Alias: Prelude

Sloane: "By the way, you look beautiful."
Sydney: "Spare me."

Is there anything that Jack wouldn't do to protect Sydney? He had Vaughn and Lauren kidnapped, and he actually killed Parez in cold, mock-suicidal blood. Not that Parez was what you'd consider a loss to humanity, but this shocked me.

Arvin Sloane was clearly enjoying passing Sydney off as his mistress, but she got the last word; my favorite moment in this episode was Sydney "picking a fight" with Sloane on the dance floor. Why is Sloane insisting on working with Sydney? Why is he helping her with her missing two years, and why did she send him the key? Why does he need her, and how is he planning to use her? Is he going to revive her memory at some point, activate her again?

We learned a little more about Sark while he was holding Lauren at gunpoint. He never got to know his father, but he certainly knows who killed him. And now, so does Lauren, Lindsey, and the NSC. Had to happen.

Does Vaughn really love his new wifey? It sounded very much like he did when he was confronting Jack. But with Sydney in serious trouble, and Lauren acting as if she doesn't care if Sydney lives or dies, it looked to me like Vaughn just emotionally changed sides... at least a little. There were almost Sydney/Vaughn smoochies, too.

The opening dream sequence was fascinating, so I went through it frame by frame. (As you probably already know, I have no life.) A lot of it was the outline of the birds plus different angles of the statue of the angel holding a bowl, both of which we saw near the end of the episode in "Julia's" apartment. There are church bells ringing, a whispered word I couldn't decipher, and the word "Milo," which is Rambaldi's first name. There were a lot of shapes that could have been many things: red ropes, which might symbolize blood; neon green shapes (you got me there), bright white flashes of light that turned into the operating room light. I also thought that some of the shots of the angel looked like blue internal organs, and the Rambaldi heart they were after last season.

The part of the dream where Sydney wakes up on the operating table, finds the hole in her side bleeding, and starts pulling tubes out of a gaping wound, right where her interesting new scar is, seems very like a memory. What did they do to her?

The scene where the shrink showed her the lobotomized guy was a set-up for the cliffhanger: Lindsey has taken Dixon down, and Sydney has been arrested. Now we're all worried that Sydney is going to be lobotomized.

Or would she heal? Was Sydney treated with the Rambaldi healing thingy, like Allison?

Bits and pieces:

— Dixon doing a lockdown in order to bring Sloane into the CIA was fun, especially when Marshall automatically treated Sloane like the boss. "Marshall, Sloane has no authority in this room."

— Diane's death has made Dixon so cold and professional. I'm assuming it was Diane's death that did it, anyway. Along with what happened at SD-6, and Sydney's death... okay, Dixon has a lot of good reasons to be cold and professional.

— Marshall's little optical camouflage car was probably the coolest gadget I've seen so far this year. But why weren't there filaments built on the sides of it, too?

— The envelope Sydney addressed said: "Mr. Arvin Sloane, Omnifam Foundation, Himmel 819, CH 8091 Zurich, Switzerland."

— Okay, who knew the boy on the bicycle was a trap? Everybody?

This week's...

... itinerary: Mexico twice, Beijing, and Rome.

... McGuffin: a maser is supposedly capable of assassinating people from space.

... hot look: Sydney and her stuntwoman in a slinky black outfit and black ski mask, fighting with two swords. I didn't think anyone could look good in a ski mask, but Jennifer Garner looks good in anything.

This was probably four spies out of four. Or close to four. Very good,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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