov Smirnov might say.

Close-up of the tattooed, humping hand we saw earlier. THH is gripping a case. Pan up to Ana Espinosa, a.k.a. Gina Torres from Hercules and Cleopatra 2525. The Techno Of Tenseness apparently subcontracted out to some traveling flamenco-guitar-playing buskers. It's not unpleasant.

CIA. Vaughn. Lambert leafs through Sydney's file. He says, "Look at her. Wouldn't kick that out of bed." Ew. Smarmy Lambert exits, leaving a trail of smarm. Vaughn looks resigned and disgusted. And, yes, sensitive and pained. Yuck, yuck, yuck on Smarmbert!

SD-6. Marshall tells Sydney that since she'll be dressed to thrill -- oh God, not Marshall, please don't have him bring the ick -- maybe she'd want to wear the lovely simulated-pearl transmitter with her outfit. He's totally demented, like some kind of mad-scientist-cum-Barker's-Beauty. He urges Sydney to try it on. I get the feeling that Jennifer Garner and Carl Lumbly are trying not to laugh during these scenes. Totally sincere, he offers to model it himself, but then realizes that it wouldn't match his ensemble.

Sydney doesn't know what to do. Ana sees her and gives her a triumphant smile. Sydney expositions, "Ana's in the vault." She yells at Dixon to fix the descrambler. Dixon says that Ana's back-up is jamming their signal, and he'll find them. Ana, acting crazy-sexy-cool, grabs the case from the vault, saunters up to the glass barrier, kisses it, and waves good-bye. Sydney tries to narrow her eyes and look menacing, but mostly looks dumb and young. Ana leaves a big lip-print. Well, we know she's not wearing Lipfinity.

Right before Ana and the case drop into the duct she rose out of, the alarms sound, and guards are just about to pour into the vault. Sydney tells Dixon to find out who's cutting their signal, and how. Cut to Ana sashaying out with the rest of the crowd. She tells her back-up in Spanish that she got the goods. Meanwhile, Dixon spots the van holding Ana's crew and rams it on the side. It tips.

Ana saunters. A guard stops her and asks to check her bag. Ana asks why. He tells her to just show him the contents of the bag. Ana says of course, and as he reaches for the bag, sucker-punches him. She runs. Vault Of No Return. The descrambler descrambles. Sydney escapes and drops through the vent.

The music's doing a good job here -- I actually feel tense! I feel it! Sydney sheds her shoes and runs down the hall. She yells to Dixon that she's going to try and cut Ana off. A lot of kids down at the forums felt that Sydney runs funny. It's true, but I'm wondering if that's because Sydney's trying to go at warp speed down a slick hallway in bare feet and a long, tight, dress with a big mane of hair. Also, I think SD-6 or the CIA should really get Sydney some special bras, because the bouncing can't be good for the breasteses.

Sydney runs onto the deck of a warehouse-looking type room. She looks down and sees Ana running across the floor, making for the exit. Sydney grabs a chain hanging from the ceiling and makes like Tarzan, hair and dress train flying, to hit Ana feet-first in the gut. Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Some well-done fighting ensues, although it's a little too balletic for my taste. Lots of leg-sweeps and axe-kicks. They really look like they're hitting each other. A chain and hammer get involved. Ana wins when she kicks the crap out of Sydney and Sydney tumbles down a short flight of stairs.

Sydney tells Dixon that Ana's heading out the back. She and Dixon meet up and watch as Ana scales the fire escape to the roof. Sydney demands Dixon's gun, and then, in an act of sharp-shooting that would do Annie Oakley proud, and which I do not buy for a second, shoots the strap so that the case falls off Ana's shoulder to the ground. I mean, she had to be at least fifteen to twenty feet away, it's night, and the bag-strap is black, not to mention so is Ana's vest. What. Ever. Close-up of Sydney's face and then Ana's as they exchange an Emperor-commends-Skywalker-on-his-training look.

Los Angeles. Sad Sack Sidekick Will shows up at Danny's apartment to pick up Danny's belongings from his former landlord. Wow. What a complete and total disconnect from the scene. Will notices that there's a traffic camera outside Danny's apartment and gets all Young Sherlock Holmes. And yes, I'm as shallow as a kiddie pool, but if Bradley Cooper's hair was not the color of a fluffy Easter chick and he shaved, I would find Will much less annoying. If that makes me wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Will. Newspaper offices. He's on the phone, trying to track down the tape from the traffic camera outside Danny's apartment. His boss comes in and demands the mutated cabbage story. She asks how many words out of two thousand he's typed. He asks, "Counting the headline?" Lame! He couldn't fudge some kind of "I asked the research department for blah dee blah" excuse? And he calls himself a writer? Ha! Boss-lady snaps, "Will, don't make me regret hiring people in their twenties."

SD-6. Sydney's cell rings. Will calls with some lame joke about banking. Lame-o banter ensues. Will asks her if she wants to meet the gang for dinner; Sydney offers her place instead. Will says he has to get off the phone before he gets fired, "which is inevitable." Sydney says his name all significantly. Will asks what, and Sydney pusses out and says, "Nothing. It's just nice to be home."

Smarmbert. Sydney. Some back room in some warehouse in Somewheresville. Smarmbert smarms that it must've been -- he almost doesn't know how to say it -- devastating when Kenny was killed. Snerk. Is that some kind of weird South Park shout-out? It made me giggle. Sydney gets this look of horrified disbelief on her face, like Smarmbert cut a fart or something. He tells her he understands and empathizes. Sydney tells him civilly that his name was Danny. Smarmbert compliments her on her never-say-die spirit. Sydney asks what the meeting's about. Smarmbert lays on the smarm with a trowel and tells her he just wanted to get a little face time with his girl. Admirably, Sydney doesn't punch him. She also points out that SD-6 tracks their agents for suspect activity, and "to do me a favor -- don't be so friendly." Smarmbert says he loves her "spirit." He all but twirls his moustache and calls her a fine filly. Sydney snaps, "That's heartening. Are we done here?" She leaves. He watches her ass.

Sydney's Apartment Of Food, Folks And Fun. Hail, hail, the gang's all here. They're drinking margaritas and playing cards. Will tells a story about how he's so blind without his glasses that once he didn't notice three guys in his kitchen painting his walls. Sydney points out that he was naked. Non! Mais oui! Quelle horreur! Trés joli! Charlie, Francie's boyfriend, gets this weird, lascivious expression on his face and tells them how he cleans the house naked. I don't even want to think about the awkwardness of how he handles the vacuum. Francie is understandably embarrassed.

They play cards. Sydney calls Will's bluff. They all diss Will for being a bad poker player. Francie says she always knows when Will is bluffing, but she can never tell when Sydney is. Hurricane Foreshadowing is a-brewin', I tell ya. Will gets a phone call.

Francie and Charlie leave. Will gets some info about Danny's traffic apartment. Sydney appears behind him and asks what's up. Will lies -- successfully, I might add.

Sydney and Will are making post-drunk-munchies sundaes in her kitchen. I don't know how I feel about that. I feel that after getting drunk one must eat hot, greasy food, and lots of it, to prevent a hangover. No substitutions accepted. Sydney tells some story that goes on and on and on and on. Will asks if her story has a point. The point is basically that she binges on ice cream when she's drunk. My God. Am I in Bizarro World? I agreed with Will!

They eat their sundaes. Will sits on the counter. Sydney stands to him. Will offers her a bite of his sundae, saying it's the best ever: chocolate, chips, and it's genius. Both actors do a nice job of acting slightly tipsy but not quite soused. She takes it. Sydney gives him a bite. It lands on his shirt. He stands up to clean it off. They stand close. They kiss. It's one of those "Did she lean forward first or did he touch her first?" jobs. Then, thank God, it's over.

Sydney moves away. She obviously feels weird and off-balance. Will doesn't know what to do. He changes the subject and tells her that he'll go get the box of Danny's stuff from his car. All in all, nicely done. It's just that I'm just so sick of unrequited love storylines in every TV show. It's especially annoying since we know that this whole situation is going the Noel-Felicity-Ben love triangle route. Why can't someone be original and try to approximate real life? Sydney and Will would get pig-drunk and screw, immediately regret it, and never do it again. The incident would irrevocably alter the warp and woof of their friendship until it tainted everything in its midst and then their friendship would die in a festering sea of unspoken resentments and sublimated emotion. Except that I'd have to recap it. Also, I may be projecting. Never mind. Let's go with TV unreality.

SD-6. Sloane tells Sydney that Marshall couldn't open the lockbox she got from Ana. Marshall sputters in his defense that it's rigged with a mechanism that'll destroy the contents if it's not opened with its own key. Sloane tells him to go back to work. Marshall says, "Just to clarify, I'm not being fired?" Sloane says wearily, "Back to work means not fired." Left unspoken is the word "jackass." Hee!

Sloane tells Sydney they needed a contingency plan, so they called in their best "game theorist" -- Spy Daddy. Blah blah too dangerous for Sydney to infiltrate K-Directorate, so instead Sydney and Ana will meet in a neutral location and will open the lockbox together. Snerk. Lockbox! I keep thinking of the SNL sketch during the last Presidential election. "Strategery." "Lockbox! Lockbox!" Sydney says that she could've broken into K-Directorate. Spy Daddy tells her that with his plan she has a fighting chance. He gets up to leave. She asks him to answer her question about her mother. Spy Daddy said that her mother knew he was CIA, and that she died in the accident, that it was no lie.

Newsstand. Smarmbert and Sydney pretend to read magazines. Smarmbert tells her she has to tag Ana with a tracking chip at their meeting. Sydney points out that she can't do that with a team of snipers trained on her. Smarmbert tells her that she has to obey his orders. Sydney says it's been too many years that she's blindly accepted orders, and that if Devlin doesn't put Vaughn back on the case, they get nothing. Smarmbert says, "Vaughn is a junior officer." Sydney says, "Then promote him." She exits.

Will. Boss-lady. Will tells her that all the traffic cameras within a one-mile radius of Danny Hecht's apartment were out during the time of his murder. Boss-lady points out that his article is overdue, and someone else is on the crime desk. Will says, "Don't make me regret working for people in their fifties." Boss-lady levels the stink-eye at him. Will backtracks. "Forties." She gives him one week. Also, Boss-lady looks nowhere near fifty.

Berlin. Van. Dixon. Sydney's in the back of the van, getting rigged up. She's on her phone talking to Francie, who thinks Charlie is cheating on her, since she found a matchbook with a love note scrawled inside it. Would someone really bother to write a love note inside a matchbook after a clandestine tryst? Is this really how the kids do it these days? Also, did Sydney call Francie from Berlin in the middle of her life-or-death mission? Otherwise, wouldn't Francie have to punch in, like, a trillion numbers for international long distance, and wouldn't she think that was weird? Plus, aren't those Nextel phones and some special service the only way you can have a US number and go anywhere in the world? Oh, forget it. I'm going to go Zen: I could care whether this show has even the sheerest glaze of plausibility. Or I could not. For now, I'm going with "not."

Dixon is eavesdropping on her conversation and wondering what the hell is going on. Sydney tells Francie to talk to Charlie, since there could be an explanation. I don't know about that. Shit stinks for a reason. The wire guy goes to tape something on her rack, and Sydney smacks his hand and tells him no. She tells Francie she's with a German client and has to go.

Tons of government types troop into a giant, brightly lit stadium. They set up. Sydney, clad in your everyday urban girl warrior uniform of basic black separates and boots, strides to the center of the stadium. Sydney clicks her ear mike and asks, "Who am I talking to?" Cut to Vaughn at a satellite relay station in LA. "Your invisible friend." She says, "My guardian angel." He says right back atcha kid, and thanks for getting me the promotion. Wait. WAIT WAIT WAIT. How is Sydney able to speak on that mike and not be heard by SD-6? Ahhh! God. Okay. Zen. Zen. Let it go. Let it go.

SD-6 offices in LA. Sloane and Spy Daddy watch Sydney's progress. Sloane asks if they spoke about Sydney's mother. Spy Daddy says they did, and he lied about the real cause of her death. Is anyone surprised by this? Be quiet -- you were not!

Ana strides in wearing grey. She asks Sydney how her Russian is. They speak for a few lines. You know, it would be nice to get translations for the foreign dialogue that goes beyond "hello," "goodbye," or "thanks." Ana needles Sydney about working for the agency that killed her one twue wuv. Gina Torres' Russian accent is about as good as Shannon Elizabeth's "Czech" accent in American Pie, by the way. Jennifer Garner relies on sucking in her cheeks to convey emotion. Sorry, hon. That only works if you're Garbo.

Sydney snaps and asks Ana if she brought the key. Ana asks her if she brought the box. Close-ups of their faces as they kneel to unlock the box. Okay. So we've seen this exact scene in Pulp Fiction, Repo Man, and Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. How many movies have paid this homage to Kiss Me, Deadly? I'm starting to think homage just means "rip-off." They unlock it. Close-ups of their faces. Sydney looks terrified. She breathes, "Oh my God." Gina Torres' facial expression here is great -- she looks frightened, exhilarated, and overwhelmed, simultaneously.

week: Sydney has to guard Patel, find some weapon, and safeguard the WTO. I wonder if she manages to get her paper in on time.