ALIAS – EPISODE 5 – SYDNEY
OUT OF THE BOX
“You’re going to be a great Mom.”

There are times when I’m not sure the ‘reminder’ of the previous week and the new week begin. However, there was a scene with Syd and Renee talking on the phone, which seemed to segue into the U.S. Army Storage Depot in Frankfurt Germany. We see a shadowy masked figure fire at a guard and he drops. The figure breaks into the depot and returns with something clutched in his/her hand. Another finds the fallen guard and the alert is sounded. Our masked figure shoots the second guard and disappears into the night after removing the ski mask. It is Renie Rienne.

The scene switches to L.A. where Sydney is doing some exercising. Rachel enters and watches for a moment.

“You must be excited.”
“Yeah, when I’m not terrified.”

Sydney gets up with her help and says she is scared too about being a single Mom. Rachel assures her she’ll be amazing. Sydney tells her that she can stay as long as she wants…to keep each other company.

Sloane and Jack meet. Jack tells Sloane that he’s asked for Sloane to be a member of the APO team. He knows that Sloane’s reason to be a member is Nadia. He’s looking for a cure for her. If he is at APO, he will be able to get access to CIA files. He will assist Jack, who is the Director now, by giving him access to all of his connections. Sloane thanks him and wonders why it’s taking so long. Jack says there is one person blocking the re-appointment.

Meanwhile in Marseilles, Renie opens the box and plunges a needle into the man’s chest. He awakens. At the same time, Dixon is telling Jack that in the raid, the masked intruder did not go for weapons, but instead went after a 100 cc’s supply of atropine ZX. The medicine was designed as a high-powered stimulator. Tom Grace is talking to a pal in Frankfurt, who works at the depot. He sends Tom the footage from outside the depot of the robber. They look at footage from the outside of the depot and see the intruder was Renie Rienne.

“We don’t know she’s the one who took the body,” says Sydney, but Jack decides to send Sydney, who has been in contact with Renie, to Marseilles where she is.

Sydney tells Jack, Renie still doesn’t trust her. Vaughn however did trust her. She is concerned that they will burn her as an ally.

At the gun range, Jack watches as Tom is firing at a target. His marksmanship is impeccable.

Tom explains, “My mother always said if somebody was worth shooting once, they are worth shooting twice.”

“I’m sorry I never met her,” responds Jack. “She sounds like my kind of woman.”

He tells Tom he is sending him to Marseilles with Sydney to be her protector. “That fact is off the books,” indicating he does not want Tom to tell Sydney what Jack said.

Jack sends Tom Grace with Sydney to be her back up and protector. (After all, she is pregnant.) When they arrive, Sydney tries to reach Renie. She notes there are cameras and sensors placed around the warehouse.

They talk for a moment, then Renie cuts off the conversation. Aha, she’s behind Grace with a gun at his back and the cell phone in the other. Tom asks her who is in the window above them. Renie gasps and runs with the APO pair behind her. Inside, they find the older man, who attacks Renie. Tom pulls his gun, but she tells him its okay it’s her Papa. After all, it’s been twenty-three years since he’s seen her.

The man asks what year it is. Two thousand six is the answer. He is Luc Garceau, Renie’s father. He tells her that he didn’t tell them where she was. She wonders if the man who kidnapped him, was Dr. Aldo Desantis. Tom notices he is bleeding from his ears and eyes. Renie rushes to him, as he collapses.

Back in LA, Keach, the man hired by Dean to contact Sloane, accosts him outside the hospital where Nadia is being kept. He is sent to a waiting car and in the back seat, guess who...yeah, we all know who, don’t we…Gordon Dean. He tells Sloane there is a Senator Lewis who is the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. She is blocking his re-appointment to APO and he has to persuade her to allow him to return.

Jack and the others at APO discuss Luc. Tom tells them about the box and the man. They now know the man responsible for putting Luc away is Dr. Aldo Desantis. Files were first in Africa. Rachel says she moved them to San Francisco at Dean’s order.

Sydney wants to move Luc to a safe house where he can receive medical treatment. Tom heads to the elevator to get the van. Suddenly the elevator stops and the lights go out. An alarm sounds and Renie and Sydney see the warehouse is about to be invaded by mercenaries. Tom leaves the elevator and sees gunmen entering the building. He tells Sydney and Renie to go to a safe room with Renie’s father. The phone rings and Sydney hears they have twenty minutes to give up Luc.

Rachel and Marshall hook up with ‘war games’ about their method of hacking into the Pentagon’s files. Rachel’s easy access impresses Marshall. They have to find the archived Desantis files that were sent to San Francisco. They now know they are in a San Francisco bank. Rachel, Marshall, and Dixon are tasked by Jack to get those files. Marshall has built a spider-like robot with a tiny motor and a camera that will copy the files without their leaving the vault.

They enter the bank and Dixon, being the ‘head-man’ tells the manager he wants his package to be kept in the upscale vault. Rachel makes a phone call to Dixon’s wife and as she does Marshall from outside the bank accesses the inside of the vault to see where the files are being kept.

As soon as Dixon and the manager leave, Marshall opens the box Dixon left to let “Charlotte” out to do the job. It does look like a spider, but is so much more. We watch as Charlotte makes her way over to the cabinet where file 2187 is kept. Marshall instructs it to film the box and it does, beginning to photograph everything, which is sent back to the van.

Back in the warehouse safe room in Marseilles, Renie tells Sydney her story. In a flashback: Her father got some money for participating in clinical trials, but he disappeared, finally landing in Geneva. We see Luc telling his daughter to stay in the closet and say nothing. She is not to come out for any reason. The little Renie see’s two men capture her father and inject him with something. They take him away unconscious.

Sydney now understands what drives Renie…revenge.

Meanwhile Tom has overpowered a guard, removed his clothes, and taken his place with the mercenaries. He places a bomb on the tire of the gas truck. He is accosted because he doesn’t speak French and manages to get away before the truck explodes. Inside the room, Luc screams they are coming for him. Tom and Renie go to engage the invaders, leaving Sydney to be with Luc.

Back in Washington D.C., we see Senator Lewis watching her daughter ice-skating. Sloane approaches and comments on her daughter’s skating ability. Lewis thanks him but also says she is not going to allow him back into the CIA. He takes out an envelope from his inside coat pocket. They are pictures of her daughter asleep in her bedroom. He infers that something awful could happen.

In Marseilles, the mercenaries are suddenly gone. Renie notices Tom is hurt and applies a bandage to his arm. Tom takes out a tracking device he found on the man he killed inside the warehouse. He shows them the device. The tracker zooms in on the box. There is a green light flashing and they know the tracker was activated when Renie opened the box.

Dixon and Jack talk about Sloane’s security clearance granted by Senator Diane Lewis’ withdrawal of her objection to his return.

“Are you certain this is the right course of action,” asks Dixon.

Then Dixon understands that Jack’s wanting Sloane back is a means of keeping an eye on him. Dixon will most certainly be watching him also.

Marshall and Rachel talk about the man in the box. They are pouring over the files they retrieved of Desantis notes. They check the medical records and discover the EEG is not the same. That means the man in the box was put in there after the DSR had him.

In Marseilles, Tom and Sydney discover something is wrong in the room. There is some sort of light in a box blinking. Tom and Renie run out to fight the raiders, leaving Sydney alone with him. Luc tells her to give him to them that the beacon is leading the mercenaries to him.

“What beacon,” demands Sydney. She knows if he was the man in the box, he wouldn’t have known about it. He fumbles the answer. Then on questioning further by Sydney, he pulls a gun. There is confrontation. Renie thinks Luc is her father. She pulls on gun on Grace; Luc holds a gun on Sydney. Sydney tells Renie that Luc is not her father. Suddenly there is the sound of a helicopter near by. There is an explosion and part of the wall collapses. Firing erupts as a mercenary shoots at them from the door of the helicopter. He throws a belt to Luc, who, after putting it on, escapes.

After talking to APO, Sydney tells Renie everything APO knows, including the fact that a private plane left for North Korea. Renie finally tells Sydney she was wrong and now trusts her.

In Kaesong, North Korea, Luc, in a hospital bed, is visited by Gordon Dean. He is now been identified as Dr. Desantis. Luc tells Dean the girl, meaning Renie, has connections to the CIA. Dean assures him that he will have inside information soon.

Sloane arrives at APO where Jack waits for him at the end of the hall.


REMARKS
“She sounds like my kind of woman.” Says Jack…and we all say, of course, look whom he’s married to…still.

The costume top Renie wore over her black tee the entire time she was in the warehouse was reminiscent of a cut off hospital gown. The pattern seemed all too familiar.

I don’t know about you, but I did have some trouble hearing the dialogue over the music. Maybe I’m such a techno idiot I didn’t know what to do to fix it. Ah well…

I was very impressed with the design of Charlotte that the production staff put together, but since I’m no technical genius, I suppose its passé these days. Still very effective and another great Marshall gizmo.


DISCUSS:

Was little Renie the subject of the clinical trials…not her father? It’s very possible her father decided it was not a good idea for her to continue. What do you think?

If she is supposed to be an assassin, whom did she work for…the French? Why did she kill the three CIA men and the ambassador?

What were the clinical trials about? Care to guess?

Do you think Jack suspects Sloane of blackmailing the Senator in order to get back into APO?

What will Sydney do or say when she finds Sloane is back?