Sydney: "What took you so long?"
Vaughn: "Traffic light out on Venice."
That was it? Is that all the Vaughn we're getting? Mutated flashbacks?
This episode was more frustrating than romantic for me, sort of like a surreal clip show. Recreating all of those Sydney/Vaughn scenes couldn't have been easy. I remember all of them, of course: Vaughn proposing, Vaughn dying, the Santa Monica Pier, the prison cell in North Korea. I don't remember anything related to the opener with the tea kettle. Did I forget it, or was it supposed to be new?
The bad guys want Sydney's baby. Why? What does it have to do with Irina, Vaughn, and SD-6? Was all this a confusing glimpse of the big mystery that will make sense by the end of the season? That map that they were trying to get Sydney to remember was from very early in season one, and Desantis said they have been searching for "the Horizon" for thirty years. Does all this, the baby and "the Horizon," sound like Rambaldi, or am I just projecting?
Sydney knew on a basic level that what she was seeing wasn't real, certainly enough to give them the wrong name from the map. Vaughn constantly told Sydney that she needed to let him go. Was this just Sydney's own subconscious telling her that they were using the memory of Vaughn against her? Vaughn also said, "We'll find each other. We always find each other." Maybe they will bring him back, after all. Nah. They're not giving me anything I want this season. So far, anyway. (Okay, I take that back. We did get a great Sark episode. So maybe there's hope.)
Leaving aside my complete disappointment with the Vaughn situation, I'm glad that Irina is back – even though I don't like her role in what they were doing to Sydney. (Although it explains the constant discussion of not hurting the baby. But what about hurting her pregnant daughter?) Jack and Irina are the most interesting and romantic couple on the show. And the fact that I'm saying this during a romantic Sydney/Vaughn episode is sort of sad. I could see them trying hard for the tragic romance, but I was too ticked to enjoy it.
In case I haven't made it clear enough, let me reiterate. I don't want Vaughn flashbacks. I want Vaughn.
Bits and pieces:
— Tom Grace was married seven years ago. The marriage lasted three years, and didn't work out. The fact that it was mentioned may be an indication that we're going to be meeting his ex at some point. Let's hope she's not another double-crossing spy wife, because we've gone way past our quota.
— Sloane lied to Dixon about his contacts, even though he did make a serious attempt to find Sydney, and showed sincere concern for her.
— It was good to have Amy Acker (Peyton) back, and working with Irina. Did Sydney kill her with that needle? I hope not.
— The one-eared Patrick Bauchau is dead already, and we don't even know what he was really up to. Did they have to throw away a perfectly good character actor like that? And why wasn't Desantis afraid to die, after all those years in suspended animation? It didn't make sense.
— Renee was Wonder Woman again. That two blade thing was very cool. And it was fun seeing her work with Jack.
— Please. No more ear torture a la Reservoir Dogs.
— The little desert island fantasy felt like an homage to Lost.
Quotes:
Sydney: "My mom wasn't the best role model, you know."
She said this very early in the episode, a hint that this was all about Irina.
Jack: "You're right. The suit shouldn't scare you. What should scare you is, I'm a very concerned father."
This week's...
... itinerary: San Francisco, Madrid, Hungary, Sydney's brain, an oil tanker in the middle of an ocean.
Sigh. Two out of four spies,
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
* Seeing how the map is somewhere in the CIA archives, a faster way to get that information is to kidnap Dixon's children again. But Dixon could still provide false intel to them and they wouldn't be able to verify it.
ReplyDelete* There's a pattern of old characters coming back. Episode 7 had Sydney's season 1 professor. Episode 8 had Sark. This episode has Vaughn and Irina, as well as a North Korean guard (which may have been the same actor they used in season 3). It looks like they're trying to cram in as many past characters as they can before the show ends. Weiss and Will are certainly on the list. Lauren, hopefully, isn't.
* The way Vaughn says "killing the monster" in that early SD-6 era scene, it's a bit different in the new scene. The original scene had a short pause between "killing" and "the". The new scene doesn't. And Vaughn sounds less committed to destroying SD-6 when he says it. Makes sense, because SD-6 no longer exists.
* There's a subtle clue in here that Vaughn may not be dead. Jack considers Vaughn's death a personal matter. Jack handles personal matters by cutting off fingers and ears. Seeing how Jack did no such thing to Gordon Dean, I don't believe Gordon really killed Vaughn.
* I certainly didn't expect Billie Doux to be angry with an episode with so many Michael Vartan scenes. He didn't get this much screen time even when he was on the show. ;)
* Sloane's rooftop phone call scene suggests that he's really not a villain at this point anymore. Sloane's situation is the same as Dixon's when his children were abducted, and he had to lie to the CIA.
* Renee shooting at the second black van makes no sense. How does she know the van is connected to the first van?