V
verdantheart
Guest
“No Hard Feelings” finds Vaughn in the Prophet 5 storeroom, Sydney posing as Anna and meeting up with Peyton, and Jack filling in Marshall and Dixon in on Sydney's decision to go undercover and overseeing the operation. They've placed a tracker on the chip, which Peyton promptly snuffs by dropping it in her drink. Marshall immediately switches on the afterburners to track their car by satellite and they tail them to the airport.
At the Prophet 5 stronghold, Sloane has declared victory over the manuscript at last, holding up the now rather Swiss-cheesy document and intoning, “The circle will be be closed when the Chosen One fines the Rose in San Cielo.” However, Sloane wonders whether Anna, as a mere counterfeit, can accomplish Sydney's task. Sydney enters, revealing the news that Sydney Bristow is dead.
Back in LA, a bot Marshall placed on the net caught a message for Alan Corman that Corman was flying in that night. He reveals his finding to Rachel. Rachel wants to investigate herself before they go to Jack with it.
Sydney disables the bugs in her room, then gives Jack a call to report her mission. She becomes wistful as she overhears a giggle from Isabelle.
Dixon arrives at Vaughn's location in Hamburg, saying “You're shorter than I remember.” They await the team sent to box up the Prophet 5 information before heading to rendezvous with Sydney in Rome.
On the flight, Sloane tells Sydney-as-Anna that she will know her contact when she meets him on the ground in Rome, then asks how she killed Sydney. Sydney says that Sydney Bristow was just as vulnerable to a bullet in the back as any other person. Sloane joins Peyton and confirms the kill plans for Anna. “I want to be the one who kills her,” he says.
In Rome, Sydney and Vaughn make contact. Vaughn could not locate San Cielo. Sydney enters the meeting place, an off-track betting location. Sark, her contact, joins her, whereupon she belts him, saying it's for getting her locked up.
Back in LA, Tom meets up with Corman, who passes him a note. Rachel stops him, demanding an explanation. They go to a neutral location, where Tom explains that the kill order for his wife came from the Cardinal; he couldn't understand it, since she was just a teacher. In return, Corman wants his car, which he couldn't take into witness protection.
In Rome, Sydney and Sark share some drinks. Sark explains that San Cielo is now La Fossa, the maximum security prison. It was, in fact, the prison where Rambaldi was once held. He says it would take someone of the Chosen One's quality to take the prize from that—but “I guess you'll have to do.” He then calls the police to report an explosion and tells Sydney, “I suggest you take cover,” whereupon the much of the building explodes. The two pull guns, Sark robs the till, and, as the cops pull up, they turn themselves in, Sark saying (in Italian), “We have seen the error of our ways.”
As Vaughn and Dixon set up in the prison underbelly with Marshall and Jack listening in, Sydney is lodged in isolation while Sark is housed with a large cellmate. Sark's cellmate tells him, “You will be very popular in here.” However, Sark begins choking almost immediately, causing his new admirer to yell for help.
Just as the APO team has gotten into the prison security system, Sark has been wheeled into the infirmary, knocked out the guards, and hacked into the security system himself, booting APO out. He opens the door for Sydney. He must fight off a revived guard to let Sydney through yet another door before reinforcements arrive to restrain him.
Sydney wanders into the bowels of the prison and finds an old man, who tells her, “I've been waiting for you a very long time.” He tells her to come with her, but she tells him that she is looking for the rose. He tells her, “I am the Rose,” and shows her his rose tattoo.
Sloane calls the warden and tells him he wants to extradite two fugitives. Peyton provides support, posing as General Prosecutor Micelli.
Meanwhile, in LA, Tom and Rachel steal Corman's car. Tom tells Rachel about his wife and how he failed to meet her the night she died.
In La Fossa, Sydney and the Rose come to a wall bearing yet another large drawing of Sydney. “Who did this?” asks Sydney. The Rose says it was Rambaldi and that “He told me you'd be coming.” He removes a brick from the wall and brings out a pendant of some kind. Sydney asks what it is, but the man is vague. He describes it as both Rambaldi's greatest gift and greatest curse as well as his defiance of nature and the end of nature itself. Sydney promises to stop the “bad people,” but the old man says “You can't stop them. . . In the end it is just fate.”
Peyton picks up Sark, telling him Anna wouldn't be joining them. Sloane meets Sydney. Sydney tells him she didn't find anything, but he takes the item from her, then begins to strangle her. Marshall hurries to distract Sloane while Vaughn rushes to her aid. He's able to set off an alarm, which is enough to allow Sydney to fight Sloane off until a guard arrives. Sloane escapes while Vaughn arrives and shoots the guard.
In LA, Tom delivers the car to Corman, demanding to know why his wife was killed. He's reluctant to say, knowing Tom will want to kill him, but with his gun drawn and driving off, he tells Tom that she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tom was the target and Tom was supposed to meet his wife; he didn't show, but she did. It was a case of mistaken identity. As the car drives off, Tom detonates it.
Sydney and Vaughn at last share a moment with Isabelle. Sydney reflects that she came so close to death. But as Sydney starts thinking about Prophet 5, Vaughn reminds her that they were going to put that on hold for the evening. However, the phone rings and Sloane tells Sydney, “It was you, Sydney, of course.”
Comments . . .
OK, this could be a quibble, but it's a little longer, so I'll explain it here. If their aim was to track Sydney, why didn't they put a tracker on Sydney instead of the chip? They had no reason to believe that the chip would stay with Sydney for any length of time anyway. Secondly, the chip contained partial information leading to information about Prophet 5. Prophet 5 didn't need the information, they just needed to keep others from the information. In fact, Prophet 5 had a good idea as to what was on the chip (information about them or the location of same)—because it was placed within the children of the agents investigating Prophet 5—so it was in fact likely that they would destroy it at their earliest opportunity. Since the information had remained hidden for 30 years without someone stumbling over it, how likely is it that someone would just happen to stumble over it (they didn't know Vaughn already had his hot little hands on it, after all) before they had already taken over the world . . . or whatever (I want a beeeeellion dollars!?)? I think somebody wasn't thinking things through.
Hm, if Rambaldi was such a great guy—as Sloane seems to think—why did he seemingly devote so much time coming up with one ultimate weapon after another? I mean “the end of nature itself”? Doesn't sound exactly people-friendly, does it? And yet, Sloane seems to cast himself as the humanitarian in bringing these “works” to fruition . . . when he's not busy using them to destroy those who aren't standing in his way, anyway.
Does Sloane even know what this last work is purported to do, or does he just care about getting it to work?
After seemingly working on a clandestine escape plan with Sark last episode, this episode Sark is part of the Prophet 5 team. Sloane seems quite sanguine about revealing the encoded message to Prophet 5. Is he on his own recognizance long enough to make his getaway? Or is this a bit of a non sequitur? If Sloane is happy, there's no reason for this circuitous route in contacting Sark. Hopefully next week we will find Sloane merrily absconding with the goods and letting Prophet 5 whistle in the wind—but Sark's assistance should play into this, as per his church/contact. Of course, if Prophet 5 wanted to dispose of Sloane right away, sending him to take care of “Anna” and collect the McGuffin was a severe miscalculation, was it not?
Sloane says, “It was you, Sydney, of course.” Well, of course! And as always, the post-betrayal Sydney behaves like a petulant teen (Sending me to my room?). Shouldn't Sloane have realized who she was right away? He, of all people, knows she is the Chosen One. He is supposed to be the one with Faith. Besides, Ms Follower of Rambaldi is talking about her checkbook. Sydney, pretending to be Anna, uses her opportunity to tell Sloane exactly what she thinks of his "faith." However, in doing so, she must rely on their relative unfamiliarity with Anna so that she can claim that her faith lies more in her bank balance than Rambaldi, Follower or not. Anyway, Sloane tries to kill Sydney, but then when he realizes it's her, no "Sorry I tried to kill you!", just "Of course." I guess with him it's no harm no foul.
Oh, yes, Tom. Tracked down the Cardinal. Killed his wife's assassin. Yay. Jack would be proud. And yet, I'm wondering, so why all the hubbub, bub? Don't we have bigger fish to fry? Like Sloane? Or Irina? Unless . . . Yeah, earlier I was thinking that the Cardinal was somebody new, but now I'm finally leaning toward Irina—and not just on instinct. Why? Because this is all totally unrelated to what everybody's doing and now Tom has a line on the Cardinal . . . but no one knows where Irina is. And if this is some old, worn-out hit Irina called back in her “the Man” days . . . well, it all comes down to fate, baby. The synchronicity of that kind of call coming back to haunt Irina would be too much for them to pass up. I wouldn't put it past Jack to know that the hit was connected to the Man, either—and it would be nice, finally, for him to have a play in what's going on this season, y'know. Well, things are coming to a close, so you know it's time for a family reunion.
Quibbles and bits . . .
It really is about Tom's wife! And although it's kinda nice that sometimes it's not all about Sydney (unless ...), um, this is really kinda pedestrian by comparison with the A story. Oh well. This B story has been sort of a yawner—for me, anyway.
Um, should Sydney have so much trouble fighting off little bitty Sloane? Just what is in that water he drinks, anyway?
“You can't stop them”? That thing has been sitting there for, what, 500 years? Is it indestructible? If you mess with it—say, smash it with one of those bricks—will it destroy the world? Did the old man have to give it to the Chosen One? If only she could get it out and she decided to just leave it there, could the Bad Thing(tm) still happen? Somehow, methinks it must be combined with the Horizon (or something) to bring about doomsday. With 500 and all these variables, you can't stop them? I beg to differ. But that wouldn't be any fun, would it?
Random thoughts . . .
Now, this is why we've missed Sark. He's excellent at his job and thoroughly enjoys it. "The beautiful man is dying!"—Well, we can't have that, can we?
Speaking of which . . . Sydney just doesn't seem to get into her job the way she did in the first season . . . that's probably one of the reasons why the later seasons aren't as fun. I know that she's been forced into staying a spy, but she needs to relax and have a little fun every so often so that we can have fun with her.
"An elaborate scheme to postpone your wedding to his daughter" . . . hm, now that makes sense, doesn't it?
The Tom/Rachel story really feels like it would have been dropped if it weren't needed for something. That Cardinal must be something important.
Some nice dialog and atmosphere in this episode. There's a sense of what the show used to be like a long time ago. It'll be interesting to see how it wraps up.
Discuss . . .
Do you think that Sloane should have realized it was Sydney right away? Why or why not?
Do you think that Sydney should have been able to fight off Sloane better and make off with the Rambaldi McGuffin? Why or why not?
Do you think Sloane really knows what this Rambaldi doodad does? Explain.
Sloane appears to feel no guilt over trying to kill Sydney. Is that because he thought Sydney was Anna at the time, or is it because he is over the deep end, incapable of processing emotions in a normal way? Or is it something else? Explain.
Any problems with the way Sloane seemingly went from working around Prophet 5 in the previous episode to working with them in this episode? How do you think that will work out? Oh, and what was Prophet 5 thinking, putting the McGuffin in Sloane's hands?
Do you think that Sydney took an unnecessary risk by using her guise as Anna to voice her own opinions about Sloane's "faith"? Why or why not? Do you think Anna is more mercenary or Follower?
Should Marshall and Rachel have notified Jack about Tom's activities? Do you think that Irina is the Cardinal? Why or why not?
So, any speculation on what this Rambaldi blessing/curse does? Other than bring about doomsday, that is.
Any thoughts on this Rambaldi character and what he must have been like?
Next:
“It's over, Sloane.” And so it is! RIP, Alias. For better and, well not so better, it's been fun.
At the Prophet 5 stronghold, Sloane has declared victory over the manuscript at last, holding up the now rather Swiss-cheesy document and intoning, “The circle will be be closed when the Chosen One fines the Rose in San Cielo.” However, Sloane wonders whether Anna, as a mere counterfeit, can accomplish Sydney's task. Sydney enters, revealing the news that Sydney Bristow is dead.
Back in LA, a bot Marshall placed on the net caught a message for Alan Corman that Corman was flying in that night. He reveals his finding to Rachel. Rachel wants to investigate herself before they go to Jack with it.
Sydney disables the bugs in her room, then gives Jack a call to report her mission. She becomes wistful as she overhears a giggle from Isabelle.
Dixon arrives at Vaughn's location in Hamburg, saying “You're shorter than I remember.” They await the team sent to box up the Prophet 5 information before heading to rendezvous with Sydney in Rome.
On the flight, Sloane tells Sydney-as-Anna that she will know her contact when she meets him on the ground in Rome, then asks how she killed Sydney. Sydney says that Sydney Bristow was just as vulnerable to a bullet in the back as any other person. Sloane joins Peyton and confirms the kill plans for Anna. “I want to be the one who kills her,” he says.
In Rome, Sydney and Vaughn make contact. Vaughn could not locate San Cielo. Sydney enters the meeting place, an off-track betting location. Sark, her contact, joins her, whereupon she belts him, saying it's for getting her locked up.
Back in LA, Tom meets up with Corman, who passes him a note. Rachel stops him, demanding an explanation. They go to a neutral location, where Tom explains that the kill order for his wife came from the Cardinal; he couldn't understand it, since she was just a teacher. In return, Corman wants his car, which he couldn't take into witness protection.
In Rome, Sydney and Sark share some drinks. Sark explains that San Cielo is now La Fossa, the maximum security prison. It was, in fact, the prison where Rambaldi was once held. He says it would take someone of the Chosen One's quality to take the prize from that—but “I guess you'll have to do.” He then calls the police to report an explosion and tells Sydney, “I suggest you take cover,” whereupon the much of the building explodes. The two pull guns, Sark robs the till, and, as the cops pull up, they turn themselves in, Sark saying (in Italian), “We have seen the error of our ways.”
As Vaughn and Dixon set up in the prison underbelly with Marshall and Jack listening in, Sydney is lodged in isolation while Sark is housed with a large cellmate. Sark's cellmate tells him, “You will be very popular in here.” However, Sark begins choking almost immediately, causing his new admirer to yell for help.
Just as the APO team has gotten into the prison security system, Sark has been wheeled into the infirmary, knocked out the guards, and hacked into the security system himself, booting APO out. He opens the door for Sydney. He must fight off a revived guard to let Sydney through yet another door before reinforcements arrive to restrain him.
Sydney wanders into the bowels of the prison and finds an old man, who tells her, “I've been waiting for you a very long time.” He tells her to come with her, but she tells him that she is looking for the rose. He tells her, “I am the Rose,” and shows her his rose tattoo.
Sloane calls the warden and tells him he wants to extradite two fugitives. Peyton provides support, posing as General Prosecutor Micelli.
Meanwhile, in LA, Tom and Rachel steal Corman's car. Tom tells Rachel about his wife and how he failed to meet her the night she died.
In La Fossa, Sydney and the Rose come to a wall bearing yet another large drawing of Sydney. “Who did this?” asks Sydney. The Rose says it was Rambaldi and that “He told me you'd be coming.” He removes a brick from the wall and brings out a pendant of some kind. Sydney asks what it is, but the man is vague. He describes it as both Rambaldi's greatest gift and greatest curse as well as his defiance of nature and the end of nature itself. Sydney promises to stop the “bad people,” but the old man says “You can't stop them. . . In the end it is just fate.”
Peyton picks up Sark, telling him Anna wouldn't be joining them. Sloane meets Sydney. Sydney tells him she didn't find anything, but he takes the item from her, then begins to strangle her. Marshall hurries to distract Sloane while Vaughn rushes to her aid. He's able to set off an alarm, which is enough to allow Sydney to fight Sloane off until a guard arrives. Sloane escapes while Vaughn arrives and shoots the guard.
In LA, Tom delivers the car to Corman, demanding to know why his wife was killed. He's reluctant to say, knowing Tom will want to kill him, but with his gun drawn and driving off, he tells Tom that she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tom was the target and Tom was supposed to meet his wife; he didn't show, but she did. It was a case of mistaken identity. As the car drives off, Tom detonates it.
Sydney and Vaughn at last share a moment with Isabelle. Sydney reflects that she came so close to death. But as Sydney starts thinking about Prophet 5, Vaughn reminds her that they were going to put that on hold for the evening. However, the phone rings and Sloane tells Sydney, “It was you, Sydney, of course.”
Comments . . .
OK, this could be a quibble, but it's a little longer, so I'll explain it here. If their aim was to track Sydney, why didn't they put a tracker on Sydney instead of the chip? They had no reason to believe that the chip would stay with Sydney for any length of time anyway. Secondly, the chip contained partial information leading to information about Prophet 5. Prophet 5 didn't need the information, they just needed to keep others from the information. In fact, Prophet 5 had a good idea as to what was on the chip (information about them or the location of same)—because it was placed within the children of the agents investigating Prophet 5—so it was in fact likely that they would destroy it at their earliest opportunity. Since the information had remained hidden for 30 years without someone stumbling over it, how likely is it that someone would just happen to stumble over it (they didn't know Vaughn already had his hot little hands on it, after all) before they had already taken over the world . . . or whatever (I want a beeeeellion dollars!?)? I think somebody wasn't thinking things through.
Hm, if Rambaldi was such a great guy—as Sloane seems to think—why did he seemingly devote so much time coming up with one ultimate weapon after another? I mean “the end of nature itself”? Doesn't sound exactly people-friendly, does it? And yet, Sloane seems to cast himself as the humanitarian in bringing these “works” to fruition . . . when he's not busy using them to destroy those who aren't standing in his way, anyway.
Does Sloane even know what this last work is purported to do, or does he just care about getting it to work?
After seemingly working on a clandestine escape plan with Sark last episode, this episode Sark is part of the Prophet 5 team. Sloane seems quite sanguine about revealing the encoded message to Prophet 5. Is he on his own recognizance long enough to make his getaway? Or is this a bit of a non sequitur? If Sloane is happy, there's no reason for this circuitous route in contacting Sark. Hopefully next week we will find Sloane merrily absconding with the goods and letting Prophet 5 whistle in the wind—but Sark's assistance should play into this, as per his church/contact. Of course, if Prophet 5 wanted to dispose of Sloane right away, sending him to take care of “Anna” and collect the McGuffin was a severe miscalculation, was it not?
Sloane says, “It was you, Sydney, of course.” Well, of course! And as always, the post-betrayal Sydney behaves like a petulant teen (Sending me to my room?). Shouldn't Sloane have realized who she was right away? He, of all people, knows she is the Chosen One. He is supposed to be the one with Faith. Besides, Ms Follower of Rambaldi is talking about her checkbook. Sydney, pretending to be Anna, uses her opportunity to tell Sloane exactly what she thinks of his "faith." However, in doing so, she must rely on their relative unfamiliarity with Anna so that she can claim that her faith lies more in her bank balance than Rambaldi, Follower or not. Anyway, Sloane tries to kill Sydney, but then when he realizes it's her, no "Sorry I tried to kill you!", just "Of course." I guess with him it's no harm no foul.
Oh, yes, Tom. Tracked down the Cardinal. Killed his wife's assassin. Yay. Jack would be proud. And yet, I'm wondering, so why all the hubbub, bub? Don't we have bigger fish to fry? Like Sloane? Or Irina? Unless . . . Yeah, earlier I was thinking that the Cardinal was somebody new, but now I'm finally leaning toward Irina—and not just on instinct. Why? Because this is all totally unrelated to what everybody's doing and now Tom has a line on the Cardinal . . . but no one knows where Irina is. And if this is some old, worn-out hit Irina called back in her “the Man” days . . . well, it all comes down to fate, baby. The synchronicity of that kind of call coming back to haunt Irina would be too much for them to pass up. I wouldn't put it past Jack to know that the hit was connected to the Man, either—and it would be nice, finally, for him to have a play in what's going on this season, y'know. Well, things are coming to a close, so you know it's time for a family reunion.
Quibbles and bits . . .
It really is about Tom's wife! And although it's kinda nice that sometimes it's not all about Sydney (unless ...), um, this is really kinda pedestrian by comparison with the A story. Oh well. This B story has been sort of a yawner—for me, anyway.
Um, should Sydney have so much trouble fighting off little bitty Sloane? Just what is in that water he drinks, anyway?
“You can't stop them”? That thing has been sitting there for, what, 500 years? Is it indestructible? If you mess with it—say, smash it with one of those bricks—will it destroy the world? Did the old man have to give it to the Chosen One? If only she could get it out and she decided to just leave it there, could the Bad Thing(tm) still happen? Somehow, methinks it must be combined with the Horizon (or something) to bring about doomsday. With 500 and all these variables, you can't stop them? I beg to differ. But that wouldn't be any fun, would it?
Random thoughts . . .
Now, this is why we've missed Sark. He's excellent at his job and thoroughly enjoys it. "The beautiful man is dying!"—Well, we can't have that, can we?
Speaking of which . . . Sydney just doesn't seem to get into her job the way she did in the first season . . . that's probably one of the reasons why the later seasons aren't as fun. I know that she's been forced into staying a spy, but she needs to relax and have a little fun every so often so that we can have fun with her.
"An elaborate scheme to postpone your wedding to his daughter" . . . hm, now that makes sense, doesn't it?
The Tom/Rachel story really feels like it would have been dropped if it weren't needed for something. That Cardinal must be something important.
Some nice dialog and atmosphere in this episode. There's a sense of what the show used to be like a long time ago. It'll be interesting to see how it wraps up.
Discuss . . .
Do you think that Sloane should have realized it was Sydney right away? Why or why not?
Do you think that Sydney should have been able to fight off Sloane better and make off with the Rambaldi McGuffin? Why or why not?
Do you think Sloane really knows what this Rambaldi doodad does? Explain.
Sloane appears to feel no guilt over trying to kill Sydney. Is that because he thought Sydney was Anna at the time, or is it because he is over the deep end, incapable of processing emotions in a normal way? Or is it something else? Explain.
Any problems with the way Sloane seemingly went from working around Prophet 5 in the previous episode to working with them in this episode? How do you think that will work out? Oh, and what was Prophet 5 thinking, putting the McGuffin in Sloane's hands?
Do you think that Sydney took an unnecessary risk by using her guise as Anna to voice her own opinions about Sloane's "faith"? Why or why not? Do you think Anna is more mercenary or Follower?
Should Marshall and Rachel have notified Jack about Tom's activities? Do you think that Irina is the Cardinal? Why or why not?
So, any speculation on what this Rambaldi blessing/curse does? Other than bring about doomsday, that is.
Any thoughts on this Rambaldi character and what he must have been like?
Next:
“It's over, Sloane.” And so it is! RIP, Alias. For better and, well not so better, it's been fun.
