V
verdantheart
Guest
[May need to revise . . . in a hurry . . .]
“Resurrection” begins with Sydney entering CIA headquarters in LA--only we know it’s not Sydney because she inserts a contact lens before the eye scan and “freshens” her breath before breathing into the breathalizer. Sure enough, it’s Lauren, who enters to download the Rambaldi equation lately extracted from Nadia while Dixon and Marshall discuss his progress on getting the location of “Rambaldi’s essence.” Unfortunately for Marshall, he enters, wonders aloud why Sydney’s downloading the equation, and is shot for his curiosity. As Lauren leaves, she has Sark initiate countermeasures consisting of activating all the bombs that Lauren tossed along the way during her entrance. Vaughn pursues “Sydney,” but is conked on the head for his trouble, whereas Jack calls in security on Sark and has better luck.
A Mr Foster questions Sydney, who is frustrated to see Lauren borrowing her face to perpetrate yet another insult upon the CIA. After learning what was compromised, Sydney realizes that Lauren was the perpetrator. Foster suggests that Nadia might be involved, at which point Sydney ends the interview and Foster reassigns Sydney to a desk job until the investigation is complete.
Meanwhile, Vaughn tells Jack he’s ready to embark on the mission that they talked about regarding Lauren. Jack cautions Vaughn that the pressure to capture Lauren is about to rise exponentially considering her latest exploit, so Vaughn had better act soon. Therefore, he suggests to Dixon that Vaughn interrogate Sark based on Sark’s pattern of “caving out of fear” (a reason to have Jack interrogate him, wouldn’t you say?). Vaughn beats Lauren’s location out of Sark and moves in.
Sydney discusses the damage with Weiss, who tells her that Vaughn interviewed Sark but got nothing out of him. Sydney calls only to realize that Vaughn has gone after Lauren. She tries to talk him out of it, saying, “It’ll haunt you . . . I’ll lose you all over again.”
Vaughn follows Lauren to a warehouse where she meets with her equation expert. The equations boil down to an encrypted longitude and latitude. Lauren rewards her expert by shooting him, thereby ensuring his silence. Vaughn takes a picture of the location, then lies in wait and knocks Lauren out (Hi, Honey).
Sydney goes for the tape of Vaughn’s interrogation, only to find that it has been classified--by her father. She demands it from Jack, who insists that Vaughn needs closure and this is the only way for him to achieve it. Sydney tells Jack that he’s trying to achieve his own closure through Vaughn, but Jack counters that he had the chance to do that but passed it up--only to live to regret it. He claims that he’s trying to prevent Vaughn from becoming a man like himself. “I love you too much to let that happen,” he says.
Vaughn hangs Lauren from the ceiling. She wakes begging for her life, claiming to have fallen in love with Vaughn, hoping never to hear from the Covenant with further orders from them--but then Sydney came back. Naturally, Vaughn does not believe her. “I hate you, but I love Sydney more,” he says. “That’s the only reason you’re not dying tonight.” At this point he coughs up blood, stabbed from behind.
Sloane enters Nadia’s room to tell her what they’re after--Rambaldi’s consciousness, housed in the “Sphere of Life.” He asks her to go with him.
Vaughn is rushed into surgery. A horrified Sydney tells Jack, “You were right. Lauren has to pay.” Jack insists, “Vaughn has to do it.” But Sydney isn’t listening.
We see Lauren enter the cell next to Sark. She tells him she forgives him for giving her up and tells him that her mother has hired a lawyer. She asks about backup data, but once she has the information, reveals herself as Sydney, using a mask and voice modulator.
The location from Nadia’s data leads to a location in Palermo. Jack has arranged for a plane for Sydney:
Jack: Let me go instead.
Sydney: I can’t.
J: I’ll cover for you with Foster.
S: What is it?
J: Nothing. We’ll talk when you get back.
Vaughn wakes after surgery to find that Sydney has gone after Lauren. He’s agitated, worried Sydney is walking into a trap because it was Katya Derevko who stabbed him. With Weiss’ help, he stages an escape.
Nadia escapes and meets up with Sloane. She reveals that she altered the equations as Rambaldi’s elixir wore off, thereby misdirecting the Covenant and CIA.
Sydney is waiting at the Palermo site as darkness falls. Katya creeps up on her, but Sydney grabs her gun. Katya claims to be infiltrating the site and mistook Sydney for a Covenant guard. Sydney hands Katya her gun only to have Katya pull the trigger on her--fruitlessly. Sydney has pulled the clip. Katya asks, “How did you know?” Sydney admits she didn’t--before, and shoots her with a tranq.
Sydney moves in, taking out several guards. However, Lauren grabs her and a fights ensues. Lauren tells her that if Sydney kills her, she’ll never learn the “truth” and begins teasing her with little tidbits, promising proof in a vault in Wittenburg. She grabs a gun as Vaughn shows up and takes Sydney--“If you love her, you’ll put the gun down!” Vaughn starts to do so, but then shoots her. They kiss, Lauren rises (don’t all the monsters?) and Vaughn plugs her with his remaining four bullets. Lauren gasps out the vault number with her dying breath: 1062. “What was that?” Vaughn asks. “It doesn’t matter,” Sydney claims.
It matters so little that we then see Sydney in Wittenburg entering a bank vault. She breaks into box 1062, where she finds a secret CIA document, readable only via ultraviolet light. On the cover page we read:
S.A.B. 47
17 April 1975
Subject Sydney Anne Bristow
Senior Project Manager Jack Bristow
As she quickly scans the pages, crying, we see someone enter. It’s her father, wearing an expression of deep sadness. “Sydney. You were never supposed to have found this.”
Analysis . . .
First, a couple of words about Vaughn and Jack’s manipulation of him. Jack seizes on an existing opportunity partly in an attempt to solve a huge problem that he’s facing. However, he isn’t creating a situation, but merely facilitating it. He sees where it’s headed and is helping it get where it’s going partially because it will help solve his own problem.
But, in doing this, Jack proposes the idea of vengeance as some sort of “balm for the soul,” an avenue for “closure.” It concludes the life of the betrayer, yes, but you still have to live with your own mistakes . . . I have a hard time seeing Jack as the kind of man who does not realize this. Sydney accuses Jack of getting “Vaughn carrying your burden, trying to get you closure by doing the one thing you never got the chance to do--kill the person who betrayed you.” But Jack knows that it’s impossible for Vaughn to do that . . . that’s not what this is about at all. The question is, with his secondary motive, how fully does Jack believe it when he says, “I did have a chance. And I didn’t take it. And not a day went by that I didn’t regret letting her go. Vaughn will feel the same way. He will end up like me and I love you too much to let that happen.”
Jack’s circumstances are very different from Vaughn’s. Vaughn regrets even marrying Lauren, but Jack cannot regret marrying “Laura”--he’s admitted as much. He has Sydney from the marriage. And even if he is telling the truth, even if he regrets every day that he didn’t kill Irina when he had the chance, doesn’t he in equal part wish he had her back? With every measure of hatred and resentment in his heart, isn’t there an equal measure of forgiveness and love? We’ve seen it. However, it is very much true that Jack doesn’t want Vaughn to turn out like him--we know that it took a long time for Jack to make any kind of emotional recovery from Irina’s betrayals . . . and as we continue to discover, they’re never over, even when she’s absent.
Perhaps Jack realizes that Lauren, who Vaughn used basically as a band-aid to cover the emotional wound of losing Sydney, will continue to irritate Vaughn until he takes action and throws her away. Perhaps it’s not so much revenge that is needed, but confrontation--did Jack allow his opportunity for confrontation slip away? Jack is right that Vaughn needs “closure”--he can never heal his relationship with Sydney without it--but death is not necessarily the answer for that. The circumstances have to be right (and Sydney worked it out so that they were perfect, huh?) . . . in the end Vaughn can’t work it out on his own and drags Sydney into it.
Finally, I must note that the lesson that Vaughn cannot have learned from this all-too-tidy ending is that Lauren is merely a substitute for Sydney and that folly and fallacy is his fault. It is not Lauren’s defect that he married a woman he was not in love with. That Lauren was a betrayer was merely his “good fortune”--for now he can put her behind him without any guilt! Unlike an ordinary divorced man, he has total closure! Not only is Lauren dead, but she wasn’t even who she was represented to be! She had no feelings for him, so he can feel good about hating her and shutting her out of his life! Man, the boy should celebrate instead of feeling badly. However, embracing this reality would be an admission of his glaring faults--that he is too cowardly to face his own grief; that he is too wrapped up in the pride of his own self-righteous self-image to turn to the woman he loves, while merely dropping a woman who represents a mere construct of illusion. Send the guy to a therapist, stat.
Moving on. Lauren reveals a box number to Sydney and Sydney gets to the box and is reading the documents before Jack can get there to stop her. What does this tell us?
First, Jack knows that Lauren has the document, but he doesn’t know where the document is--if he did, he would get to it and Sydney would never have to see it. The fact that Lauren has this document and discloses it to Sydney reveals why Jack is pressing Vaughn to “seek closure” with Lauren--Jack needs Lauren dead, and he needs someone other than Sydney to go after her.
This suggests why Lauren joined the Covenant. She discovered documents like these concerning herself. Her father was part of a project like this--therefore their estrangement and her defection to the Covenant. She turned against the government that programmed her to be a spy. At the same time, she discovered that Sydney Bristow was part of the same sort of experiment--but with even more spectacular success--a field agent of legendary prowess, while she somehow was relegated to a desk. She stole the document and hid it away.
This explains why Jack went to Senator Reed with his information about Lauren instead of working directly through the CIA (something I’ve wondered about). He believed that this--and the loss of the documents about Sydney (he’d be aware of that) and any loss of documents about Lauren are most definitely connected and look to Reed for help in resolving the problem. This might also explain why Jack was so willing to accept the explanation that Reed’s death was suicide even though it most certainly was not. He needed time to decide what to do about Lauren given the fact that she was holding onto what is, to him, a ticking bomb that could destroy the remaining shreds of his tattered family.
When Vaughn goes vengeance-happy over his treacherous wife, he offers Jack an opportunity that he can’t pass up (as discussed). Vaughn can kill two birds with one stone by eliminating Jack’s problem while simultaneously removing a cancer on his relationship with Jack’s daughter.
But Sydney gets to Lauren and Lauren can’t wait to tell her “the truth.” She uses it in an attempt to forestall her death, but also blurts it out in her dying breath.* [Random thoughts] My guess is that she either a) sees Sydney as being in the same boat with her as a “manufactured spy” and that Sydney will pick up the standard that she dropped, or b) she realizes that this knowledge will bring Sydney nothing but pain.
I’ve seen quite a bit that says, well, this proves that Jack must be Covenant. Well, if he were, I think things would have gone quite a bit better for him this season--either that, or he lets things really string out (even further than Sloane does!!!) before allowing them to reel back in to him. In which case, the Covenant is way too unsubtle for him (he’d be manipulating the Covenant, not running it); the Trust would be more his style (and even there, he’s obviously not an official member because he wasn’t required to eyeball the vault lock). However, he must have some sort of importance because he seems to be able to (literally) get away with murder. But his importance is to the US government, not some penny-ante terrorist group. I think if he ever walks away from the US government, he’s taking all the marbles with him--or it’s going to be because they betray Sydney in a way he can’t work around.
Back to the Covenant. Whether Jack was in prison or not following his wife’s “death,” he most certainly was in prison at the outset of this season, and had been there, in solitary, for about a year. So he could hardly have been running the Covenant during that period. And, we’re supposed to believe that Jack was not only aware that Sydney had gone through an attempted brainwash, but that he, himself was behind it?--when he, of all people, knew it was likely not going to work (because of the Project Christmas training that he, himself, implanted)?
OK, let’s pretend Jack doesn’t love his daughter at all and is fine with turning her into an altered personality and feeding her to the likes of Simon Walker (who he later killed, I suppose, simply to silence Walker, not because Walker offended him?). If he were high up in the Covenant, why go to all of the time and trouble of pushing all of Vaughn’s buttons to get him to go after Lauren when he could simply order Cole or someone to pull the trigger on her? Wouldn’t Jack know Katya through the Covenant instead of having to meet her for the first time in “Crossings”? Why would the Covenant be so willing to use lethal force against Sydney? It’s clear that Jack doesn’t want Sydney killed, but Lauren, Sark, Bomani, and Katya were all more than willing to kill her. The only reason that the Covenant didn’t want Sydney dead at first was to get the “second coming” info out of her. After that, she was fair game.
Why would it be Jack registering suspicion and surprise--a private suspicion and surprise--upon realizing that Lauren might be Covenant, if he were, in fact, Covenant himself? If he were Covenant, wouldn’t he be important enough to know she were Covenant already? And, finally, if Jack were Covenant, would he not be expediting their progress toward the Passenger instead of impeding it? Jack is the one person who stands between the Covenant and its goal--the person into whose hands Sloane’s life falls. And he decides against the Covenant when he could so believably and easily have let it go the other way--even by “attempting” to save Sloane, thereby covering his bases with Sydney.
Anyone still believe Jack is Covenant? Please explain to me the basis for this conclusion.
No, the document was all CIA. It was a CIA document that was stolen by Lauren. Sydney is a CIA project, S.A.B. 47, headed by her father, Jack Bristow. This is all we are given (by the episode). We do not know the details of what Sydney learned about herself. [The official website suggested in its initial writeup that Jack was not in fact imprisoned after Irina’s apparent death, but was working with Vaughn and Brill. That he knew about Nadia and that both Sydney and Nadia’s lives had been fully documented. This is not part of the series, however, so it is subject to change.]
Some have already jumped to the conclusion that Jack’s evil. “I think you’re evil. Evil. Evil! Eeevil!!!” Smack! [Sorry, just got a DVD of The Birds . . .] That’s a big conclusion based on a title page of a secret document. I’m going to wait and see. [And it’s going to be a long wait, too . . . sigh] However, I’m going to point to one thing. When Sydney decides to go to Palermo, Jack could have stopped her. She is assigned to desk duty because of the investigation into the security breach and bombing of the Rotunda. But instead of stopping Sydney, Jack backs up her decision and assists her, providing her with a plane and covering with Foster. He is letting her make her own decisions--even though they might hurt her (and him) in the process. He’s letting her be an adult--he’s doing the very hardest thing for a parent to do: let go. And in this case, he’s facing the highest possible penalty for his action, in his mind: the loss of his daughter’s love.
And, again, it looks like Jack must have bugged Sydney or provided for other means of discovering where she was going because he showed at the bank in Wittenburg. It’s believable (especially with Vaughn’s presence) that Sydney would be delayed more than long enough for Jack to have gotten to the documents before Sydney and removed them. But he does’t. He waits for Sydney to discover them and only then does he express his despair that she has had to live through this moment.
So, if Jack’s not an evil Frankenstinian bastard, what is he? What has he always been when he has done terrible things in the past? The things that he’s done that have seemed unforgivable have always been in response to impossible situations. My ex-wife might kill my daughter or worse--I must emphatically demonstrate that she can’t be trusted. The reasoning behind the Project Christmas protocol is still a little murky, but we have reason to believe that Jack knew that Sydney was likely to be pushed into his life, like it or not, and he had to prepare her--and as a result, she was saved from reprogramming.
We don’t know what happened yet, but it looks like this project was initiated on the day of Sydney’s birth. Just when Jack should have been celebrating, suppose he was pushed to the wall instead. Suppose he was given a choice. You can either head this project and have a daughter, or you can decline and have your daughter taken away from you forever. We’ll just tell your wife that the baby died. In either case, Sydney would be spy-ified--there was nothing he could do about that. He was trapped. But if he signed on, he’d at least have some control . . . and he’d keep his family together. I wonder if they dumped a load of Rambaldi on him at this time? That would be one hell of an awakening for a man of 25 . . .
If we decide to believe that Jack initiated this project, that it was his idea, that he set out to make experiments of his children, then everything that has been established about Jack as a character is not correct. Even Irina indicated that she believes Jack to be a good father--and she must know about this, this happened before Jack found out that she was a spy.
On to the series of questions that Lauren brought up:
Do you think the CIA couldn’t find you when you went missing? Was the body correctly identified as not Sydney’s? And if so, who knew? Was Jack in on it as head of S.A.B. 47? Does this account for Jack’s relative lack of demonstrative grief? It would take a lot of convincing for me to believe that Jack would permit Sydney to go through that kind of torture . . . given their history . . . not if he could stop it. It would be a lot easier for me to buy if he were told later on, when it was too late (as with her recruitment into SD-6). I’ll be very unhappy with the writers if they decide that Jack’s imprisonment at the outset of the season is merely a hoax. You can’t turn major important emotional moments in a series to so much smoke and mirrors without draining the series of its impact--and Jack’s relationship with Sydney is one of the two most important relationships of the series (I won’t insult the shippers by arguing that it’s the most important relationship). I love you--just kidding! That’s what we call “a cheat.” So let’s be careful how and how far we go in baiting and switching the fans. We do know that Kendall, at least, caught up with her and served as her handler . . . odd, an FBI flunky serving in that capacity, but, hey . . .
Or you learned the truth by chance? Well, Kendall didn’t just drop by . . . or, I guess he sorta did. But only after Sydney reopened the mess she earlier tried to put a lid on. Which indicates that the CIA was happy to have Sydney follow up on Sloane’s breadcrumbs to her missing memories in hopes that they’d be the ones to pounce on the Rambaldi artifact. This indicates that Sloane was colluding with Jack instead of Irina because the encoded messages in Sloane’s breadcrumb trail were encrypted with a cipher which Jack claimed Irina devised and taught him. (Perhaps all he does to cooperate with Sloane is to recognize the cipher as one of Sloane’s and claim that it is one of Irina’s?)
But if Jack did this, circumventing Sydney’s own efforts to do the right thing . . . why did he do it? Suppose he told her that she erased her own memories for a reason--he knows Sydney would never believe that for a second and couldn’t live with it and be happy. He’s seen how the missing time has tortured her day by day . . . I can’t believe that Jack cares about the McGuffin and whether the CIA gets it or not--he cares about Sydney’s health and happiness. And taking her to some sort of resolution would seem to be the only way to get her there. With so few realistic leads, he pretty much has to allow events to take their course, as he did last season with Irina’s plot. Which leads naturally to . . .
And if your mother’s been helping you since you left, why haven’t you ever spoken to her? Why, indeed? Sydney hasn’t, but Jack has--or thinks he has. He asked for help from Irina and met Katya, purportedly acting on Irina’s behalf. During the discussion about the previous episode, I suggested that Katya has been posing as Irina in Jack’s IM conversations and Irina is either dead or driven underground. Lauren seems to be backing up my suspicions. However, Lauren can hardly point the finger at Jack as complicit in this subterfuge, for Jack is being deceived here.
You can’t believe you and your sister both just happen to be agents. Ah, well, both the CIA and the KGB-cum-SVR are complicit in this, aren’t they, for wouldn’t it have been the SVR who would have administered the Project Christmas protocol to Nadia? Although, if Jack managed to get access to her between her time in KGB/SVR hands and the orphanage, he might have done this--and a good thing too, for she’s even more on her own than Sydney.
We don’t know from the episode how much Jack knew about Nadia, about her whereabouts, and so on, but if he was on the same team with Vaughn Sr and Brill, can we believe that he has the same concerns? Specifically, does he share the same worry about bringing Sydney and Nadia together--the one that Vaughn was so adamant about (the Chosen One and the Passenger are destined to fight and neither will survive)? If so, that would leave Jack with a horrifying choice--to protect his second daughter, he must leave her in an orphanage to suffer. He could not approach her or show any love or concern for her because that would tip others off to her identity. This could help explain Jack’s estrangement from his remaining daughter--an overwhelming guilt over his inability to express his love for both equally! Even if it turns out that he is Nadia’s father, not Sloane (I’m guessing he wouldn’t take Sloane’s word on this)--if Jack knew all this time where she was, how could he ever reveal his fatherhood? The burden of guilt would be too great--for indeed he never showed up, never rescued her from that place. And even if it was for the best of reasons, even if it was to protect her in the only way that he could, he was leaving his child without her parents. And, knowing what Irina is, could he leave her to be brought up by her? Seriously? And now, what could he say that could make up for the past? How Sydney ended up with a father and Nadia ended up with nothing? And there’s still the problem of having Nadia in proximity with Sydney. Far better to keep his distance and allow Sloane to take her--Sloane at least is an able protector and has proven willing to make sacrifices to do so. Let him have his pretense--as long as he plays it to the hilt.
So is Jack trying to hold his fractured family somehow together by keeping it carefully apart? By becoming head of this project, was he trying to stay at the head of his family? Whatever he has said to Sydney about regretting having stayed his hand regarding Irina, too many signs point toward his lingering feelings toward her for us to ignore. He has attempted to conceal his feelings, but they are all too evident, whether from his glances or his behavior. Jack seems to simply let Irina go when she is not threatening Sydney--his strategy seems to be to distance Irina from Sydney; he delayed taking her into custody when Sloane (his objective) was not in the picture during season 2.
Does Jack even keep Nadia safely separated from himself, hidden from the CIA, from terrorists and criminals of all sorts, from Sloane--from Irina herself? Or is she part of his CIA project, followed from birth? If so, how does Jack prevent them from insisting that she be dosed with Rambaldi’s elixir? Who left Nadia at the orphanage, Irina or someone from the CIA? Irina supposedly killed Vaughn Sr to get her--did someone get to Irina afterwards? Jack?
I have a “big spec,” but I’m reluctant to bring out the spoiler tags for fear that if it’s in the works, they’ll change things around . . . (lol)
Within all this mess lies a question: Was Jack’s shaken reaction at Sydney’s revelation that Irina was alive that she was alive, or that Sydney realized she was alive? It’s hard to believe that Jack would not have tracked her down (for better or worse) if he didn’t believe that she was dead . . . And it hardly seems to make sense that they’d have been in contact over the years . . . Did he just let it be? Did she fake her death yet again for his benefit? ’Tis a puzzlement . . .
Random thoughts . . .
First, a few items on the “You’ve got to be kidding me!” scale. The prize-winner, of course was both Lauren and Sydney posing as each other by wearing Mission Impossible-style masks of each other. Problem, guys, this reads a lot better on the page than on screen! If you look closely--or better still, not so closely--at Jennifer Garner and Melissa George, you can see that they are built nothing alike and they are not at all the same height. How could even a casual viewer not notice something wrong--and how could a less casual viewer--say, someone like Julian Sark--possibly fail to notice that something was wrong?!? Impossible! 10 out of 10 on the YGTBKM credulity-stretching scale.
Second, Sydney hands Katya her gun back, sans clip, but Katya doesn’t notice the change in heft. Give me a break! She doesn’t notice that her gun is suddenly much more top-heavy? Does a clip full of rounds weigh so little or the handle of a gun so much? Not last time I picked one up (although, admittedly, that was some time ago). We’re talking top seasoned agent, here, though. 8 out of 10 YGTBKM.
Third, once again, Vaughn springs to his feet after a near-mortal blow. What happened? When Allison was at the bar ordering her shot of Rambaldi juice, Vaughn said, “I’ll have what she’s having--no, better make that a double”?! We’ve seen him stabbed and left for dead, left with an Inferno Protocol drip in him, and now again stabbed in the lung. Don’t call him Boyscout, call him Timex because he keeps on tickin’! Unbelievably. His escape and rescue of Sydney registers 9 out of 10 on the YGTBKM scale. Glad he was there, but--please!
Forth, won’t those people die?! This isn’t Halloween XXI, people. Sydney and Vaughn kiss, Lauren starts to stir . . . that’s not only unbelievable, it’s trite! 6 out of 10 on the YGTBKM scale (lower because we were expecting it); 10 out of 10 on the irritation scale.
Fifth and finally, Lauren getting the better of Sydney in a fight? Was it the distractions or what? C’mon, Allison maybe, but never Lauren!!! Puh-leeeze! Did Sydney see Vaughn out of the corner of her eye and decide to let him have his closure? I’m only going to give this a 5 on the YGTBKM scale, but only because there might be explanations for her lapse.
But other than that, I enjoyed the episode. Really. You’ve just got to do a little better on the YGTBKM scale.
* Let’s hope this was Lauren’s dying breath and that the rumors that she’ll be back for a few episodes next season are just so much disinformation. She was shot six (count ’em, six) times, and I’ve had enough needless back-from-the-dead drama with Allison.
Must admit, when Vaughn spat up that blood, I thought, must be Katya. And sure enough . . .
Again, things turn out, as I’ve mentioned, a little too neat and tidy for Sydney and Vaughn. Isn’t it convenient that his wife turned out to be a betraying spy instead of a nice girl (and wasn’t he an ungrateful wretch about that)? Isn’t it convenient that Lauren gave him the perfect excuse to blow her away--and that it was Vaughn and not Sydney who did it? As usual, things work out great for Vaughn, through no fault of his own, while things are totally screwed for Jack, who has tried everything in his power to prevent disaster (short of holding Sydney back). Would Jack have let someone get the drop on him as often as Vaughn has? No. If it was Jack, would Lauren have lasted long enough to be rescued? No. Vaughn screwed up enough to force Sydney into the picture allowing him to come riding in on his white horse in his shining armor to save her at just the right moment. Nothin’ beats dumb luck, that’s for sure. Yeah, I’m being hard on Vaughn, but I’m exaggerating for comparison’s sake.
I wonder if the number 47 in the project is at all linked to Lot 47 in the DSR's collection? Is there a file about Nadia encoded N?B (or N?S, since she ended up as Santos) 45?
More in-depth discussion regarding Jack in the Spy dad column. It might take me a little while because the character issues are a bit tangly, to say the least.
The cliffhanger of the finale felt a little retread-ish because of its similarity to the Project Christmas revelation of season 2--this feels like it’s just a blown-up version of that. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Entertainment Weekly reported that the script changed quite a bit from the original plan, which involved a cliffhanger in which Sydney must choose between saving Vaughn or saving Jack. Frankly, I think that would be a terrific choice, but the timing’s not quite right for it now. After this season (if we discount this episode), I’d hope that many of us would take into account Vaughn’s behavior and think Sydney a total chump if the decision weren’t a forgone conclusion. Let’s allow Vaughn to raise his worthiness quotient and then have Sydney face that decision (of course, now it looks like both her men might have to work on their worthiness quotients, huh?). I wonder if the hasty rewrite accounts for some of the lapses in realism? I know this is escapist, but there is such a thing as verisimilitude, after all! I hope this is a direction that they planned to take the series and not a spur-of-the-moment fix. Perhaps that’s also why we never seemed to really get at the resurrection part of “Resurrection.”
The last episode of the season . . . As usual, it’s a sad moment. At least I still have season 1 commentary to fill out--for once I’m happy that I tend to procrastinate! For S/V fans, I’m sure it’s a moment of relief. For family fans, it’s a moment to look anxiously toward the future, hoping that Sydney’s past her run-off-without-waiting-for-an-explanation days. I, for one, am hoping to hear the explanation. It should be very illuminating! And I’m hoping for a season that focuses more on Jack and less on Vaughn--a far more complex and interesting character played by (no offense) an exceptional actor. Sydney keeps prying--it’s time for her to accept the responsibility which goes along with that and either become a true partner with her father or declare her independence from him.
Discuss . . .
[Holding some questions for Spy dad . . .]
Why do you think Jack pushed Vaughn toward “closure”? Was it a) his own personal need to remove Lauren from the picture, b) Vaughn’s relationship with Sydney was being poisoned by his feelings regarding Lauren c) a mixture of both of these, or d) he really is trying to work out his own issues through Vaughn?
Do you think if Vaughn had put Lauren through an acid bath, it would have made him feel any better? Would that have been better or worse than killing her?
Do you think that with what happened, Vaughn has achieved “closure”? Do you think that his basic issues have been addressed or not? What are the basic issues, anyway, and how have they been addressed or not?
Sydney blamed Lauren for what happened to Vaughn and not Jack for inciting him to go after her. Did this surprise you?
What do you make of Lauren? Why did she join the Covenant? Did she discover documents concerning herself and Sydney as I’ve suggested? If not, why else? Did you believe her story about falling in love with Vaughn (as I keep hearing, who wouldn’t--that sound you hear is my suppressed snicker)?
Do you think that Jack knew that Sydney was alive all along--or not? When do you think he found out? How involved (if at all) do you think he was in her undercover mission with the Covenant? Do you think he helped circumvent her memory wipe? If so, was it for the CIA or for Sydney’s well-being? Do you believe that he was really imprisoned, or was that a hoax?
Do you think that Katya has been posing as Irina via IM all along? That Irina never met Sydney during the time when she was Julia Thorne? Do you believe that Irina is still alive? What do you think has happened to her?
Do you expect Sydney to wait for Jack to explain the document she discovered in Wittenburg? In other words, how much has she changed since season 1--is she still willing to take things at face value, or does she now want to look behind the actions for the motivations? Has her basic trust for her father grown? Can she still drop it easily, or is that more difficult for her now? (This is a test of the Sydney Bristow trust system . . .)
Do you think that Jack chose his role as head of SAB 47, or was he forced into it? Do you think he’s basically good or evil?
Do you think Jack’s in the Covenant, or even its head? If so, please explain--thoroughly.
Do you think that Jack knew about Nadia all along? Do you think he knew where she was? If so, why do you think he left her languishing at the orphanage? Do you think if this were true it would help explain his estrangement with Sydney?
Next:
The long, long wait . . . Have a great summer & fall! Don’t forget us--stop by and visit! We’ll be here.
Modifications:
1. Random thought added regarding Lot 47/45.
“Resurrection” begins with Sydney entering CIA headquarters in LA--only we know it’s not Sydney because she inserts a contact lens before the eye scan and “freshens” her breath before breathing into the breathalizer. Sure enough, it’s Lauren, who enters to download the Rambaldi equation lately extracted from Nadia while Dixon and Marshall discuss his progress on getting the location of “Rambaldi’s essence.” Unfortunately for Marshall, he enters, wonders aloud why Sydney’s downloading the equation, and is shot for his curiosity. As Lauren leaves, she has Sark initiate countermeasures consisting of activating all the bombs that Lauren tossed along the way during her entrance. Vaughn pursues “Sydney,” but is conked on the head for his trouble, whereas Jack calls in security on Sark and has better luck.
A Mr Foster questions Sydney, who is frustrated to see Lauren borrowing her face to perpetrate yet another insult upon the CIA. After learning what was compromised, Sydney realizes that Lauren was the perpetrator. Foster suggests that Nadia might be involved, at which point Sydney ends the interview and Foster reassigns Sydney to a desk job until the investigation is complete.
Meanwhile, Vaughn tells Jack he’s ready to embark on the mission that they talked about regarding Lauren. Jack cautions Vaughn that the pressure to capture Lauren is about to rise exponentially considering her latest exploit, so Vaughn had better act soon. Therefore, he suggests to Dixon that Vaughn interrogate Sark based on Sark’s pattern of “caving out of fear” (a reason to have Jack interrogate him, wouldn’t you say?). Vaughn beats Lauren’s location out of Sark and moves in.
Sydney discusses the damage with Weiss, who tells her that Vaughn interviewed Sark but got nothing out of him. Sydney calls only to realize that Vaughn has gone after Lauren. She tries to talk him out of it, saying, “It’ll haunt you . . . I’ll lose you all over again.”
Vaughn follows Lauren to a warehouse where she meets with her equation expert. The equations boil down to an encrypted longitude and latitude. Lauren rewards her expert by shooting him, thereby ensuring his silence. Vaughn takes a picture of the location, then lies in wait and knocks Lauren out (Hi, Honey).
Sydney goes for the tape of Vaughn’s interrogation, only to find that it has been classified--by her father. She demands it from Jack, who insists that Vaughn needs closure and this is the only way for him to achieve it. Sydney tells Jack that he’s trying to achieve his own closure through Vaughn, but Jack counters that he had the chance to do that but passed it up--only to live to regret it. He claims that he’s trying to prevent Vaughn from becoming a man like himself. “I love you too much to let that happen,” he says.
Vaughn hangs Lauren from the ceiling. She wakes begging for her life, claiming to have fallen in love with Vaughn, hoping never to hear from the Covenant with further orders from them--but then Sydney came back. Naturally, Vaughn does not believe her. “I hate you, but I love Sydney more,” he says. “That’s the only reason you’re not dying tonight.” At this point he coughs up blood, stabbed from behind.
Sloane enters Nadia’s room to tell her what they’re after--Rambaldi’s consciousness, housed in the “Sphere of Life.” He asks her to go with him.
Vaughn is rushed into surgery. A horrified Sydney tells Jack, “You were right. Lauren has to pay.” Jack insists, “Vaughn has to do it.” But Sydney isn’t listening.
We see Lauren enter the cell next to Sark. She tells him she forgives him for giving her up and tells him that her mother has hired a lawyer. She asks about backup data, but once she has the information, reveals herself as Sydney, using a mask and voice modulator.
The location from Nadia’s data leads to a location in Palermo. Jack has arranged for a plane for Sydney:
Jack: Let me go instead.
Sydney: I can’t.
J: I’ll cover for you with Foster.
S: What is it?
J: Nothing. We’ll talk when you get back.
Vaughn wakes after surgery to find that Sydney has gone after Lauren. He’s agitated, worried Sydney is walking into a trap because it was Katya Derevko who stabbed him. With Weiss’ help, he stages an escape.
Nadia escapes and meets up with Sloane. She reveals that she altered the equations as Rambaldi’s elixir wore off, thereby misdirecting the Covenant and CIA.
Sydney is waiting at the Palermo site as darkness falls. Katya creeps up on her, but Sydney grabs her gun. Katya claims to be infiltrating the site and mistook Sydney for a Covenant guard. Sydney hands Katya her gun only to have Katya pull the trigger on her--fruitlessly. Sydney has pulled the clip. Katya asks, “How did you know?” Sydney admits she didn’t--before, and shoots her with a tranq.
Sydney moves in, taking out several guards. However, Lauren grabs her and a fights ensues. Lauren tells her that if Sydney kills her, she’ll never learn the “truth” and begins teasing her with little tidbits, promising proof in a vault in Wittenburg. She grabs a gun as Vaughn shows up and takes Sydney--“If you love her, you’ll put the gun down!” Vaughn starts to do so, but then shoots her. They kiss, Lauren rises (don’t all the monsters?) and Vaughn plugs her with his remaining four bullets. Lauren gasps out the vault number with her dying breath: 1062. “What was that?” Vaughn asks. “It doesn’t matter,” Sydney claims.
It matters so little that we then see Sydney in Wittenburg entering a bank vault. She breaks into box 1062, where she finds a secret CIA document, readable only via ultraviolet light. On the cover page we read:
S.A.B. 47
17 April 1975
Subject Sydney Anne Bristow
Senior Project Manager Jack Bristow
As she quickly scans the pages, crying, we see someone enter. It’s her father, wearing an expression of deep sadness. “Sydney. You were never supposed to have found this.”
Analysis . . .
First, a couple of words about Vaughn and Jack’s manipulation of him. Jack seizes on an existing opportunity partly in an attempt to solve a huge problem that he’s facing. However, he isn’t creating a situation, but merely facilitating it. He sees where it’s headed and is helping it get where it’s going partially because it will help solve his own problem.
But, in doing this, Jack proposes the idea of vengeance as some sort of “balm for the soul,” an avenue for “closure.” It concludes the life of the betrayer, yes, but you still have to live with your own mistakes . . . I have a hard time seeing Jack as the kind of man who does not realize this. Sydney accuses Jack of getting “Vaughn carrying your burden, trying to get you closure by doing the one thing you never got the chance to do--kill the person who betrayed you.” But Jack knows that it’s impossible for Vaughn to do that . . . that’s not what this is about at all. The question is, with his secondary motive, how fully does Jack believe it when he says, “I did have a chance. And I didn’t take it. And not a day went by that I didn’t regret letting her go. Vaughn will feel the same way. He will end up like me and I love you too much to let that happen.”
Jack’s circumstances are very different from Vaughn’s. Vaughn regrets even marrying Lauren, but Jack cannot regret marrying “Laura”--he’s admitted as much. He has Sydney from the marriage. And even if he is telling the truth, even if he regrets every day that he didn’t kill Irina when he had the chance, doesn’t he in equal part wish he had her back? With every measure of hatred and resentment in his heart, isn’t there an equal measure of forgiveness and love? We’ve seen it. However, it is very much true that Jack doesn’t want Vaughn to turn out like him--we know that it took a long time for Jack to make any kind of emotional recovery from Irina’s betrayals . . . and as we continue to discover, they’re never over, even when she’s absent.
Perhaps Jack realizes that Lauren, who Vaughn used basically as a band-aid to cover the emotional wound of losing Sydney, will continue to irritate Vaughn until he takes action and throws her away. Perhaps it’s not so much revenge that is needed, but confrontation--did Jack allow his opportunity for confrontation slip away? Jack is right that Vaughn needs “closure”--he can never heal his relationship with Sydney without it--but death is not necessarily the answer for that. The circumstances have to be right (and Sydney worked it out so that they were perfect, huh?) . . . in the end Vaughn can’t work it out on his own and drags Sydney into it.
Finally, I must note that the lesson that Vaughn cannot have learned from this all-too-tidy ending is that Lauren is merely a substitute for Sydney and that folly and fallacy is his fault. It is not Lauren’s defect that he married a woman he was not in love with. That Lauren was a betrayer was merely his “good fortune”--for now he can put her behind him without any guilt! Unlike an ordinary divorced man, he has total closure! Not only is Lauren dead, but she wasn’t even who she was represented to be! She had no feelings for him, so he can feel good about hating her and shutting her out of his life! Man, the boy should celebrate instead of feeling badly. However, embracing this reality would be an admission of his glaring faults--that he is too cowardly to face his own grief; that he is too wrapped up in the pride of his own self-righteous self-image to turn to the woman he loves, while merely dropping a woman who represents a mere construct of illusion. Send the guy to a therapist, stat.
Moving on. Lauren reveals a box number to Sydney and Sydney gets to the box and is reading the documents before Jack can get there to stop her. What does this tell us?
First, Jack knows that Lauren has the document, but he doesn’t know where the document is--if he did, he would get to it and Sydney would never have to see it. The fact that Lauren has this document and discloses it to Sydney reveals why Jack is pressing Vaughn to “seek closure” with Lauren--Jack needs Lauren dead, and he needs someone other than Sydney to go after her.
This suggests why Lauren joined the Covenant. She discovered documents like these concerning herself. Her father was part of a project like this--therefore their estrangement and her defection to the Covenant. She turned against the government that programmed her to be a spy. At the same time, she discovered that Sydney Bristow was part of the same sort of experiment--but with even more spectacular success--a field agent of legendary prowess, while she somehow was relegated to a desk. She stole the document and hid it away.
This explains why Jack went to Senator Reed with his information about Lauren instead of working directly through the CIA (something I’ve wondered about). He believed that this--and the loss of the documents about Sydney (he’d be aware of that) and any loss of documents about Lauren are most definitely connected and look to Reed for help in resolving the problem. This might also explain why Jack was so willing to accept the explanation that Reed’s death was suicide even though it most certainly was not. He needed time to decide what to do about Lauren given the fact that she was holding onto what is, to him, a ticking bomb that could destroy the remaining shreds of his tattered family.
When Vaughn goes vengeance-happy over his treacherous wife, he offers Jack an opportunity that he can’t pass up (as discussed). Vaughn can kill two birds with one stone by eliminating Jack’s problem while simultaneously removing a cancer on his relationship with Jack’s daughter.
But Sydney gets to Lauren and Lauren can’t wait to tell her “the truth.” She uses it in an attempt to forestall her death, but also blurts it out in her dying breath.* [Random thoughts] My guess is that she either a) sees Sydney as being in the same boat with her as a “manufactured spy” and that Sydney will pick up the standard that she dropped, or b) she realizes that this knowledge will bring Sydney nothing but pain.
I’ve seen quite a bit that says, well, this proves that Jack must be Covenant. Well, if he were, I think things would have gone quite a bit better for him this season--either that, or he lets things really string out (even further than Sloane does!!!) before allowing them to reel back in to him. In which case, the Covenant is way too unsubtle for him (he’d be manipulating the Covenant, not running it); the Trust would be more his style (and even there, he’s obviously not an official member because he wasn’t required to eyeball the vault lock). However, he must have some sort of importance because he seems to be able to (literally) get away with murder. But his importance is to the US government, not some penny-ante terrorist group. I think if he ever walks away from the US government, he’s taking all the marbles with him--or it’s going to be because they betray Sydney in a way he can’t work around.
Back to the Covenant. Whether Jack was in prison or not following his wife’s “death,” he most certainly was in prison at the outset of this season, and had been there, in solitary, for about a year. So he could hardly have been running the Covenant during that period. And, we’re supposed to believe that Jack was not only aware that Sydney had gone through an attempted brainwash, but that he, himself was behind it?--when he, of all people, knew it was likely not going to work (because of the Project Christmas training that he, himself, implanted)?
OK, let’s pretend Jack doesn’t love his daughter at all and is fine with turning her into an altered personality and feeding her to the likes of Simon Walker (who he later killed, I suppose, simply to silence Walker, not because Walker offended him?). If he were high up in the Covenant, why go to all of the time and trouble of pushing all of Vaughn’s buttons to get him to go after Lauren when he could simply order Cole or someone to pull the trigger on her? Wouldn’t Jack know Katya through the Covenant instead of having to meet her for the first time in “Crossings”? Why would the Covenant be so willing to use lethal force against Sydney? It’s clear that Jack doesn’t want Sydney killed, but Lauren, Sark, Bomani, and Katya were all more than willing to kill her. The only reason that the Covenant didn’t want Sydney dead at first was to get the “second coming” info out of her. After that, she was fair game.
Why would it be Jack registering suspicion and surprise--a private suspicion and surprise--upon realizing that Lauren might be Covenant, if he were, in fact, Covenant himself? If he were Covenant, wouldn’t he be important enough to know she were Covenant already? And, finally, if Jack were Covenant, would he not be expediting their progress toward the Passenger instead of impeding it? Jack is the one person who stands between the Covenant and its goal--the person into whose hands Sloane’s life falls. And he decides against the Covenant when he could so believably and easily have let it go the other way--even by “attempting” to save Sloane, thereby covering his bases with Sydney.
Anyone still believe Jack is Covenant? Please explain to me the basis for this conclusion.
No, the document was all CIA. It was a CIA document that was stolen by Lauren. Sydney is a CIA project, S.A.B. 47, headed by her father, Jack Bristow. This is all we are given (by the episode). We do not know the details of what Sydney learned about herself. [The official website suggested in its initial writeup that Jack was not in fact imprisoned after Irina’s apparent death, but was working with Vaughn and Brill. That he knew about Nadia and that both Sydney and Nadia’s lives had been fully documented. This is not part of the series, however, so it is subject to change.]
Some have already jumped to the conclusion that Jack’s evil. “I think you’re evil. Evil. Evil! Eeevil!!!” Smack! [Sorry, just got a DVD of The Birds . . .] That’s a big conclusion based on a title page of a secret document. I’m going to wait and see. [And it’s going to be a long wait, too . . . sigh] However, I’m going to point to one thing. When Sydney decides to go to Palermo, Jack could have stopped her. She is assigned to desk duty because of the investigation into the security breach and bombing of the Rotunda. But instead of stopping Sydney, Jack backs up her decision and assists her, providing her with a plane and covering with Foster. He is letting her make her own decisions--even though they might hurt her (and him) in the process. He’s letting her be an adult--he’s doing the very hardest thing for a parent to do: let go. And in this case, he’s facing the highest possible penalty for his action, in his mind: the loss of his daughter’s love.
And, again, it looks like Jack must have bugged Sydney or provided for other means of discovering where she was going because he showed at the bank in Wittenburg. It’s believable (especially with Vaughn’s presence) that Sydney would be delayed more than long enough for Jack to have gotten to the documents before Sydney and removed them. But he does’t. He waits for Sydney to discover them and only then does he express his despair that she has had to live through this moment.
So, if Jack’s not an evil Frankenstinian bastard, what is he? What has he always been when he has done terrible things in the past? The things that he’s done that have seemed unforgivable have always been in response to impossible situations. My ex-wife might kill my daughter or worse--I must emphatically demonstrate that she can’t be trusted. The reasoning behind the Project Christmas protocol is still a little murky, but we have reason to believe that Jack knew that Sydney was likely to be pushed into his life, like it or not, and he had to prepare her--and as a result, she was saved from reprogramming.
We don’t know what happened yet, but it looks like this project was initiated on the day of Sydney’s birth. Just when Jack should have been celebrating, suppose he was pushed to the wall instead. Suppose he was given a choice. You can either head this project and have a daughter, or you can decline and have your daughter taken away from you forever. We’ll just tell your wife that the baby died. In either case, Sydney would be spy-ified--there was nothing he could do about that. He was trapped. But if he signed on, he’d at least have some control . . . and he’d keep his family together. I wonder if they dumped a load of Rambaldi on him at this time? That would be one hell of an awakening for a man of 25 . . .
If we decide to believe that Jack initiated this project, that it was his idea, that he set out to make experiments of his children, then everything that has been established about Jack as a character is not correct. Even Irina indicated that she believes Jack to be a good father--and she must know about this, this happened before Jack found out that she was a spy.
On to the series of questions that Lauren brought up:
Do you think the CIA couldn’t find you when you went missing? Was the body correctly identified as not Sydney’s? And if so, who knew? Was Jack in on it as head of S.A.B. 47? Does this account for Jack’s relative lack of demonstrative grief? It would take a lot of convincing for me to believe that Jack would permit Sydney to go through that kind of torture . . . given their history . . . not if he could stop it. It would be a lot easier for me to buy if he were told later on, when it was too late (as with her recruitment into SD-6). I’ll be very unhappy with the writers if they decide that Jack’s imprisonment at the outset of the season is merely a hoax. You can’t turn major important emotional moments in a series to so much smoke and mirrors without draining the series of its impact--and Jack’s relationship with Sydney is one of the two most important relationships of the series (I won’t insult the shippers by arguing that it’s the most important relationship). I love you--just kidding! That’s what we call “a cheat.” So let’s be careful how and how far we go in baiting and switching the fans. We do know that Kendall, at least, caught up with her and served as her handler . . . odd, an FBI flunky serving in that capacity, but, hey . . .
Or you learned the truth by chance? Well, Kendall didn’t just drop by . . . or, I guess he sorta did. But only after Sydney reopened the mess she earlier tried to put a lid on. Which indicates that the CIA was happy to have Sydney follow up on Sloane’s breadcrumbs to her missing memories in hopes that they’d be the ones to pounce on the Rambaldi artifact. This indicates that Sloane was colluding with Jack instead of Irina because the encoded messages in Sloane’s breadcrumb trail were encrypted with a cipher which Jack claimed Irina devised and taught him. (Perhaps all he does to cooperate with Sloane is to recognize the cipher as one of Sloane’s and claim that it is one of Irina’s?)
But if Jack did this, circumventing Sydney’s own efforts to do the right thing . . . why did he do it? Suppose he told her that she erased her own memories for a reason--he knows Sydney would never believe that for a second and couldn’t live with it and be happy. He’s seen how the missing time has tortured her day by day . . . I can’t believe that Jack cares about the McGuffin and whether the CIA gets it or not--he cares about Sydney’s health and happiness. And taking her to some sort of resolution would seem to be the only way to get her there. With so few realistic leads, he pretty much has to allow events to take their course, as he did last season with Irina’s plot. Which leads naturally to . . .
And if your mother’s been helping you since you left, why haven’t you ever spoken to her? Why, indeed? Sydney hasn’t, but Jack has--or thinks he has. He asked for help from Irina and met Katya, purportedly acting on Irina’s behalf. During the discussion about the previous episode, I suggested that Katya has been posing as Irina in Jack’s IM conversations and Irina is either dead or driven underground. Lauren seems to be backing up my suspicions. However, Lauren can hardly point the finger at Jack as complicit in this subterfuge, for Jack is being deceived here.
You can’t believe you and your sister both just happen to be agents. Ah, well, both the CIA and the KGB-cum-SVR are complicit in this, aren’t they, for wouldn’t it have been the SVR who would have administered the Project Christmas protocol to Nadia? Although, if Jack managed to get access to her between her time in KGB/SVR hands and the orphanage, he might have done this--and a good thing too, for she’s even more on her own than Sydney.
We don’t know from the episode how much Jack knew about Nadia, about her whereabouts, and so on, but if he was on the same team with Vaughn Sr and Brill, can we believe that he has the same concerns? Specifically, does he share the same worry about bringing Sydney and Nadia together--the one that Vaughn was so adamant about (the Chosen One and the Passenger are destined to fight and neither will survive)? If so, that would leave Jack with a horrifying choice--to protect his second daughter, he must leave her in an orphanage to suffer. He could not approach her or show any love or concern for her because that would tip others off to her identity. This could help explain Jack’s estrangement from his remaining daughter--an overwhelming guilt over his inability to express his love for both equally! Even if it turns out that he is Nadia’s father, not Sloane (I’m guessing he wouldn’t take Sloane’s word on this)--if Jack knew all this time where she was, how could he ever reveal his fatherhood? The burden of guilt would be too great--for indeed he never showed up, never rescued her from that place. And even if it was for the best of reasons, even if it was to protect her in the only way that he could, he was leaving his child without her parents. And, knowing what Irina is, could he leave her to be brought up by her? Seriously? And now, what could he say that could make up for the past? How Sydney ended up with a father and Nadia ended up with nothing? And there’s still the problem of having Nadia in proximity with Sydney. Far better to keep his distance and allow Sloane to take her--Sloane at least is an able protector and has proven willing to make sacrifices to do so. Let him have his pretense--as long as he plays it to the hilt.
So is Jack trying to hold his fractured family somehow together by keeping it carefully apart? By becoming head of this project, was he trying to stay at the head of his family? Whatever he has said to Sydney about regretting having stayed his hand regarding Irina, too many signs point toward his lingering feelings toward her for us to ignore. He has attempted to conceal his feelings, but they are all too evident, whether from his glances or his behavior. Jack seems to simply let Irina go when she is not threatening Sydney--his strategy seems to be to distance Irina from Sydney; he delayed taking her into custody when Sloane (his objective) was not in the picture during season 2.
Does Jack even keep Nadia safely separated from himself, hidden from the CIA, from terrorists and criminals of all sorts, from Sloane--from Irina herself? Or is she part of his CIA project, followed from birth? If so, how does Jack prevent them from insisting that she be dosed with Rambaldi’s elixir? Who left Nadia at the orphanage, Irina or someone from the CIA? Irina supposedly killed Vaughn Sr to get her--did someone get to Irina afterwards? Jack?
I have a “big spec,” but I’m reluctant to bring out the spoiler tags for fear that if it’s in the works, they’ll change things around . . . (lol)
Within all this mess lies a question: Was Jack’s shaken reaction at Sydney’s revelation that Irina was alive that she was alive, or that Sydney realized she was alive? It’s hard to believe that Jack would not have tracked her down (for better or worse) if he didn’t believe that she was dead . . . And it hardly seems to make sense that they’d have been in contact over the years . . . Did he just let it be? Did she fake her death yet again for his benefit? ’Tis a puzzlement . . .
Random thoughts . . .
First, a few items on the “You’ve got to be kidding me!” scale. The prize-winner, of course was both Lauren and Sydney posing as each other by wearing Mission Impossible-style masks of each other. Problem, guys, this reads a lot better on the page than on screen! If you look closely--or better still, not so closely--at Jennifer Garner and Melissa George, you can see that they are built nothing alike and they are not at all the same height. How could even a casual viewer not notice something wrong--and how could a less casual viewer--say, someone like Julian Sark--possibly fail to notice that something was wrong?!? Impossible! 10 out of 10 on the YGTBKM credulity-stretching scale.
Second, Sydney hands Katya her gun back, sans clip, but Katya doesn’t notice the change in heft. Give me a break! She doesn’t notice that her gun is suddenly much more top-heavy? Does a clip full of rounds weigh so little or the handle of a gun so much? Not last time I picked one up (although, admittedly, that was some time ago). We’re talking top seasoned agent, here, though. 8 out of 10 YGTBKM.
Third, once again, Vaughn springs to his feet after a near-mortal blow. What happened? When Allison was at the bar ordering her shot of Rambaldi juice, Vaughn said, “I’ll have what she’s having--no, better make that a double”?! We’ve seen him stabbed and left for dead, left with an Inferno Protocol drip in him, and now again stabbed in the lung. Don’t call him Boyscout, call him Timex because he keeps on tickin’! Unbelievably. His escape and rescue of Sydney registers 9 out of 10 on the YGTBKM scale. Glad he was there, but--please!
Forth, won’t those people die?! This isn’t Halloween XXI, people. Sydney and Vaughn kiss, Lauren starts to stir . . . that’s not only unbelievable, it’s trite! 6 out of 10 on the YGTBKM scale (lower because we were expecting it); 10 out of 10 on the irritation scale.
Fifth and finally, Lauren getting the better of Sydney in a fight? Was it the distractions or what? C’mon, Allison maybe, but never Lauren!!! Puh-leeeze! Did Sydney see Vaughn out of the corner of her eye and decide to let him have his closure? I’m only going to give this a 5 on the YGTBKM scale, but only because there might be explanations for her lapse.
But other than that, I enjoyed the episode. Really. You’ve just got to do a little better on the YGTBKM scale.
* Let’s hope this was Lauren’s dying breath and that the rumors that she’ll be back for a few episodes next season are just so much disinformation. She was shot six (count ’em, six) times, and I’ve had enough needless back-from-the-dead drama with Allison.
Must admit, when Vaughn spat up that blood, I thought, must be Katya. And sure enough . . .
Again, things turn out, as I’ve mentioned, a little too neat and tidy for Sydney and Vaughn. Isn’t it convenient that his wife turned out to be a betraying spy instead of a nice girl (and wasn’t he an ungrateful wretch about that)? Isn’t it convenient that Lauren gave him the perfect excuse to blow her away--and that it was Vaughn and not Sydney who did it? As usual, things work out great for Vaughn, through no fault of his own, while things are totally screwed for Jack, who has tried everything in his power to prevent disaster (short of holding Sydney back). Would Jack have let someone get the drop on him as often as Vaughn has? No. If it was Jack, would Lauren have lasted long enough to be rescued? No. Vaughn screwed up enough to force Sydney into the picture allowing him to come riding in on his white horse in his shining armor to save her at just the right moment. Nothin’ beats dumb luck, that’s for sure. Yeah, I’m being hard on Vaughn, but I’m exaggerating for comparison’s sake.
I wonder if the number 47 in the project is at all linked to Lot 47 in the DSR's collection? Is there a file about Nadia encoded N?B (or N?S, since she ended up as Santos) 45?
More in-depth discussion regarding Jack in the Spy dad column. It might take me a little while because the character issues are a bit tangly, to say the least.
The cliffhanger of the finale felt a little retread-ish because of its similarity to the Project Christmas revelation of season 2--this feels like it’s just a blown-up version of that. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Entertainment Weekly reported that the script changed quite a bit from the original plan, which involved a cliffhanger in which Sydney must choose between saving Vaughn or saving Jack. Frankly, I think that would be a terrific choice, but the timing’s not quite right for it now. After this season (if we discount this episode), I’d hope that many of us would take into account Vaughn’s behavior and think Sydney a total chump if the decision weren’t a forgone conclusion. Let’s allow Vaughn to raise his worthiness quotient and then have Sydney face that decision (of course, now it looks like both her men might have to work on their worthiness quotients, huh?). I wonder if the hasty rewrite accounts for some of the lapses in realism? I know this is escapist, but there is such a thing as verisimilitude, after all! I hope this is a direction that they planned to take the series and not a spur-of-the-moment fix. Perhaps that’s also why we never seemed to really get at the resurrection part of “Resurrection.”
The last episode of the season . . . As usual, it’s a sad moment. At least I still have season 1 commentary to fill out--for once I’m happy that I tend to procrastinate! For S/V fans, I’m sure it’s a moment of relief. For family fans, it’s a moment to look anxiously toward the future, hoping that Sydney’s past her run-off-without-waiting-for-an-explanation days. I, for one, am hoping to hear the explanation. It should be very illuminating! And I’m hoping for a season that focuses more on Jack and less on Vaughn--a far more complex and interesting character played by (no offense) an exceptional actor. Sydney keeps prying--it’s time for her to accept the responsibility which goes along with that and either become a true partner with her father or declare her independence from him.
Discuss . . .
[Holding some questions for Spy dad . . .]
Why do you think Jack pushed Vaughn toward “closure”? Was it a) his own personal need to remove Lauren from the picture, b) Vaughn’s relationship with Sydney was being poisoned by his feelings regarding Lauren c) a mixture of both of these, or d) he really is trying to work out his own issues through Vaughn?
Do you think if Vaughn had put Lauren through an acid bath, it would have made him feel any better? Would that have been better or worse than killing her?
Do you think that with what happened, Vaughn has achieved “closure”? Do you think that his basic issues have been addressed or not? What are the basic issues, anyway, and how have they been addressed or not?
Sydney blamed Lauren for what happened to Vaughn and not Jack for inciting him to go after her. Did this surprise you?
What do you make of Lauren? Why did she join the Covenant? Did she discover documents concerning herself and Sydney as I’ve suggested? If not, why else? Did you believe her story about falling in love with Vaughn (as I keep hearing, who wouldn’t--that sound you hear is my suppressed snicker)?
Do you think that Jack knew that Sydney was alive all along--or not? When do you think he found out? How involved (if at all) do you think he was in her undercover mission with the Covenant? Do you think he helped circumvent her memory wipe? If so, was it for the CIA or for Sydney’s well-being? Do you believe that he was really imprisoned, or was that a hoax?
Do you think that Katya has been posing as Irina via IM all along? That Irina never met Sydney during the time when she was Julia Thorne? Do you believe that Irina is still alive? What do you think has happened to her?
Do you expect Sydney to wait for Jack to explain the document she discovered in Wittenburg? In other words, how much has she changed since season 1--is she still willing to take things at face value, or does she now want to look behind the actions for the motivations? Has her basic trust for her father grown? Can she still drop it easily, or is that more difficult for her now? (This is a test of the Sydney Bristow trust system . . .)
Do you think that Jack chose his role as head of SAB 47, or was he forced into it? Do you think he’s basically good or evil?
Do you think Jack’s in the Covenant, or even its head? If so, please explain--thoroughly.
Do you think that Jack knew about Nadia all along? Do you think he knew where she was? If so, why do you think he left her languishing at the orphanage? Do you think if this were true it would help explain his estrangement with Sydney?
Next:
The long, long wait . . . Have a great summer & fall! Don’t forget us--stop by and visit! We’ll be here.
Modifications:
1. Random thought added regarding Lot 47/45.
That's so sad...But there'll still be the Season Recap column, won't there? At least something else to look forward to.
