Previously on Alias: Sloane double- and then triple-crossed Jack and Syd when the promise of a cure for his comatose daughter was dangled before his eyes; Gordo got captured and then sent on a mondo acid trip by Gonzo Geek Marshall, only to wind up murdered by Sloane in the end; and it was discovered that Prophet Five is actually made up of insiders at twelve government agencies. But you can forget all of that, really, because none of it makes an appearance in this episode.
We begin in Siberia on a train full of woolly Russian extras who look like they were shipped in from what's left of the Dr. Zhivago set. If you look carefully, you can see Omar Sharif in the corner, quietly playing bridge against himself. A man with a terrible haircut enters the car and trips to two men playing chess. He then offers one of them the suggestion to try Knight to C-5 and the guy thanks him for this nice move. Terrible Haircut goes to leave and we see that he's left some sort of blinking device behind. He exits the car and sits down in the car right to it and checks his watch. Seconds later, the device makes its final "ding" and we get an exterior shot of the train as a brilliant blue light explodes out of the car and immediately disappears. No one on the train seems to have noticed the explosion at all. Terrible Haircut goes back into the car with the bomb or whatever, and it would appear that everyone in the car has been completely torched, but their chairs and the interior of the car haven't been damaged one iota. Terrible Haircut grabs his device and leaves.
Apple Store. Marshall, Rachel, Getty and Dix are busy going through a huge stack of papers and documents. Rachel asks Marshall if he's decoded Gordo's encryption yet. Marshall says he would have, but he got a little sidetracked with some MI:6 transmissions he intercepted saying that there's been some talk about "M.P.B." tests. Getty and Dix are incredulous, but Rachel has no idea what the hell an "M.P.B." even is, so she asks Marshall what he's talking about. Marshall says it's a micropulse bomb, and it incinerates people but leaves everything else intact. By the way, a Google search for "micropulse bomb" just brings up eleventy descriptions of this particular episode, so I think we can count it out as being a potential real weapon, no?
Dix mentions the Siberian train incident, and Getty asks if that was the test, and no one seems to know, and Getty suddenly gets all breathless and declares that the Brits can't be going after an M.P.B. because that would violate every treaty known to man. Dix then says that Jack and Syd are in England trying to find out more about the entire situation and figure out who they can trust to talk to about all this. In the meantime, he says, they're going to spend countless hours going over every transmission Marshall pulled off the server. Mmmm. Exciting!
Yorkshire. The home of pudding. Syd's sitting at a table having tea with a granny in a fuzzy Chanel jacket who simply won't shut the hell up. Syd's sporting a rather hilariously large hair flower that matches her magenta dress. The hell? As Granny Chanel natters on at her, Syd spots Caroline Goodall across the way and seems to recognize her. Jack, elsewhere at the party, turns to look at his daughter and she gives him the oh-so-subtle "check out the chick" head jerk to the left. Syd excuses herself from Granny Chanel's table with a hearty Virginian "thank yeeeew!" Caroline's at the tea table, chatting up some tweedy bloke, when Syd walks up and tells her that she forgot a napkin and significantly hands her one.
The napkin obviously said something along the lines of "Get yer arse into the room with the piano, pronto," because, seconds later, Caroline enters a room where Jack is picking out notes on a Steinway. She smiles at him and says, "Do you still play?" "No," gruffs Jack. "Gave it up years ago." Caroline tells him that he shouldn't have approached her at the party, and Jack grits, "I take it Joseph still doesn't know what you do for a living?" Oh, burn. Caroline's unfazed: "How would it look for the French ambassador to have a spook for a wife? Besides, this is where I get my best intelligence." "I already talked to the minister of finance," snits Jack. "He's a dimwit." Hee! He gets all the best lines in this episode.
Caroline cuts to the chase and asks Jack what this is all about. He says that they believe that someone inside MI:6 is attempting to acquire a micropulse bomb. Caroline thinks this is outrageous; Jack agrees, and states that they've come to the conclusion that there's probably a double agent within the organization. Oh, isn't that always the way? Pesky double agents. Jack says it goes even deeper than just a double agent, and asks her if she's heard of Prophet Five.
We switch quickly to Joseph, Caroline's hubby, who's wandering around, asking people if they've seen his lovely wife. Syd quickly intercepts him before he can head into the house and asks him if he's the French ambassador and would he mind helping her with her, like, Français? Joseph's like, uh, dude? I have lunch with presidents and world leaders; I do NOT work for Berlitz. But he helps her anyway, and stand there with this stunned expression on his face as Syd blabbles at him in her fakely bad French. When she's finished, he tells her très bien and hopes this ends their little rendezvous, but Syd's just getting started. She does this little happy dance and starts to yammer more bad French as Joseph looks like someone's shoved a flaming tiki torch up his rectum.
Back with Jack and Caroline. He's explaining how Prophet Five is a far-reaching organization with connections to twelve major government agencies that they know of, and Caroline rightly assumes that following the micropulse bomb might be the key to finding out more about it. She's a bit perturbed that Jack's asking her to investigate her own agency from the inside, but Jack says that he wouldn't have come to her if this didn't involve Sydney as well. Caroline's all, Sydney? Is she okay? Jack's all, oh, she's fine. In fact, that pregnant chick who handed you the napkin outside? That's her! Caroline laughs and says that unless Sydney's wearing a very convincing disguise-- "I'm gonna be a grandfather," quips Jack. "A very YOUNG grandfather." Hee. I told you he gets all the best lines. Caroline congratulates him and tells him that Sydney's lovely, and Jack says she is and then goes on to tell Caroline about Vaughn's death. Caroline's sympathetic, but she still thinks investigating her own agency is risky. "That's treason," she says. "What's a little treason between old friends?" asks Jack.
Conference Room of Endless Expositions. It must be a few days later, because Jack's informing the troops that Caroline got back to him and confirmed their suspicions about a double agent at MI:6. She hasn't identified the double agent, but she did manage to identify the man who designed the weapon. Jack brings up his picture on the Wall of TVs, and it's Terrible Haircut from Siberia. His name is Basarov and he's a tenured faculty member at the University of St. Petersburg. Jack says that Basarov is on his way to a conference in São Paulo, Brazil, where he's scheduled to give a lecture on theoretical microdynamics. "Wow," says Marshall, "sounds awesome!" Jack just stares at him. "Well, you know, um, Brazil," stutters Marshall. "Isn't that the place where they have the, uh, string…oh, not bikinis but --" "Thongs," says Jack. "Yes!" says Marshall. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Oh, man. Every time I watch this, it makes me laugh just a little bit harder. Garber's expression is priceless. You just know the entire table of actors broke the hell up during this scene. Hell, they're barely keeping it together right now. I have to admit, I couldn't help but replay this scene in my head during the rest of the episode. 'Twas a mite distracting, but hilarious.
Jack goes on to say (THONGS!) that Basarov is scheduled to receive a transmission within 48 hours (THONGS!) that will inform him of where and when the sale of his device will take place. It's assumed that he'll receive this transmission (THONGS!) via his laptop at the conference. Marshall says that they just have to get access to the laptop, upload the bugging software, and they're in like Flynn. Piece of cake. He can do it no problem. Jack glares down at him (THONGS!) and says that Marshall needs to stay behind to decrypt the transmission. Jack's expression: There is NO WAY I am sending you down there with the THONGS and the TOPLESS BEACHES. Marshall's expression: Is this because I asked about the THONGS? Jack assigns Rachel to the Brazil job, and the meeting adjourns.
Later on, Rachel's getting ready to head out. Syd walks up and hands her the bugging program. She asks if Rachel's okay with the assignment, and Rachel says she is and that she's glad she's going; anything to keep the investigation moving. "When's the last time you did something just for fun?" asks Syd. Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You're black. "Hitting Gordon Dean on the head with a shovel," says Rachel, "THAT was fun." Heh. Syd says she has to have a life. Dear Kettle: Again, you're black. Love, Pot. Rachel says that she'll work on the whole "get a life" thing after she gets back from Brazil.
And so we head off to São Paulo, the land of tangos, men with gold chains, and THONGS. Rachel enters the hotel and checks in. She's using a sporadic British accent as her cover, although I'm not really sure why. No one knows her at this convention, so it's not like her own accent wouldn't work. Speaking of accents, David Anders is using his own American one and he's loudly bitching at the hotel clerk about the "geek convention" that's in town and how he doesn't give a damn, he still wants the upgrade he was promised. Again, not really sure why he's pretending to be an American as his disguise, seeing as he's not even bothering to change his appearance at all and he IS one of the most wanted men in the world.
At any rate, Rachel and Sark-Pretending-To-Be-An-American both get on the elevator and he immediately stares at her nametag (read: boobs) and starts up a conversation. "So, Lydia, you here on business?" "Yes," she says tersely. "The geek conference." Heh. Sark pretends to be ashamed a bit and then the elevator doors open and they both exit. Sark gives Rachel's retreating back a rather snarky look and I'm thinking that, later on down the road, we'll discover that Sark actually was working Rachel this whole time and that this entire thing wasn't just a nice coincidence. I just find it hard to believe that Sark, who's always at the top of his game (dalliances with the stupid Lauren notwithstanding), would be so bored with his high-flying freelance spy job that he had to actively pursue a snotty "British" computer geek who clearly dislikes him. Unless, of course, he had an ulterior motive. That's my theory and I'm sticking with it.
Rachel moves to her hotel room and Sark moves to his and whaddya know? They're directly across from each other. What're the odds? Of course, Basarov is on this floor as well, so they're both well situated to monitor his comings and goings. Rachel gets to work in her room, setting up a small spy camera and her computer. At the same time, Sark's in his room, getting set up. He's on the phone and he tells someone on the other end of the line that he's in place and that he's looking at Basarov right now. "Don't worry, Benjamin," Sark says in his delicious British accent. "For what you're paying me, I won't let anything stand in my way.
And now is the time on Alias when we shove another Zicam flu stick up our nostrils in a feeble attempt to ward off the germy colds that are running rampant through the Carolinas. Stupid Carolinas.
After the break, we head right back to São Paulo, as Basarov makes his way down into the hotel lobby. Rachel gets up and goes right over to him and pretends to be a huge fan of his. She asks him to sign his article and hands him a pen. He signs and she runs back to her room to scan the article he just signed. She gets a scan of his thumbprint and runs it through her handy ACME Thumbprint Plasticator, rendering a lovely duplicate of Basarov's thumb in latex. Over in Sark's room, he's ordering a crapload of food from room service. He asks them to get it there in ten minutes and he'll triple the gratuity. I don't think they can rush "pork skewers" without giving someone trichinosis, but whatever.
Basarov's heading into the shower, which is why Rachel and Sark are both on the move. She heads over to Basarov's room and easily unlocks the door. She goes directly to the computer and is about to put the latex thumbprint into play when there's a knock at the door. It's Sark, pretending to be room service. Rachel scoots the hell out of the room and Sark enters in his room service outfit with a laden room service cart. He too goes directly to the computer and sprays Basarov's key card with something. That's when we head out onto the ledge and see just where Rachel's scooted to. She's barely hanging on to the outside of the hotel, trying not to look down. Oh! She just looked down!
Sark easily gains access to Basarov's computer and uploads his own bugging program. He quickly leaves, and somehow, Rachel knows this, and she leaps back into the room just as Basarov's shower turns off. D'oh! Better hurry, Rachel! She gets into the computer, uploads the program, and makes it out of there seconds before Basarov exits the bathroom. Rachel goes back to her room and tries not to vomit all over herself. Way to hold it together, Rachel! I'm so proud of you. Ledge-hanging AND a successful mission? You rock.
Rachel calls Getty and tells him that the mission went fine. "So…what do I do now?" she asks. He tells her to keep her PDA with her and that it'll alert her as soon as Basarov gets the transmission. After that, she just has to send it to Marshall. "Until then," he says, "looks like you have the night off. Just relax." Rachel visibly melts a bit and you can almost SEE the martini being conjured up in her head. The thing we see is Rachel, sitting alone at the bar downstairs, drinking a gargantuan martini. Yum. Sark enters and sits a few stools down from her. He's all, hey! Lydia! Whassup? She just sexily glares at him and licks the inside of her glass in case any vodka's evaporated there.
The following scene is kind of unnecessary, especially considering that we ALL know how it ends up. Basically, Sark and his bland American accent try to make nice-nice with Rachel, and Rachel and her fleeting British accent try to ignore him while still flirting. I'm still curious as to why Sark, obviously on an assignment, would bother chatting up some random chick at a bar. Is he that hard up for some play? Or has he grown tired of hookers? I just…don't know. So, Sark and Rachel make small talk and he moves down closer to her and she yammers on about her "new job" and how she feels like she's in over her head and he tells her to take some risks and blah blah blah get to the making out already!
They carry on a thinly veiled conversation in which they both talk about their real jobs without ever actually saying what they really do and it's amusing to see Sark try to be human and Rachel try to have fun, but the scene itself doesn't really propel the plot, so let's just get to the face-sucking, shall we? After the bar chat, they head up to their rooms and a small goodnight kiss leads to a big goodnight kiss and the thing we know, Sark's moving Rachel to her door, asking if she has the key, and she's all (kiss kiss smack smack), uh, no! We can't go in there! Because all my equipment's still set up and then you'll know what I really do! And then they move across the hall to Sark's room, where Rachel slams him up against his door and asks why they can't go in his room and he's like, well, uh, no, because all MY stuff is out, oh wait, I'm a neat freak and a professional, so, hell YEAH we can go in my room, because you won't even know what in the hell I do anyway!
They stumble back into his room and have this fabulously sexy scene that has them both twisting and turning and moaning and ripping each others clothes off and they have more chemistry with each other in this one thirty-second scene than Sark and Lauren had during the entire latter half of Season Three. I'm sorry, but it's true. Later on, after the horizontal mambo, Rachel's running her hands all over Sark's smoothly tanned torso and saying that she doesn't make a habit of this. He says he doesn't either. He's a liar. He's also a good kisser. At least, he looks like one. But maybe I'm out of practice. He asks her if she wants something to drink and gets out of bed to go get it. She lounges in bed for all of two seconds before she starts going through his shit on the nightstand. There's a watch, a passport with "Bob Brown" as the name and a ticket to the Bahamas.
Suddenly, Rachel's PDA starts beeping. She leaps out of bed and starts throwing on her clothes. Sark comes out of the bathroom and says something about being in the tropics so how about some rum and then he sees her and he's like, uh, dude? She says she forgot how early her flight is and he says, "What're you talkin' about? We got a couple of hours!" Aw. He wants more of the poontang. Rachel makes some more excuses and Sark sees his computer beeping and suddenly he's all, oh, yeah! Uh, you should TOTALLY GO NOW. She kisses him on the cheek. "Bob, it's been --" "Yeah, it has," he says, practically shoving her out the door. Hee. Rachel heads back to her room and immediately calls Marshall to tell him about the transmission. She hits a button on her computer and starts the upload and Marshall says he'll get right on it.
Apple Store. Syd and Rachel are just hanging out in one of the conference rooms. Syd tells her she did a great job and that Marshall's almost done analyzing the transmission. Then Syd's like, duuuude? Why are you glowing? You're GLOWING. Rachel's all, NO I'M NOT. Syd's like, spit it out. What'd you do? Rachel's like, uh, it's more like who'd I do? She tells Syd all about Bob Brown and how great he is and Syd's like, so, you gonna see him again? Rachel looks at Syd like she has lips made of cotton candy and is like, uh, dude? He thinks I'm a British engineer named Lydia. I don't think we're meeting up anytime soon. "Guess what happens in Brazil, stays in Brazil," says Syd.
"What happened in Brazil?" asks Jack, entering the room. Hee. "Um," gulps Syd, "Rachel got food poisoning." "Sorry," says Jack. Hee hee. He goes on to tell them that Marshall decrypted the transmission and that the double agent is due to meet Basarov in Spain in 14 hours. Jack says he's leaving soon to monitor the exchange. "You taking anyone with you?" asks Syd. "My MI:6 contact will be joining me," he says. Syd tilts her head and quirks her mouth as if to say, "Oh, reaaaaallly?" Jack kind of looks at her like, huh? Seriously. He looks like he has NO idea what she's giving him that face about. "You'll coordinate from here?" he asks, ignoring her saucy glance. "Yeah," she says, totally giving him the Raised Eyebrows of Why Don't You Get You Some, Dad! "Good," clips Jack, turning on his heel. Heh.
Spain. Jack and Caroline are hanging out on a rooftop overlooking the exchange site. They start setting up the cameras and computers. Syd calls into Jack and asks how it's going and he says they're almost ready. Caroline flicks a switch and the Apple Store gets a signal and a visual of the location. Jack removes a device from a case, saying that they can tag the weapon with it. Caroline's phone rings just then and she says it's her husband. "Where does he think you are?" asks Jack. "Developing nations summit," she says, turning off her phone. Jack looks irritated by this whole exchange. He goes on to outline the rest of their plan and Caroline declares that it sounds good.
Down below, a vehicle approaches, and Caroline comments that they're ahead of schedule. A guy removes a tarp from the back of the vehicle and Marshall gets a read on the weapon as it's uncovered. It's a micropulse bomb that probably has a 20-mile blast radius. Another car shows up, and Jack says, "I thought he was showing up alone." "So did I," says Caroline. From the Apple Store, Syd recognizes someone on the screen as "Masari," and Getty pipes up that Masari is a member of the RLF, which, of course, is some random terrorist organization. Syd gets on the horn to Jack and tells him that the dudes down below aren't MI:6 agents and that the dude is Masari and this whole thing is an ambush. At that precise moment, Masari's men below start shooting everyone and Caroline goes to grab the tracker device and then the screens go to snow back at the Apple Store. That's because men with guns have come upon Caroline and Jack and have decided to take them to a little place they call Kidnap Village.
Everyone at the Apple Store scrambles to find out what happened to Jack and Caroline. Sloane enters and heads right over to Sydney and she fills him in on what went down in Spain. Sloane surmises that, because the MI:6 meet was supposed to take place at 2:38 AM and Masari showed up at 2:17 AM, the double agent never had a chance to even put his hands on the weapon. Sloane asks Sydney how they got the intel on the meet and Syd says that Rachel intercepted a transmission. "Well," says Sloane, "maybe she wasn't the only one."
Conference Room of Endless Expositions. Sark's visage appears on the Wall of TVs as Sloane explains that Sark was in the same hotel at the same time as Rachel. Rachel looks like she's just been slapped in the face with a three-day-old seal flipper sandwich. "Who is this guy?" asks Getty. "Kidnapper, extortionist, murderer," says Syd. "The list goes on." All the more reason that Sark should have worn, say, AT LEAST A FAKE MOUSTACHE? Dude's a wanted man and he can't even bother to wear a HAT? Lord. Syd goes on to say that Sark used to be tied to the Covenant and SD-6, but that now he mostly works for himself. "Freelance," says Rachel with tears in her eyes. Syd catches this comment and immediately understands what's going on.
She and Rachel head off to the Random Corner of Embarrassed Confessions so that Rachel can piss and moan about how she had NO idea who Sark was or what he was after and that she will do ANYTHING to set things right again. Syd asks if Sark just used Rachel for information, and Rachel says that there's no way he could have; they were never in her room and he had no access to the transmission. Rachel then mentions the plane ticket she found in the room and tells Syd that Sark's going to the Bahamas.
So, it's off to Nassau and the never-annoying sound of steel drums. Sark exits the Nassau airport and finds Rachel there, waiting for him. "Lydia!" he says, surprised. "How nice," she twits. "You remembered my name." Just then, Syd turns around and walks right to him. "Do you remember me?" "Sydney," Sark purrs in his British accent. He tries to give Syd some lip about arresting him and how he's going to make it difficult for her (dude? She's pregnant; I don't think she's really going to give chase, do you?), but Syd ignores him and gets right to the point, telling him about how her father and Caroline have been abducted by Masari. She wants to know where his base of operations is. Sark's not spilling. Syd says they're not here to arrest him; they're here to hire him. Sark's eyeballs practically fall out of his head. Heh.
Tunisia. Masari makes his way into the small cell where Jack and Caroline are being held. Jack asks why they're being held there, and Masari asks where the video feed they were transmitting was going. Caroline smart-asses that they're tourists and they were just taking holiday photos. Masari doesn't like smartasses, so he grabs her and Jack goes apeshit and some guards hold him back as Masari points a gun at Caroline's left hand. "Where was the transmission going?" he shouts at Jack. "Take me," is all Jack will say. "I'm not easily frightened," grits Caroline. "You should be," says Masari. And then he shoots her in the hand. DAMN. Yeah, that's not gonna be easy to explain to the French hubby, no? Jack does his best to kick some ass, but he's cuffed, so he can't do much damage. Masari states that he's going to shoot her in the right hand too if Jack doesn't speak up about the transmission. The gun's about to get fired for the second time when one of Masari's men saves the day by interrupting and whispering in Masari's ear.
Masari leaves the room and gets on his cell phone. It's Sark, saying that his sources tell him things got complicated in Spain. He's sitting in an Apple Store office, across from his old boss, Arvin Sloane. Heh. These two together just kill me. Masari asks Sark what he knows about Spain, and Sark says he knows everything and that there's an international search underway for the intelligence officers Masari has in his custody. Masari thanks him for the info, and then Sark says that he has a proposition. The agents are worth some serious cash, so he, Sark, would be willing to take them off of Masari's hands. Masari's like, uh, yeah, I can't be bothered with that. I'm just going to kill them and go get a smoothie. Sloane tells Sark to do whatever it takes and Sark gets back on the phone and says, "Benjamin, you have many enemies. Given what I know, I could broker a pretty good deal for myself." "Are you threatening me?" asks Masari. Sark says he's just a businessman, nothing more. Masari says he'll expect him in the 24 hours at his Tunisian compound.
Dix and Syd discuss Sark's intel and Syd leaps up to start arranging transport to Tunisia. Dix calmly tells her that she can't go to Tunisia; Jack wouldn't want her to. "I can't lose him," says Syd. "You won't," says Dix. We head off to Tunisia with Dix driving a big-ass truck and Getty riding shotgun. In the back, Sark and Rachel discuss sexual positions and which ones are their favorites. Rachel hands Sark a locator so that they can get the exact location of Jack and Caroline once he finds them. Sark smoothly tells her that he imagines she feels to blame for all of this, but she shouldn't. "I'm very good at what I do," he snakes. Heh. Rachel ignores him and gives him instructions on how to use the locator. "I must admit, you're quite fetching in black," he smirks. "I. Will. Gag. You," she spits. Heh. Sark makes a face like, "I don't know that I wouldn't quite enjoy that, actually." Hee. "Does this mean we can't be friends?" quips Sark. Rachel just glares at him and looks away. Yeah, I don't think so, Julian.
The truck stops, and everyone but Dixon gets out. Rachel and Getty head off and Sark gets in the passenger's seat. Back with Syd, she's just hanging up the phone when Marshall enters, saying he heard the phone ring. Syd says that it wasn't the Appleseed Gang, and looks dejected. Marshall asks if she wouldn't care for some company while she waits. Aw. Syd says that she'd like that. Aw, again. Back in Tunisia, Dix pulls the truck inside the compound and Sark gets out, saying that Masari's expecting him. Rachel and Getting are strapped to the bottom of the truck, which is actually billowing smoke from the engine. Sark snits something at Dixon about how, if he expects to get paid, he should have the truck fixed by the time he comes back. Dix tries to make friends with the guards by saying something about how Sark thinks he still lives in the colonies. Sark heads inside, and Dix tends to the truck.
Sark meets up with Masari in a room housing the bomb. They exchange some bad-guy small talk and finally, Sark opens up his briefcase and asks to be taken to the prisoners. Masari asks, "Why the rush?" Sark responds, "I need to be in Tunis by sundown." "I'm afraid, uh…that won't be possible," says Masari, pointing a gun at Sark's head. Uh-oh.
Back outside with Dix, he's trying to get some water out of one of the guards for his steaming truck. The guard can't leave his post, however, so Dix is SOL. Just then, the guard's walkie beeps and Dix senses that something's going down. The guard brings up his gun and Dix shoots him in the knee as Getty and Rachel roll out from beneath the truck. Dix points his gun at the guard's chest and demands to know where the prisoners are being held.
Down in the prison area, a guard runs to the door after Dix yells at him to open it. Dix promptly shoots him dead and he, Getty, and Rachel enter. Dix orders Rachel to cover the entrance as he and Getty run off to get Jack and Caroline. They come upon a staff of guards outside the cell and Getty tosses a gas grenade into their midst. It goes off and he and Dix shoot the shit out of all the guards. Damn. Getty opens the door to the cell and Jack immediately says that Caroline needs medical attention. "You don't look so good yourself," quips Getty. Dix says that an extraction team is standing by and that he'll call for them. Getty gets on comms to Rachel and tells her that they have Jack and Caroline but that Sark and Masari are still missing. Rachel cocks her gun and heads off to find them. She opens up a door and gets an "oh shit" look on her face. She calls Sydney and tells her that her father's alive, but that they have another problem. That's when we see that Sark has been chained to the micropulse bomb and that it's been set to go off in about eight minutes. Oh shit, indeed.
Syd and Marshall decide that there's not enough time to evacuate the area, so they'll have to talk Rachel through dismantling the bomb. Rachel moves over to it. Marshall tells Rachel to unscrew the front panel. "Unscrew it?" she hisses. "Unscrew it with what?" "Might I suggest something sharp?" snits Sark. Rachel gives him a look and then grabs a readily accessible letter opener on the desk. "So," she says, "what happened?" "I overestimated my friendship with Masari," says Sark. "He assumed I was betraying him and he took the money and he left." "Oh," says Rachel. "So, then, he knows you pretty well." "Mmm," says Sark, nodding his head. Hee.
Rachel gets into the panel and Marshall blabbers at her what she needs to do and Syd pipes in her two cents and it doesn't really matter because OF COURSE she dismantles the bomb. The only highlights of this scene are the constant nattering between Sark and Rachel and Sark's growing discomfort at how clueless Rachel is and how that cluelessness may very well kill him. Heh. Rachel ably handles the wires inside the panel, and she's about to cut the one that will dismantle the bomb when Sark goes, "Wait. If that's the wrong wire…" "I thought you liked risks," she snits at him. "I also like my body," says Sark. "And, as I recall, you do too." HA! Rachel just glares at him and cuts the wire, but the clock keeps counting down. She tells Marshall that it's still armed and he says that's okay, she just needs to disable another wire.
"Don't you want to get Dixon?" asks Sark. "No offense, but you haven't shown the best judgment lately." Hee. Rachel finds the wire and tells Marshall she's got it. "Okay," he says, "that should work." "Should or will?" hisses Syd. "Should?" says Marshall, looking totally clueless. Rachel lets out a breath and Sark squinches his eyes shut, getting ready for death. Rachel suddenly looks up and calmly says to Sark, "Just so we're clear, you approached me. You were the one who was stupid enough to let me into your room and afterwards? You were the one that wanted to cuddle." HEE! She cuts the wire, the bomb goes dark, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. "That was spectacular, Rachel," says Sydney. Sark gives Rachel a look that would indicate that he agrees with Sydney. "About what you just heard --" says Syd to Marshall. "Don't know, don't wanna know," he volleys back. Heeeeee.
Outside the Masari compound, Jack walks up to Caroline, who's now on a stretcher with her hand bandaged. He tells her she'll be in a London hospital by nightfall. She tells him to wish Sydney well for her. He tells her that the doctor can easily make her gunshot wound look like a paper cut. Actually, he just tells her that he's sorry. She takes his hand and tells him, "Don't be." Aw. You know, they never outright mention that these two may have had an affair, but you still totally know they did because of the subtle care they show for each other. Garber and Goodall rock the house.
Downstairs in the jail, Dix and Getty are facing off with Sark. "About your payment," says Dix. "You'd love to arrest me right now, wouldn't you?" snits Sark. Ungrateful bitch. Rachel just saved your life! Try to show a little gratitude! "Give us your account number," says Getty, "and we'll wire you your fee." In the background, Rachel's on the phone, ready to hand over the account number. Sark glances at her and then says, "Don't bother. This one's a freebie." He leaves, and he and Rachel share a little look as he goes. Hee. They're totally gonna do it again later in the season.
Apple Store. Syd's on the phone with Jack, asking if he needs anything. He says he's fine, just exhausted, and that she needn't bother. He says they should meet for breakfast and he'll come by and pick her up. She says that'd be great. "Dad…" she says, her voice getting emotional. "If anything had happened and I couldn't have been there --" "Sydney," says Jack. "You did exactly what I would have wanted. You and the baby are all that matters." "I love you, Dad," she says. "Sleep well." Aw! When's the last time she said that! I mean, out loud! To him! Aw. They hang up, and Dix enters. Syd walks right over to him throws herself so hard into his arms that he looks kind of stunned. But then he settles himself into the hug and smiles and…sniff. What? I'm not crying. Shut up. A beautiful piano sonata is playing over the soundtrack as they hug and we switch to Jack's apartment, where we discover that it's actually HIM that's playing the piano. There are stacks and stacks of books all over the piano and it looks like it hasn't been played in ages. But Jack's playing it now, and he looks…at peace.
on Alias: Syd gets kidnapped and has dreams about Vaughn. Welcome back, Mr. Vartan!