And now for Part Two of "Authorized Personnel Only," or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Dark Side and Accept the Fact that Both of My Parents Are Evil and Wrong and Not of the Lord."
After her confession to Vaughn, Syd returns to the Apple Store, refreshed and invigorated and ready to listen as her murderous father relates some ho-hum details about Rick Yune that are supposed to further the plot, but really just make it possible for Sloane to bring Marshall into the fold and also allow Sydney to go on some extraneous mission to steal a samurai sword.
See, Rick Yune has apparently severed all ties to every known contact and has, in effect, disappeared from the face of the earth. So, their one link to Vadik has up and gone. All signs indicate that Vadik is still around; Rick Yune's just hit the skids. And, since he's their only link to Vadik, they'd damn well better find the man. Sloane saunters up and puts his hand on the back of Syd's chair and says something about that fictional museum in London. Syd shoots a look at Sloane's hand that pretty much says, "Touch me and you pull back a stump, little man." She turns to the rest of the group and tells them about Rick Yune breaking into the museum.
Sloane announces that Rick Yune was trying to steal the Shintaro Sword. (Googled. Doesn't exist. I do my homework, y'all.) It would seem that the imaginary Shintaro Sword is the most famous samurai blade outside of Japan, and Rick Yune was trying to steal it in order to bring it back to Japan and restore honor to his country. Yes. Because nothing says "honor" like "breaking and entering." Sloane says that they may not be able to contact Rick Yune, but he's thought of a way to get Rick Yune to contact them. There's a pause as he looks around at everyone and, finally, Jack takes the bait. "Are you suggesting we fake a robbery of the Hasunaga?" Again, there's a pause. Sloane doesn't answer. Sydney, who apparently can read minds as well as kick serious ass, glances at Sloane and says, "You think we should steal the sword." Dix pipes up that the fictional Hasunaga Museum is one of the most secure in the world and, if he were running this op, there's only one man he'd trust to get them inside.
Marshall J. Flinkman. Esquire.
That's right. It's obviously time for some comic relief, because we shoot on over to Oops Center, where Marshall and Agent Sean are just hanging out, shooting the shit, discussing how depressing the place is now that all the fun ass-kicking people have left. Marshall performs his trademark humorous blabbering, going on and on about how the whole team is gone and the only one left is Sark, and that's only because he's in custody, and how he hates that guy, although he did go visit him twice, just to see a familiar face, and they had eggs. That's right. Marshall and Sark had eggs. Together. While Sark was in custody. Now THAT'S a flashback I'd like to see. "Don't do that," snits Agent Sean, all emotional and shit because his boyfriend Vaughn has left him behind.
At the end of the day, as Marshall's heading to his car juggling all sorts of geek stuff, a couple of black cars screech up. A bunch of "federal agents" get out of the cars and arrest Marshall for misuse of company property or some such shit, but we already know this is just a trumped-up charge to get Marshall into the Apple Store. The thing we see is Marshall being led into the Apple Store with a hood over his head as he blabbles about downloading maps or something. The agents park Marshall in front of the waiting group of Apple Store employees and remove his hood. He looks around. "Am I dead?" Hee. Syd just smiles and tells him he's been recruited to run the IT division of the Apple Store. Sloane walks up and manages to look menacing, even though he barely comes up to the shoulders of the rest of his team. Marshall sees him and hilariously leans into Syd. "Um, Syd?" he whispers. "Slooooanne is heeeere." Hee. "We know," says Syd with mock seriousness. Hee hee. This whole scene makes me laugh out loud. I don't care how contrived it is. It just tickles me. So, Marshall's hired! He hugs Syd and says, "We're back!" And how, brother.
And now we move on to London. We're going to do one of the standard Alias "we're on the mission already and we'll switch over to Marshall for comedy routines and techno-babble when absolutely necessary" scenes. Syd and Vaughn, clad all in black, are running across a rooftop. Marshall gets on the comm and congratulates them on…running across the roof really well? I don't know. "Stay focused," he says, obviously excited to be on another mission with his buds. "They're focused," says Dixon, obviously remembering how annoying Marshall can sometimes be. Okay, so, break-in time. Do I need to describe it? No. No, I don't. Suffice it to say, Syd blowtorches some hinge somewhere as Vaughn tries to bypass the security system to make the security cameras loop and Marshall talks him through it. Everything goes smoothly until the hinge that Syd's torching burns off and something clanks down into a vent. The security inside totally hears it and wants to check it out. But the monitors are showing the security desk guards that everything's cool near the sword, so the guards tell the other guard not to bother checking it out. Yeah. I don't know. There's forty-five minutes left to the episode and I'm really looking forward to the two billion commercial breaks that are peppered throughout the remaining portion.
Syd goes to enter the vent and Vaughn wishes her luck. Um, she's not heading to the frontline, wingnut. She's scooting down a vent and stealing a sword. And we totally know she's gonna nab it, dude. We know. So save your wishes for when Syd has to scale the Eiffel Tower and shoot an arrow into Sacre Coeur while hanging upside down AND playing the violin, okay? ["I bet that totally happens, too." -- Sars] As Syd heads down into the vent, we switch over to Marshall, who's spending his minutes with Dixon being a total toolbox. But an enjoyable one. He's yammering on about how cool this whole situation is; you know, stealing a sword in order to nab a bad guy in order to nab an even BIGGER bad guy. Yeah. That's cool. "Come on," he says. "Come on. You would never let us do this -- back in the CIA -- back when you were double-breasted…serious…robot Dixon." And he does that last part like he's the robot from Lost in Space all, "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" Hee. Marshall can be annoying at times (make that really, really, REALLY annoying), but I did miss him. He's stupid funny. Dixon, however, does NOT find him even remotely stupid funny, so Marshall meekly apologizes to him for the robot comment.
Back to the theft. Syd's still sneaking down the shaft. Hee. "Shaft." Sorry. I'm twelve. She makes it to the sword room, shoots a line across the room, hooks it, and starts shimmying her way over to the sword. Once there, she balances à la Mission: Impossible, sprays some stuff on the glass, presses a button on something and SHRRRRIIICK! The glass shatters but remains in place. She then rolls the glass up like a yoga mat and does something with some wires and some metal thingies as Vaughn watches her on his screen. Marshall comments that the biggest challenge of this heist is the marble pressure pad beneath the case -- there's no way to deactivate it. It doesn't really matter, because one of the guards is heading her way and the rest of the team thinks she should abort the mission. But Syd stubbornly continues, insisting that she's almost there. So, after some tense moments wherein we're supposed to assume that Syd's going to get caught in mid-steal, the guard enters the room and…of course, the sword is gone and so is Syd. If by "gone" you mean "hanging from the ceiling just waiting for the guard to follow the zip line along the ceiling to her crouched hiding place."
The guard turns and just as he sees her, Syd knocks him down, sending his Coke bottle rolling across the floor. The second it hits the marble pressure pad the sword case is sitting on, the alarm goes off and the security gates start coming down. Syd makes a run for it and slides through a series of crashing gates. She makes it out to an exterior door and exits. Sirens can be heard in the distance. A couple of cop cars pass right by her, and I'd like to give a high five to the sound guys for giving us Brit sirens, not American. At least THEY'RE paying attention to details.
Syd tells Dix that she needs an extraction pronto. Dix tells her it'll take them 60 seconds to get to her. She snaps that she doesn't have 60 seconds and she'll see them at the Lz. Whatever that means. Syd runs off down an alleyway and a copy car comes careening around the corner. She bolts, but the car cuts her off and, in a scene directly reminiscent of the pilot episode, Spy Daddy jacks the passenger door open and yells at his daughter to get in the car. Syd hesitates, and Jack's all, dude? Get in the car NOW and you can HATE ME LATER, okay? She gets in and Jack gets on the comm and we learn that Jack's code name is "Raptor," which just…hee! Hee hee hee. Did we already know that? Because that? Is priceless. That name didn't show up in any of the other recaps I searched through, so I think this is a new thing and I think this is a good thing because HEE. "Raptor." Hee hee hee. Know what else is funny? The exchange between the two of them once Syd gets in the car. "What are you doing here?" Syd asks breathlessly. "You know what else typically works in a situation like this?" spits Jack. "A simple 'thank you.' Get down." Hee! Syd ducks and Jack drives off. If I'm not mistaken, you can totally see Victor Garber hiding a smirk as he peels off. The man hates props, people.
The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue. Syd and Vaughn are walking along together, looking nice and chummy. Jack and Sloane are watching them. What's up with Sloane's jacket, by the way? It's one of those stand-up collar jobs that looks like it belongs on an accountant in Blade Runner or Demolition Man. I mean, it's cool and everything, it's just…no one else in the office is sporting anything like it, so Sloane winds up looking like he…accidentally got his jacket wrong or something. Anyway, Sloane just has to ruin the moment by saying, "You didn't tell her, did you? The truth." "I told her that I was responsible for the death of her mother," says Jack, turning to look at him. "Did you tell her everything?" Sloane asks. "She's better off not knowing everything," says Jack, turning back to look at his daughter with Vaughn. Yeah. That little moment made me wonder if Vaughn had something to do with the death of Irina. I know what happens at the end of the episode and I still think Vaughn might have had something to do with it. I just don't trust him. He's got a jones for killing duplicitous ex-wives, y'all.
So Sloane's all, dude. That's a tough call, man. Not telling your kid the truth. Wow. Jack's all, yeah, well, I'd rather she hate me than, like, know the truth. (I know it doesn't make sense -- but that's the gist of what he says. I don't write this shit, you know.) Jack's worried that the truth would incapacitate Sydney. Whatever. She thought her mom was dead and then found out she was alive and then her mother shot her. I think if she can handle that crap, she can handle the real reason Jack killed Irina. Or Vaughn killed Irina. Or Vaughn had sex with Irina and Jack killed her. Or something. I have no idea what's going on.
Brussels. Or Beverly Hills. I can't tell. Is there a difference? Dixon's on assignment, pretending to be some high flyer. He's talking to some bald dude, and he tells Baldy that he has the Shintaro sword to sell. Baldy's verrrry interested and he goes off to make a few calls. Dix calls in and tells Sloane that the deed is done. Sloane tells him to get his ass home and then he walks over to Sydney's desk, gets waaaaaay too close to her, and informs her that, with the sword in play, they should hear from Rick Yune in a matter of hours. He goes away, then returns a second later and PUTS HIS HAND RIGHT ON HER SHOULDER. Ewwwww! Like, his hand is inches away from her breastbone, dudes! Uncle Inappropriate needs to be stopped. Syd totally agrees with me too because the look on her face is like, "If I just turn to my left, I could totally take a chunk outta his palm with my canines." "It's good, isn't it?" smarms Sloane. "Having the team back together, hmmm?" Rifkin's totally enjoying being ooky. He is. He kind of pats her shoulder and then finally walks off, leaving Syd to wonder if she has Clorox and a steel brush tucked away in her file cabinet.
Marshall's New-Fangled Garage of Geekiness. Marshall's setting up his new digs, getting comfortable, hanging Star Wars figurines from the ceiling -- you know the drill. Syd enters and asks if Marshall's gotten anything on Vadik. He responds that, basically, Vadik's a bad, bad man. He runs through some of Vadik's terrorist activities, and Syd stops him when he gets to a picture of Nadia's friend. They chat about Nadia and this friend and Marshall states that the friend is the only person ever to have seen Vadik. Suddenly, Syd gets an idea: maybe the friend (Martinez) was transmitting when he was killed. Yeah, I have no idea what that means either.
I guess it means that Jack and Marshall go to prison. No, not like that! I mean, they go to see someone in prison! As far as I can tell, it's the big-ass henchman who Vaughn took down on the train in the first part of this episode. I honestly wasn't looking that closely, but his head is bigger than a Volvo, so I think I'd remember him. "I'll make you a deal," says Jack. "You cooperate with us. That's it." Volvo Head just grunts, "You don't frighten me." "Then clearly you're an idiot," snits Jack. Hee. Okay, now this part is totally convoluted and involves a lot of twisty dialogue, but the nugget of it is, the voice transmittal from Martinez captured what everyone thought was the voice of Vadik. But the voice print matches that of Rick Yune identically. So, Jack surmises, Vadik trusts Rick Yune enough to act on his behalf and, therefore, Volvo Head must have met Vadik. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either, but there ya go. "Where do we find Vadik?" asks Jack. Volvo Head wants protection. Jack agrees. "Vadik," says Jack. "You had him," says Volvo Head. "Vadik is [Rick Yune]. There is no Vadik. It's a cover. He made him up. There's no Vadik."
The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue. Jack repeats the information about Rick Yune being Vadik. He suggests a new game plan. Before they can come up with one, Dixon calls and tells them that Rick Yune took the bait and agreed to a meet in Rio de Janeiro. He also demanded that the woman who stole the sword deliver it personally. Looks like Syd's goin' ta Rio! Jack asks about backup, and Dix says Syd's allowed one backup only. Sloane orders Jack to go with her and Syd's all, whoa ho ho ho! Hang on a minute! If you don't mind, I'd prefer Dixon as my partner in the field, dude. You send me out with Dad and I could wind up dead. I do look an awful lot like my mother. Sloane just snits that he's made his assignments and if she doesn't like it, she can blow it out her ass.
Rio. Team Apple is tucked away in what looks like the same set they've used for every safe house they've ever had on this show. Syd's getting ready to make the exchange with Rick Yune. Vaughn comes over and tells her that the plan is to make the exchange, take out any backup he might have, then grab him and get on a plane. He makes it sound so easy, doesn't he? We head over to a fountain to begin the mission. Syd and Jack are sitting to each other on a low fence, the sword between them. "This is the best conversation we've had in weeks," quips Jack. Yeah. You offed her mom, dude. Not the best time to try out that "best conversation" joke you've been keeping in reserve.
The pay phone across the way rings, and Syd picks it up. Rick Yune's on the other end. He orders her to walk through a tunnel to the Alves building and then take an elevator to the tenth floor. No backup. No guns. Just the sword. Three minutes or the deal is off. Vaughn questions Marshall about the Alves building and Marshall tells him it's a bank, so if Vaughn wants to go in undercover, he's going to have to change out of that charming sleeveless plaid shirt and black watch cap. Syd sees a figure in the distance run away from a fence. I'm assuming that's Rick Yune. Syd walks over to Jack, picks up the sword, and says, "I'm going in. Alone." She walks off, and Jack gets on the comm. "I assume you all heard that?" Hee.
Syd makes her way through the tunnel toward the elevator. Vaughn gets on the comm and tells Syd to meet him at the elevator before she heads up. Marshall pipes up that the tunnel might cause them to lose comms for a bit and…just as he says it, the comms go out. So Syd's cut off. As she's making her way deeper into the tunnel, Dixon (or "Outrigger") informs Vaughn (or "Shotgun") that they've lost contact with Sydney (or "Phoenix"). Vaughn looks around at the elevators and suddenly asks Marshall (or "Merlin") if he's sure there's a tenth floor in the Alves building. And, yes, their code names are killing me.
Marshall quickly looks at some blueprints and goes, "Guys?" And you just know there ain't no tenth floor in that building. Especially since, right after Marshall goes, "Guys?" Sydney stops at the end of the tunnel and the Piano of Impending Torture kicks into high gear. Sydney senses that something's not right, so she drops the sword case, extracts the sword, and turns around, ready for a fight…with a samurai? Daryl Hannah? Keith Carradine? I don't know. Vaughn runs through the building toward the tunnel. Syd continues further down the tunnel toward…well, nothing, actually. Jack runs into the tunnel from the park end and sees the abandoned sword case. Back with Sydney, the fluorescents go completely out and we hear Rick Yune, in the shadows, say, "Hello, Sydney Bristow." He doesn't show himself right away, preferring to creep us out from offscreen. Syd takes a couple of steps, but Rick Yune catches her from behind and poof! She's gone. Vaughn and Jack actually meet each other in the middle of the tunnel, with no Syd anywhere in sight.
Commercial three thousand and twenty-two.
Back at the Rio safe house, the boys are trying to figure out how to find Sydney. Vaughn pipes up that they should contact Nadia, because she has intel on Rick Yune that they can use. Sloane's all, dude. My daughter hates me and everything I stand for. She's totally not gonna help us. Jack's all, come on! My kid's doin' it! Yours should too! Vaughn's all, I'll handle this. I'll make her help us. Where the hell is she? The thing we see is Nadia, walking near a fountain. Her cell rings and it's Vaughn on the other end. He tells her that Sydney's alive, that Vadik and Rick Yune are one and the same, and that they don't know if Sydney is, indeed, alive. "If she is, you're her only hope," he says. Way to put on the pressure, dude. Nadia quickly tells him about a location where Rick Yune used to run an operation, and Vaughn asks her for details.
While they're working out how to rescue Sydney, Sydney herself is waking up and realizing she's strapped to a chair in a drippy subbasement somewhere. Rick Yune's there, and he wants to know "what happened to the deal?" Syd's all, what? Huh? The hell? He leans closer to her, gets right up to her ear, and says, "What. Happened. To the. Deal?" Syd's all, I'm. Not. Deaf. I. Just. Don't. Know. What. You're. Talking. About. "Before you leave this room," Rick Yune says as he fondles some sharp implements, "you will tell me why." Why what? I don't know. "I might," quips Sydney. "I'm relatively open-minded. But in this case, I don't know what the hell you're talking about." "Have you eaten breakfast?" Rick Yune non-sequiturs. "Why? You wanna grab something?" Syd shoots back. Hee. For some reason, Sydney having breakfast makes Rick Yune want to…not torture her yet or something. I don't know. He says something about breakfast and walks off, leaving Syd to wonder if a cup of sadness and a plate of hate constitute breakfast.
And then we're on to the Nadia Show, complete with a now super-hot-looking Nadia (Mia Maestro is pretty much always hot-looking, but you add some strappy sandals and a set of hot rollers, and girlfriend is smokin'), doing her variation on the Bristow/Derevko strut down the hallway of what looks to be a meat-packing plant. Elsewhere in the plant, a slimy-looking guy with a ponytail is making his way around several frozen carcasses. Ew. Nadia puts on a coat of lipstick. She sexes her way around to where Ponytail is and catches his eye, offering her best "Wanna screw?" expression. Ponytail comes over and wonders where she's been for the last three months. She just responds that it took longer than she thought to find him the perfect birthday present. Namely, her.
Back in Danger Dungeon, Syd's still strapped to the chair. Rick Yune returns, this time with a henchman in tow. Damn, Rick Yune is hot. Even when he's preparing to torture Sydney, he's hot. It's true. So, while Syd watches, the henchman hooks a water hose up to a mask. Rick Yune says something about how he saw Syd in the park and how he was looking for the woman who stole the Shintaro and then he put two and two together and realized that Sydney WAS the woman who stole the Shintaro and man, he may be hot but not too smart, huh? But Rick Yune thinks that Sydney's there for a reason other than the sword. Syd looks totally baffled. Rick Yune's all, so? You found out, huh? About the hit? And if you know about the hit, then you must know why you were spared, why the job went away. Again, Syd looks totally clueless. But Rick Yune thinks she knows something, so he shoots the henchman a glance, and the henchman shoves the mask onto Syd's face and they hit the water and it gushes in, essentially drowning her in the mask.
Commercial three thousand and twenty-three. I'm not kidding. It's only been five minutes since the last one. TiVo says so.
Can I just say that Rick Yune drowning Sydney because he thinks she knows why a hit on HER was called off is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen? Why would you try to torture someone who was an assassination target in order to find out something…they more than likely know nothing about? That's like persecuting your current boyfriend or girlfriend for something your last boyfriend or girlfriend did to you. It makes no sense, your current boyfriend or girlfriend is most likely just going to be confused and pissed off, and you STILL won't get anywhere closer to a resolution. Dumb dumb dumb.
Also? Kill The Bachelor/The Bachelorette, please. Kill it now.
Danger Dungeon. The henchman rips off the mask, allowing Syd to gasp some air. She's all, dude? I don't know about any hit. The henchman puts the mask back on her. Rick Yune's all, you wouldn't be here if you didn't know about the contract. Or, you know, if the writers weren't grasping at straws and trying to intersect four totally different plot points in one fell swoop. They pull the mask off again and Syd's all, no, seriously (cough! cough!), what (cough! cough!) damn contract? Rick Yune's all, the contract I had on your life, dude. Syd's all, you were hired to kill me? The hell? Who hired you? And I'm all, yo' mamma, dude. Seriously. Syd asked, "Who hired you?" and I yelled, "YOUR MOTHER." See? I am psychic.
"Sydney," Rick Yune tsk tsks. "Assassin-client privilege." Hee. He goes on to say that the day before he was supposed to kill Syd, his client was killed. Okay, did anyone not know at this point that Irina was the one who ordered the hit? Anyone? If you didn't get it by this point, then you really shouldn't be watching this show, dude. I'm sorry, but it's true. "I swear to god, I don't know anything about this," says Syd. "Somehow I believe you," says Rick Yune with real surprise in his voice. It's a nice moment, actually. And he plays it well. "I guess," he continues, "this is just one of those coincidences." Oh, yes, I get those all the time. Like, the guy who sells me my bagel every morning is actually…my long-lost half-brother who also happens to have killed our parents and disguised it as a freak polo accident. What a coincidence!
"Guess I can just sell you the sword and go home," snits Syd. "I'll just…take the sword," smiles Rick Yune. "How's that?" He nods again at the henchman, the mask is put back on, and Rick Yune pulls the water chain and walks off, leaving Syd to drown. Somewhere else in the building, Nadia's putting her smooch on. She's doing a damn fine job of looking like she's actually EATING Ponytail's lips off. Within seconds, we see why: Ponytail drops the ground, out like a light. Nadia rips some plastic off her lips and Marshall pipes up, "So, Nadia, the tranquilizer lips? Were they too red, do ya think?" Nadia doesn't answer. Instead, she grabs a key card from Ponytail and enters the secret portion of the building. Syd's still drowning under the watchful eye of the henchman. Nadia comes up behind him and takes him out. She runs over to Syd and removes the mask. Syd gathers her breath as Nadia moves to free her arms from the chair.
Just then, Rick Yune comes up, and he and Nadia get into it. She puts up a good fight, but he winds up dropping her with a whack to the face. Just as Rick Yune's about to move to Sydney, we hear Jack in the distance calling her name. Rick Yune wisely decides to get the hell out of there as Jack and the rest of the Apple boys make their way to the girls. Syd bends over to check on Nadia, then runs off. Nadia meets up with the boys and tells them that Syd went thatta way. They all chase after her. Syd heads into the cold storage area and tries to find Rick Yune in between hanging meat carcasses. Suddenly, a sword slices through a carcass, barely missing Syd's head.
And then they fight.
Fight fight fight. Spin spin spin. Dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. Slo-mo. Hook. Kick. Rick Yune's hot. Some Elektra action with a couple of meat hooks. A little sword action on Rick Yune's part. All nicely done. Then somehow (don't ask me how), Sydney manages to get the sword turned around and drives it through Rick Yune's torso. Guess he's not coming back this season either, huh? As Rick Yune dies, Syd bends over and asks him who hired him to kill her. He takes a dramatic pause and finally says, "Captain Kangaroo." No! He says, "Derevko. Irina Derevko." Of course he does. Did you have any doubt? I called that storyline before this series even BEGAN, dudes. Seriously. Rick Yune dies, leaving Syd to ponder whether you can really love a mother who repeatedly tries to kill you, even though she repeatedly fails.
Back from the break, Sloane's addressing the troops at the Apple Store. He sums the last two hours up thusly: "Congratulations. We recovered the isotope. We've eliminated a dangerous enemy. And the British government is most grateful for American assistance in returning the Shintaro sword." Wow. That's quite an impressive list of accomplishments for only two hours. Hell, it takes me two hours just to recap thirty minutes of this damn show. Sloane goes on to say that he's pleased to announce that, after all her fighting and hating, Nadia has suddenly agreed to join the Apple Store. She'll be in charge of customer service and gift wrapping. "So," he finishes, "that's it. Go home. Feel good about what you've done." Heh. He makes feeling good sound like something bad. Syd just glares at him and follows everyone else out of the office.
Later on, Syd's off in some random wing of the Apple Store. Jack enters and asks her how she found out about the whole "Mommy wanted to kill you" plan. Syd tells him about Rick Yune. Jack moves toward her. "You didn't know?" she asks. "I merely knew your mother had hired someone," he says, a look of concern coming onto his face. "I didn't know who. I knew only one way to stop him." "Why would she want me dead?" Syd asks. Oh, Syd, please. There are thousands of reasons. But the best reason that pops to mind is that Lena Olin's never coming back, and pretending that Irina was off somewhere in a cybercafé instant messaging with baddies all over the world was getting pretty damn old.
Jack approaches his daughter and tells her he doesn't know why Irina wanted her dead. Syd, on the verge of tears (again, some more), says, "You killed her to save me? You killed Mom to save me." Yes, Syd. In order to save you, he killed your mom. To spare your life, he offed your mama. So you could live, he…we could be at this all night. Jack moves to embrace his daughter and Syd puts her hands up, kind of like, "Okay, I get it, you saved me. But you still killed my mother, so I'm gonna have to wait on the parental affection bit for awhile, okay? Thanks. I'll see ya later. After about seven years of therapy." Syd walks off and Jack just looks after her, wondering if now would be an appropriate time to tell Syd that it wasn't actually HIM that killed Irina, but Vaughn. Dudes. If that's the storyline that plays out by the end of the season, each of y'all have to buy me something from my Amazon wish list. I'm holding you to it.
As the sweet strains of "The Wind" by Cat Stevens play across the soundtrack, Syd buttons up her gray flannel coat from the Mary Poppins collection and walks toward the exit. She stops right before the door and suddenly breaks down. Vaughn, never one for the timing, walks up behind her and interrupts her sobfest. She turns and tries to pull it together. He asks her if she's okay and she says that she is. But then she just loses it all over again and Vaughn pulls her into his arms. "Thank you," she says. They hug there in the hallway as the camera pulls back and Cat continues warbling on.
New-Fangled Ovary Electric. Syd and Agent Sean are hanging out and, through Agent Sean's casual conversation, we learn that Syd's new cover job is actually the SAME cover job she had when she was at SD-6. Only this time, Agent Sean's supposed to believe that this job is for real. What, she couldn't be in PR or security or something? Plenty of people leave law enforcement jobs for cushier jobs in the private sector as security consultants. Then she could travel all over the world and…I really don't know why I'm getting bunged up about this. Agent Sean's totally gonna be recruited soon anyway, so the cover story isn't going to matter for very long. Lord.
Whatever. Syd asks if Agent Sean wants to stay for dinner, but he can't 'cuz he has to go save the world. There's a knock at the door and Agent Sean, since he's on his way out, goes to get it. It's Nadia. Agent Sean's all, hi. My name is Dorkus and I'm 38 and single. How YOU doin'? Nadia's all, oh, no. Not another one. You're cute, but I'm an Argentinean spy who may or may not be in secret cahoots with her own seriously evil father. It would never work. Move along, soldier. Agent Sean leaves and Nadia enters. Syd asks her sister what's going on. Nadia couldn't wait. She wants to talk about their mother. "Did you bring your passport?" Syd asks. Why, yes. I always bring my passport when I'm going over to my half-sister's place to chat about our mother who abandoned us!
But it would seem that Nadia DID bring her passport, as well as a set of luggage and a change of funeral clothes, because the thing we know, the girls are in Moscow, on their way to visit their mother's grave. "Our mother was killed," says Syd in a voice-over. "I found her body in a state medical facility. I identified her, paid for her release, made arrangements with a mausoleum in Moscow three blocks from where she was born. I thought she'd want it that way." This, of course, is all a lie that Syd's invented to save Nadia from knowing that Jack was their mother's killer. Or Vaughn. Or Sloane for that matter. Yeah, it's all up in the air at this point. The girls stand in front of their mother's grave and Nadia asks Syd if she knows who killed their mother. Syd says she doesn't. "I swear to god," says Nadia, "somehow, I will find out who did this to our mother. And I will kill him. I will." Well, knowing this show, the identity of that person could change week to week, Nadia, baby, so you'd better have your wits about you.
week: Syd and Nadia dress up! And shoot things! And Jack has angst! Oh, it's a laugh a minute here in Alias-land!