S1 E13 – The Box: Part 2

When this episode begins SD-6 is still in the middle of being invaded by Mckenas Cole, an old SD-6 agent, and his men.  Jack had told Sydney that if they are able to get to the vault and open it, the entire lower levels will be demolished since the fail safe was activated.  There is a system in place where if the vault is opened the C4 that is located throughout the building will go off.  The big problem is that while Sydney was scrambling the vaults combination, Cole’s men heard something, so Jack turned himself in to let her continue.  So she is on her own.  When Jack gets tied up with the other hostages, Dixon tells him that he thinks he will be able to get to his PDA and send Langley a distress email.  Jack tries to talk him out of it, but Dixon does it anyway.  Meanwhile Jack has left Sydney a map showing her where all the C4 charges are located and instructs her to disarm them as soon as she can.

At the CIA offices, Weiss comes into Vaughn’s office telling him about the email that Dixon sent. Vaughn becomes immediately concerned.   He takes it to Devlin, but Haladki wants to put in his two cents.  He is ordered to wait and do nothing until they can confirm that an attack on SD-6 really is taking place.  But we do find out that Vaughn hasn’t had such a great day.  Apparently his actions in Dr. Barnett’s office and throwing Haladki against the wall, has had him removed as Sydney’s handler.  But Vaughn is not going to stand for it.  He goes to his locker and gets his gun, and tells Weiss that if he isn’t back in a couple hours, then he’s probably dead.  That statement alone tells me that to make sure that Sydney is safe, he is about to risk not only his job, but also his life. 

Sydney has gotten to the first location of the C4 and has managed to remove the cover, but as she looks at the C4 and is trying to figure out how she will take care of it, she hears some noise and has to go take care of it. She disables the agent but takes his radio so she can hear what is going on. But Vaughn has found his way into the SD-6 garage and sees the hole in the wall behind the air conditioning truck that Cole and his men arrived in.  So we get to see Vaughn’s skills as an agent kick in for the first time, which is awesome.  He completely dominated the fight with the driver / lookout. Then he killed the dude, I loved seeing him be able to have of the fight scenes.  And I have to say that I love bad ass agent Vaughn.   Once inside SD-6 and has confirmation of the attack, he makes a call to Weiss but Haladki picks it up.  They argue and Vaughn tells him that they need to get down there, that he has the confirmation he wanted.  Although Haladki just sits on the info and does nothing.

On her way back to the room with the C4, she is about to go thru a door when she sees it start to open, so she positions herself just right and when the person walks thru the door she is able to grab them and throw them across the room.  She positions herself to possibly shoot when they get up, then they do get up and you see that it is Vaughn.  Just that short moment when both of them have guns aimed at each other is classic.  She finds out that Dixon contacted the CIA and they forwarded the message to Vaughn since he was her handler.  So he came down there to help.  They get to the C4 and work together to try and figure out how to deactivate it.  For me this was a great moment seeing them actually working together not just talking about missions, or him watching her over satellite and giving her instructions, but actually being there together and working side by side.  I love the way that they are able to communicate with each other.  They know it’s a serious situation, and they are treating it as such.  But they also are able to add little bits of humor here and there.  

Once they remove the pin, they are caught by the woman working with Cole. She takes them into a room and is telling them to put the hand ties on, but Vaughn and Sydney give each other some knowing looks and end up throwing the tie in her face and throwing her off guard, taking her gun and then tie her up.  She explains that she is with British intelligence working undercover to figure out who the Man is.  She doesn’t know exactly what they are after, but it has something to do with Rambaldi.  She tells them that when they find her, she will tell them that there is only one of them.  But they still tie her up and then move on.  They get out into the hallway and decide that they need to split up to be able to deactivate the other two in time.  She tells him the best way to open the covers, and they decide to meet back in the storage room where they first met up.  Before Sydney goes on her way, she tells him, afterwards, maybe we can go to that hockey game.  He smiles and tells her maybe.   I think that it is during this episode where the tension starts to really build.  It’s taken a few months of getting to know each other, but they both want to be able to spend more time together. 

Vaughn is able to disarm his C4, but Sydney had to leave hers when she heard some noises.  Although the women did keep her promise that she would say that there was only one of them.   When Cole finds out that his men are being killed and beaten up, he gets over the intercom and calls out to whoever is beating up his men, that if they aren’t in front of him within the next 20 seconds he would start killing her friends, starting with Jack Bristow.  We see Vaughn listening to that and he is scared, and he starts running to find her.  He ends up in the room where Jack had labeled all of the wires for which security camera they were attached to.  Vaughn watches as Sydney turns herself in.  He makes a call to the CIA where he is able to reach Weiss this time.  Weiss is able to gather a team and get ready to go down to SD-6 and help as needed.  

Sydney is able to throw off their captors with the help from Marshall.  Sydney and Cole fight it out in the vault room, but he knocks Sydney out and enters the vault, and gets the item that he came for. Luckily Jack was able to get to Sloane and cut off his finger to deactivate the fail safe since the last of the C4 hadn’t been deactivated.   Sydney is able to get up a few moments later and follows after him.  Cole gets into his getaway van, with his dead accomplices. And starts to drive away, but luckily Vaughn, Weiss and their team are there to stop him.  He tries to escape thru the back of the van only to find Sydney, who is pissed about being beaten up, so she punches him a few times and then knocks him out with a kick to the head.  Vaughn rushes over to her, first thing he does is to take her back and lead her away and ask how she is and what’s going on downstairs in SD-6.  She says that they have everything taken care of and that they should go.  Vaughn tells her that SD-6 will never know that they were there. Weiss bring them what Cole had stolen from the vault. They aren’t sure what it is, but Vaughn tells her that they know have it instead of them and it is because of her.  She resists this comment, but he insists that without her, it would be one more thing that SD-6 or another terrorist would have and not the CIA.  He tells her that hockey can wait, but what she is doing to take down SD-6 can’t.

When Sydney gets back into SD-6 everyone is trying to comfort each other, she talks with many people including Sloane.  Jack asks her if she has thought anymore about the decision that she made earlier that morning, and what she told Sloane.  She told him that she told Sloane that she would see him in the morning.  She can see that even though she has other wants and desires for her life right now, she has things that she has to take care of.

• Items that I found noteworthy… 
• Will was given a key, he followed the clues to the key and opened a locker that contained and autopsy report.  He is continuing to pursue the SD-6 story.  He knows that it could be dangerous for him, but he feels like he has to help these people that can’t help themselves right now.