Episode Report Card Manimal: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Reckoning
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.17.2001
There's some more spy gobbledegook. Apparently on some other FTL barge -- who the hell are these people? I'm starting to think they're like the Penatvirate in So I Married an Axe Murderer -- you know, the secret organization of the five most powerful people/families in the world, and it includes the Queen and Colonel Sanders and I forget the rest, but the point is that FTL has a code machine they need to get. Dixon asks how it works and Marshall cracks, "Very well," only his inadvertent quip doesn't fly so well with the kids. In fact, it lands with a heavy, wet thud. More spy talk: only eight code machines made, crew had to abandon FTL barge because it was set on self-destruct, and now they have to get the decoder from an FTL agent named John Smythe who's based in London, masquerading as an art-gallery owner. Jack tells Sydney that her job is to get the code machine back and find out what FTL is up to. Didn't they used to do this back in the '40s, when they'd hide decoder rings in random boxes of Ralston cereal? Anyway. Sydney gives her dad what I think is supposed to be a dirty look, but it ends up being kind of a sexy look, which then gave me a serious case of the creeps.
Sydney exits the meeting as her dad hustles to catch up with her. "I would've told you about the reassignment, but you were in Badenweiler," he says. He tells her he heard about the other agents. Sydney hisses, "I know about you," and accuses him of killing her mother. "Every time I think I know just how awful you are, I learn something worse. But this time, I'm gonna make sure you pay." Close-up of Victor Garber's face. The man has mastered minimalist acting: he twitches maybe three facial muscles and you get it all: distress, heartbreak, sorrow.
I never comment on commercials, but you know what? That iPod looks damned cool. I want me one.
Close-up of some guy in khakis and golf shoes at a driving range. Or whatever the heck those things are called -- I think it's a driving range. Pan up. It's Vaughn. Oh, God. Vaughn would so play golf. And I know the Beastie Boys and Samuel L. Jackson do it, that the game takes an incredible amount of skill, it's more than a game, yada yada yada, but here are my feelings on golf: it's lame. Remember that Eddie Murphy song "Boogie in Your Butt" when someone offers him twenty bucks to put something in his butt and he says, "I'd rather golf, to be perfectly honest with you"? Not that that's at all remotely related, but it's the one joke I can think of that expresses a clearly anti-golf sentiment. Vaughn takes the spot next to Sydney, who must've really pissed off Costume that day, since she's wearing knee socks, an unflattering mini-skirt, and a tucked-in Lacoste shirt with the collar dragged halfway down her back. He puts some thing on the shelf between them. "What's this?" she snaps. "A bug," he says. "What are you, twelve years old?" she snaps, all out of proportion with the actual event. You know, I would root much more for Sydney if any of her remarks had even the teensiest bit of humor or self-deprecation or awareness to them. Anyway, it's a real bug, as in a listening device. It's totally passive, and there's some other spy gobbledegook, but the point is that it's undetectable, and cleverly disguised as a bug, and Sydney is to leave it after she snags the code machine. Vaughn tells her to deliver the code machine to SD-6 -- since they won't have time to switch it -- and that SD-6 will decode everything and report it to the affiliate offices, and since they're tapped into the mainframe at SD-6, they'll know about it, too. Oh. MY GOD. Is that continuity?! Was that the real, homey, cinnamon-apple-y scent of continuity? Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Sydney and Vaughn somehow manage to ignore my case of the vapors as Sydney asks how far along the CIA is with stealing SD-6's files. Vaughn replies that it's almost 2%. Sydney is astonished. Vaughn says that they can't steal stuff quickly, or SD-6 will notice there's a leak, but that if they're patient, they can get a lot of stuff to do some real damage. Vaughn then tells Sydney that her dad is clean. Sydney spills that she confronted her dad and told him she knew about Calder, the investigation -- everything. Vaughn is pissed. He almost creases his forehead, but not quite. Sydney says that if Vaughn had been there, he'd have done the same thing. Vaughn points out (quite rightly) that she needs to learn some self-control. (Is this character continuity? And development?! Oh God, I'm afraid to look too closely in case it's like fool's gold, or a bag that turns out to be fake Prada when you get too close.) Sydney says that he doesn't know what it's like to have a parent killed because of this deadly game of spy vs. spy. Vaughn then gives us a ham-handed speech about how there's a book under glass and a memorial wall at the CIA, and how the families are never told how the agents died, and that he was "eight when [his] father became one of those stars." He continues: there's a certain protocol followed at every funeral, and they admonished him not to be conspicuously emotional and -- wait for it -- he's the dude assigned to the funerals of the Badenweiler Four. Sydney surreptitiously tries to wipes the egg off her face.
Apartment of Kate Jones/Eloise Kurtz. Will's voice is muffled as he says he has a package for Eloise. Isn't this how many Penthouse Forum letters start? Kate/Eloise opens the door -- without checking the peephole, I might add -- and sees Will, begging for five minutes of her time. She asks how he knows her name. He says he won't use it, if she's worried. She says she doesn't know anything. He points out that people who say that always know much more than they think. He then goes into detail about how they killed Danny. They do a little paddling in Lake Overlap as Kate/Eloise tells him she has pepper spray and goes to get it off the table as Will keeps asking for five minutes. She gets him right between the eyes. Will hits the floor, yelling in agony. Oh, poor Will. My sympathy did not preclude my rewatching this scene about five times and giggling, though. Kate/Eloise tells him that she warned him, and asks him just to go away.