Ice

Previously on Alias: There were some really bad accents during an otherwise fun Bahamian mission; there was a pizza party, and Weiss got his groove on with Nadia and Syd shoved pizza in Vaughn's face; there was a really super-important computer that got stolen by a chunky British guy; and there was botched retrieval attempt that ended up with Syd and Weiss kidnapped for, like, ten minutes. But don't worry! They got out alive (duh) and Weiss got himself a new job at the Apple Store alongside his lady love, Nadia. Oh, and Jack made the chunky Brit the convenient scapegoat for Irina's murder, making Syd angry, Nadia a murderer, and Jack scot-free. The man's a genius. A genius of SATAN.

We begin in Algeria. Colorful locals wander the crowded stalls of Backlot #82. Goats from the Animal Actors Union get pulled through, bleating their way to a SAG card. They pass a skinny tourist in shorts who's muttering, "I lost my bird." It should be noted that the skinny tourist is none other than Richard Speight, Jr. who won part of my heart in Band of Brothers as Sgt. Warren "Skip" Muck. Yes, the whole of my heart belonged to Damian Lewis because, seriously, Winters, man. Winters. But Muck snuck in there and nestled himself into a corner of my otherwise cold and frosty heart. He's also one of the computer guys in those funny IBM commercials that make me giggle. At any rate, Sgt. Muck is just standing in the middle of the stalls, muttering the bird phrase to various passersby. Weiss walks up and sneers, "It's 'I lost my canary.'" And try telling it to the woman upstairs." Hee. Not so good with the spy stuff, is my cute Sgt. Muck. Weiss totally rolls his eyes and sighs the sigh of "Jesus, what a loser" as Muck walks off in search of the woman.

He passes Vaughn, who's standing at the base of a staircase. Muck heads up and finds Sydney, sitting at a low table, enjoying a cup of tea. "I lost my canary," Muck correctly states. "You should have clipped its wings," Syd fires back. Code words accomplished, Muck starts chattering about how he's cold and isn't it cold in here and aren't you cold and it's probably nerves, et cetera. Nice touch, considering what happens to him in a minute here. Dix walks up and pours more tea for Syd and asks in Arabic if her friend would like anything. Syd says no and returns to Muck. He wants to see the money. Syd wants to see the weapon. Yeah, that's gonna be difficult, says Muck, because, um, see, he swallowed it. Syd just looks down at the table with an expression of, "Oh, for god's SAKE."

Downstairs, Vaughn's keeping his eyes peeled for baddies when a blonde woman appears in the distance. The Violins of Ex-Wives Who Might Not Be Dead start screeching over the scene. The woman, of course, isn't Moronen, but for a second there, Vaughn totally thought it was. Not-Moronen walks off, and Vaughn sees a guy entering the stalls whom he determines is a baddie of the first order. Syd gets Vaughn's message and she snaps at Muck, asking him if he followed their safety protocols. He's all, dude! I totally did! Syd's all, oh, save it pee-wee. You were followed. She spies another baddie and Dix spies a few more. Apparently, they're determining the badness of these guys by the fact that they're whiteand in Algeria. Bad day to be a white guy in Algeria, I guess.

Syd grabs Muck and they hurry off, with the baddies following. Weiss pulls the getaway van around. Dix manages to stop a couple baddies all by himself. Syd and Muck keep moving. They pass the first baddie spotted by Vaughn and he pulls out a gun and points it at Muck. Vaughn slams him with an old heating pan or something and he goes down. Another baddie shows up and chucks himself at Muck, bringing both of them to the ground. Syd drops him easily with a tray and grabs Muck, who's now grunting that he can't make it out of the hall. Dix gets on comms and asks if anyone has a twenty on the last baddie. Nope. Syd keeps pulling Muck out and suddenly, the lower half of his left calf justbreaks off. It totally freaked me out when I first saw it. But, yeah, it justbreaks. Like it's made ofice. Oooooooh.

So Muck goes down, and Syd sees the damage and is seriously freaked out too. Muck is groaning and wheezing and there's no blood coming out of the remaining part of his leg and it's a really weird and disturbing image. Syd and Vaughn pick up what's left of Muck and drag him toward the van that Weiss has pulled around. Muck does not look well at all. Weiss flings the doors open and as Syd and Vaughn go to pull him into the van, the last baddie shows up and points his gun. Dix gets there a second too late, the bullet flies andMuck shatters into a thousand frozen Mucksicle pieces. I watched on the TiVo slo-mo, y'all, and that effect is flawless. The Appleseed Gang seems to think so too, because they look around at each other with shared expressions of, "The fuck?"

And now is the time on Alias when we break out the glowsticks and spread glitter on our bodies and drop the E and dance to the extended remix of "Girls Behaving Badly In Excellent Wigs."

Apple Store. Vaughn enters from the secret passageway, looking, well, like shit, actually. Syd enters from a different secret passageway (how many are there?) and catches up with him, basically telling him he looks like, well, like shit. Vaughn's all, uh, thanks! Good morning to you too! Also, shut up! Syd expresses concern and asks him if he's okay. And can I just say that Jennifer Garner rocks a pair of glasses like nobody's business? The girl has Geek Glam down pat. Seriously. Vaughn just says he's fine and blames his downtrodden look on the Mucksicle episode.

Sloane's Laidback Office of West Elm Products. Sloane's telling the Gang, um, well, basically he's not telling them anything. He's telling us, the audience, why the Gang was in Algeria in the first place. Apparently, Muck was an expatriate who'd stolen a biological weapon called "Ice 5" from a Montenegrin arms dealer. He offered to sell it to the CIA for $10,000. That's kind of a small price for something that can shatter people from the inside out, I think. That's more of a million-dollar bargaining chip, I'd say. But whatever, Muck ignored protocol and was killed, as Jack kindly explains to those people who were out getting more margaritas and salsa and missed the first five minutes of the damn show.