S1 E12 – The Box: Part 1

When returning home from the CIA Sydney is understandably upset over hearing that her mother was sent to the US to fall in love with a ranking CIA officer to gather Intel for the CIA.  She pulls out her box of memories, and end up throwing some of the items into the fire.  Next we see her talking with Vaughn, and I love what she says here, so I am placing in the exact quote. “There’s something that happens when you discover the truth about someone, I know a little about this. The truth changes everything.  There’s this woman, a personality, like a colleague I’ve put together, from the photographs, the few memories I have, the scrapes of stories I’ve heard, the clothes of hers I’ve got, the books. None of its real, she wasn’t that woman at all; she was a horrible person, who killed your father.  Vaughn, I just wanted to say, that I’m so sorry!”  Vaughn is watching her the whole time very stoically, letting her get everything out without interruptions. You can see how empathetic he is, he knows that this is not easy for her.  But when she finishes and without saying a word, he just goes over to her and takes her in his arms and holds her in a genuine hug.  Even though it isn’t a romantic hug in any way, it still moves them forward.  You can see how much pain they are each in essentially over each other’s pain.  It is a great moment between the two of them.

We miss some of their conversation because the scene moves over to SD-6 being broken into by some other bad guys.  But we quickly go back to Sydney and Vaughn.  But when we get to them, Sydney is telling Vaughn that she doesn’t want to be a spy any more.  She wants someone in her life to be real.  He tells her that he is real they are real.  But she reminds them of where they are, how it can be real if they have to hide in a storage unit to be near each other.  They talk about witness protection, but Sydney doesn’t want to hide.  He tells her that Sloane would have her killed, and she tells him that she doesn’t think that he would.  She stands up and is about to leave, when she turns around and asks him if he likes hockey, the Kings, he tells her yes, but how did you know.  She noticed the pen in his briefcase.  She takes a moment but then with determination tells him that the Kings are playing the Islanders next week and that they should go together.  His first impulse is to smile, and it’s a great smile, but then his faces turns down as he tells her that they can’t do that, she can’t leave.  I think this was a big turning point for Sydney, asking Vaughn to go out with her.  Even if it’s just as friends, it’s a huge step in the process of her moving on.  -  Now this is actually the last time that we see them together in the episode so hopefully I can keep this episode breakdown pretty short.

On their way into SD-6 Jack catches up with Sydney ad tells her that she can’t quit, even if Sloane doesn’t have her killed, the people he reports to will go after her, Sloane, and all of her friends.  SD-6 is under attack, Jack and Sydney were in the elevator when the rest of the building was gassed so they were able to get away, but everyone is down at SD-6.

Back at the CIA office, Vaughn is contemplative.  Weiss walks in and knows that something is up, after getting denied on the pizza offer, he walks over to Vaughn’s desk and leans in, waiting. Vaughn breaks down and tells him that Sydney wants to quit SD-6, even though she knows that she can’t.  Then he starts to talk about his father to Weiss.  They are interrupted when another agent that they obviously don’t like comes in and tells him that it’s no secret in the office that Sydney’s mom killed his dad, and that he has to go see the office psychiatrist, Dr. Barnett.

Even though Jack and Sydney started off this episode on a rough patch, she would’ve liked to have known the truth about her mother sooner, rather than idolizing her all this time.  The two of them trying to save SD-6 together actually brings them closer.  They have some good moments together in this episode.

When Vaughn meets with Dr. Barnett, he insists that he doesn’t need crisis management for the situation at hand.  He admits that it isn’t ideal that his asset’s mother killed his father, but it happened over 20 years ago, it’s emotional, but not a crisis.  But she really wants to talk about is the relationship between Sydney and himself.  She asks how often they meet, and they meet often, sometimes 3-4 times a week.  She asks if they only meet about operations, he goes on to tell her that they have met on other occasions when Sydney wanted someone to talk to about SD-6 or about her father before she knew that he wasn’t the KGB operative.  She asks if they have a friendship, and he tells her that she needs someone to talk to and he acknowledges that he is the only person that she can confide in.  She proceeds to ask if their relationship falls under the guidelines of agent and handler.  He gets a little defensive, as you would expect.  He has tried very hard to keep his feeling at bay knowing that because of this he can’t be involved with her.  But she has been watching his work since he sent the extraction team to Tuscany and it’s mostly good, but wonders if he actually bought a Christmas present for Sydney.  He tells her that he didn’t know it was against the rules to engage in such a well-known tradition as exchanging gifts amongst co –workers for Christmas.  She asked what the gift was, and he asked who has been feeding her this information.  His defenses are up and he will defend his relationship with Sydney to the end at this point.  He also ends the conversation. 

We do get to see another big moment for Vaughn.  From what we have seen so far, he follows the rules and is a company man who follows the rules.  But he gets defensive about Sydney.  So when he sees Haladki, the co-worker who reported him to Dr. Barnett, he gets very upset; even getting physical with him, telling him that he needs to mind his own business.  Haladki tells him that he is too emotionally involved where Sydney is concerned. We see Vaughn fight dirty for the first time and tell Haladki he has no idea what an emotional connection with a woman even is.  Weiss has to pull Vaughn off of Haladki.  It is obvious now that Vaughn is willing to risk anything for her.

• Items that I found noteworthy… 
• The first mention of The Man 
• Will finds more evidence on SD-6, he doesn’t want to work on this, he knows that it is bad news after learning that one man was set up and sent to jail over the death of his wife.  It was ruled a suicide, but they know that SD-6 actually caused the death.  Their daughter comes to him after someone posing as him tells her to come and meet him.  She begs him to help her dad.