I missed the first 15 minutes! I can’t believe I forgot it was this week! I hate this 3 weeks between episodes thing! So someone spoil the first 15 minutes for me please…I came in when Sydney was trying to discourage Vaughn from going after Lauren.
Must admit the rest of the episode was very…satisfying, and leaves me eager for next season.
I missed a bit as well because of a severe weather alert in our area. When I came in, Sydney was sitting at Marshall’s desk, accessing the Rimbaldi equation. She uploads it to Sark and corrupts the CIA’s system, but not before shooting Marshall in the chest. Seriously wounded, Marshall manages to trigger an alarm to lock down the complex. Sark remotely triggers a series of explosions in the complex, triggering an evacuation protocol that overrides the lockdown protocol. Vaughn spots Sydney taking off and follows her, only to have Sydney clock him and…
pull off her face, revealing her to be Bug!
Actually we knew it was Bug already but it read more interesting when you thought it was Sydney, didn’t it?
Sydney undergoes questioning by a counter-terrorism agent (great dialog exchange: Agent: “You logged in at your sister’s safe house at 7:12 PM, do you confirm that?” Syd: “It was around dinner time. I brought her a sandwich.” Agent: “Where were you before that?” Syd: “Buying her the sandwich.”) Syd tells him to charge her under the Patriot Act or piss off. Jack and Vaughn talk about how once Bug gets blamed for the attack it’ll be harder for Vaughn to ice her under the radar. Vaughn tortures Sark who gives up Bug (but not before trying to torment Vaughn by going into a list of the locations where Sark sexed up Bug).
I think that catches you up.
I hope you’re more patient than I am. The next season isn’t going to start until January.
Yes, but the J. J. Abrams show “Lost” looks like it should be very interesting!
Did anybody catch what the note said that Sydney was reading with the black light at the end?? Poor TV reception made it hard to see it clearly. 
It said something like:
Top Secret
Sydney Bristow
By order of Jack Bristow
Then she started reading the pages really fast (super spy speed reading) and crying.
And then, as tears streamed down her face, Jack appears and says “you were never supposed to see that.” Well no shit, Jack!
I continue to be amazed every week at the people with whom I watch this show. Either I’m particularly devious-minded and would make a good spy or TV writer, or they’re not very bright. They never saw it coming that Katya stabbed Vaughn (I knew it had to be because Isabella Rosellini was in the credits and the show was already half over by the time he got stabbed so it had to be her) and they were flummoxed that Sydney impersonated Bug despite having seen the reverse at the start of the show. I keep telling them to think of the most wildly improbable turn of events and the likelihood is that’s what’s going to happen.
Although I can’t imagine what Sydney could be so upset about. Didn’t she already know that she was a subject of “Project Christmas”? Not like it was news that Jack manipulated her into being an agent.
I didn’t see that coming because I figured that it was a pretty hackneyed trick in the beginning that they wouldn’t dare use it twice in a single episode - especially because it just made me wonder why, if these masks are so convincing, why didn’t they ever use them before??
Anyway, it was still a fun episode.
Okay, MY severe weather interruption occurred right as Vaughn had Lauren strung up and was yakking about hydrochloric acid and we didn’t come back in until Lauren was talking to poor beat up Sark and… whoops it was really Syd. So … what’d I miss?
Oh, and let me just say this, “Hi, honey!” That was funny.
You’d think they’d have learned from Mission Impossible 2 that having people wear face masks is a very bad idea and opens a huge can of worms. Anybody can be anybody else at any point in time, so they are forced to just forget the concept exists.
It does make you wonder why they bothered with that fancy irreversible body transformation process in the previous season.
As far as the season finale, the cliffhanger ending needed more details. What they gave us was just boring.
There was a huge disconnect between the stabbing of Vaughn and his arrival at the hospital. Did Katya supposedly just leave him there and rescue Lauren? Did she then call 911 so somebody could save Vaughn???
Vaughn must be related to Jack Bauer, with his ability to rise from almost dead and do great things!
It was pretty stupid of Vaughn and Sydney to turn their backs on the wounded Lauren and close their eyes. Then they had to kill her without finding out what she knew. Why was she so anxious to tell Sydney the box number with her dying breath? Why would a top secret CIA document be in a box in a bank in Germany anyway?
This program is still exciting enough that I watch every episode, but the suspending of disbelief gets harder and harder every time.
Since I didn’t see the first few minutes, I didn’t know about the mask, so when they brought Bug into the cell next to the pulverized Sark, all I could think of was, “but she was just tied up and all bloody and someone on her side stabbed Vaughn, so how did she get arrested?” though I felt she was gonna hurt Sark in some way…poor Sark just leads with his heart everytime, doesn’t he? And how did they find Vaughn after he got stabbed?
If I get a chance later I’ll review the tape…I managed to tape the last half…and see if I can read any more of that paper…it implied that Jack was the agent in charge of training Sydney from birth, but we knew that. Bug was also yelling things about isn’t it a coincidence that both sisters became agents, and how come you haven’t heard from your mother personally all year, and did you really think the CIA didn’t know how to find you when you were missing and what was happening to you.
“Hi, honey.”
I love that man.
Too bad we have to wait til January to unravel the big Sydney secret. (unless, of course, they actually cancel the show altogether)
Obviously, there’s more to those UV light documents to be revealed later. I liked the UV concept, too.
I did have trouble swallowing the scene where Katya takes the gun from Sydney. First of all, the gun should be lighter without the clip, and secondly, she hands it to her with the big gaping empty hole in the handle towards her. Ok, so apparently Katya’s not too observant. Hey, it was dark. But isn’t there a round in the chamber? How did Sydney eject this round noiselessly without Katya noticing? I mean Katya is looking right at her.
I guess Sydney has expert sleight of hand skills, impressive quickness, and the foresight to eject the clip, eject the round and catch it during the split second that Katya looked away.
Did anyone else catch that Sydney’s file was called “S.A.B. Project #47” or something? 47, yo! Maybe they managed to put in something about St. Aidan, too.
Add me to the list of people that can’t believe we have to wait until January to find out what else was in that file.
The file Syd was reading was called Project SAB (Sydney Anne Bristow) 47. The start date was April 17, 1975, Sydney’s birth date, according to Alias calendars. So it seems that our dear Syd was programmed from birth! That’s some weird sh!t there.
I’ve got tons of speculation on this whole development. Katya is involved so much more than she was shown. Her stabbing Vaughn is an interesting development.
I wasn’t crazy about the masks either. You could tell it was Lauren in the Sydney mask because of the heavy eyeliner. She just can’t be without it. Vaughn’s “Hi honey” line was the best of the season.
It wasn’t a bad season finale but not one of the best. I don’twant to wait until January for new ones! I want to see how the Syd/Jack dynamic plays out, now that she’s been horrifically betrayed by him.
Sydney has the same middle name as Buffy? Die we know that already?
I don’t think the process was irreversible, just that the technology for it was destroyed or became unavailable to turn whatsername back into whatsername. The pseudo-cloning thing would be effective for long-term deep cover situations and wouldn’t be practical for short-term infiltrations like Bug was carrying out.
I heartily concur.
With the “absolutely convincing mask” trick, can we now safely assume that anyone can be anyone else? Was it Sydney or Lauren-with-mask who killed that Russian diplomat?