S1 E8 – Time Will Tell

After leaving class one day, Sydney realizes that she is being followed by someone and attacks him in a garage.  Sloane then tells her that security section assigned a tracker to her and all other SD-6 agents as they stepping up security.  Sydney and her father meet together in the conference room with a bug killer.  She asks him if she should be worried.  He tells her that an agent Dryer is on his way and she will need to prepare to take an advanced lie detector test, and to have Vaughn prep her for it.  Jack is seriously concerned, but they aren’t able to finish their conversation.

While Sydney is at home talking with Will about assorted things, including how there is an inquiry at the bank and everyone will get to take a lie detector test, she is playing with her engagement ring, and mentions to Will that she still wears it. I think she is starting to think that it is time to remove it though. Will is there to ask her for a quote for the story that he promised not to write and he doesn’t want to do it, but his boss is making him, but after she mentioned her ring, he decides against it. While they are talking Sydney gets a call from Joeys Pizza.  It’s time to go meet Vaughn and prepare for the advanced version of the lie detector.

When we see Sydney, she is hooked up all over to this machine.  She has electrodes all over her head, and has her chest strapped to more cords, as well as her hand. Vaughn asks the first question, “Have you ever had any unauthorized contact with any members of any intelligence agency besides SD-6?” She says “no”, and a machine starts beeping and you see the number 46 come up on the monitor and then go to 51. Vaughn tells her that she needs to stay under 30. He then tells her what the machine does, “This test measures the blood flow to the emotional part of your brain. Now if you want to divert the blood, you have to engage the reasoning sector— you’re reacting emotionally“(I have to quote it, because if I try and paraphrase, I will get it wrong.) She defends herself telling him that she is trying, that she can’t just flip a switch. He tells her that she has to split her focus, and she says that’s her problem, she’s split her focus so much already with school, CIA, SD-6, friends, and keeping up the lies essentially.  He reassures her that he knows she can do it, she has to.  He asks the question again, and the number reads 33 then 28. He tells her better, and then he takes a deep breath. It seems like it could be from the stress placed on Sydney and he feels it too, until you hear the next question. “Are you romantically interested in anyone?” (I told you that he has officially fallen for her.)  She looks at him and doesn’t want to answer, I love the way that he stays serious and tells her, could be a question.  She then takes the deep breath, and tells him no, I’m not. The machine starts beeping and shows 56, he looks at it and tells her interesting.  She tells him to ask it again.  He says no, we have our answer right here, good moving on.  Her stare at the machine is classic.  She thinks for a minute and then realizes and tells Vaughn that if the test was for real, she would be dead by now.  He looks down, and tells her, that they are just getting started, she’ll be okay.   

Okay, I have to go off the usual beaten path and actually talk about Sydney’s mission here.  I think that this was an important mission because of what she learned from the clock maker. So here goes nothing. On Sydney’s mission to get the clock repaired. When she approaches the repair man who is supposedly a descendant of the original clock maker for Rambaldi, he is hesitant to let her in until she mentions Rambaldi’s name. she sees the Rambaldi symbol for the first time <O>, and the clock repairman explains what it meant during the time of Rambaldi, as well as what it means now. He also tells her about his great great great (I’m not sure how many greats he went back) grandfather refusing to build any other clocks and then finally agreed to do so for Rambaldi, as Rambaldi had promised a very long life, even predicting the day that he would die.  Sydney asked him if Rambaldi was correct, and he is hesitating to tell her, but them says of course. As he is explaining the designs that Rambaldi had built into the clock, she asks him about the date on the clock, he says, “It must have meant something to Rambaldi, the clock was built from one of his designs, he never did tell me what it was.”  Sydney is taken aback, giving him an odd look, and asks him what he just said. (As I was sitting on my couch, this was the point that I thought, wait a minute what genre does this series fit under? I was hooked on Science Fiction, how did that happen?) He tries to recover by saying something about his mother.  He finishes the repairs and tells her that it is incomplete because a piece is missing. She asks if it will not work, he tells her that it will tell time. She then asks him what Rambaldi was working on.  He just tells her that the clock is fixed, and now it is over.  He stands up, and is shot by one of the snipers that is working with Anna Espinosa, that we’ve been seeing set up the shot to kill Sydney.  Sydney runs and ends up escaping from Anna just in time.

Later when Sydney is home Francie apologizes for spilling some lemonade on Sydney’s mother’s books from Jack.  Sydney tells her that it isn’t a big deal, and Sydney ends up reading that book by candle light and sees some kind of code hidden, she looks at it closer and there are multiple entries on the sides of the book written in Cyrillic letters.  The next day when she is practicing the lie detector with Vaughn, he asks if she is a double agent, she says no but my father is.  Vaughn makes a joke out of it, but she tells him to listen to her.  That 20 years ago her father would buy these books for her mother from a shop in Prague. And she found the codes in those books and they matched the style that the CIA knew the KGB used during that time.  Vaughn takes her seriously and tells her that they will deal with it later, and that he wants to see the books.  But right now her life still depends on her being able to pass this test and they need to focus. I think that even though he is concerned about what she is feeling right now about her father, he is more concerned with making sure that she is going to come out alive. 

After the mission briefing, Sydney is told to go down to psych and see agent Dryer. She seemed very calm and relaxed but, had to take a few extra moments before she answered if she was a double agent or not.  Then she goes and meets Vaughn and the blood mobile to get her counter mission.  While he is explaining what she is supposed to do, she sits in a guarded position on the counter and play with her engagement ring. I think that she is at a spot where she is conflicted about not wanting to move on too quickly after Danny, but also starting to have feelings for Vaughn.  But she is also worried about the test, and if she passed or not, it took her 20 minutes to shake her tracker so she could meet with him.  Vaughn is also worried about her, especially after hearing about her tracker.  He tells her that they do have a plan in place if she needs it to go into protection.  She tells him that she won’t be going into protection, she can’t live in hiding.   

On the mission, Dixon and Sydney find a cave of sorts in the desert of Argentina.  When Sydney goes in she finds Rambaldi’s journals, she is able to get part of the pages photographed for the CIA. But unfortunately while down the cave, Anna appears and they fight in the cave.  Sydney is shot, but is wearing a vest. She climbs the ladder and has another fight with Anna on the ladder. Sydney actually is pushed off of the ladder and falls down the hole leading to the cave. 

•  Items that I found noteworthy… 
• When Sydney shuts the door on Anna in the engineering lab, she kisses the glass door for Anna. 
• Eloise Kurtz worked for SD-6. Jack and Sloane talk about how Sloane terminated her, and how if Will doesn’t give up the story Jack will kill him himself. 
• Jack changes the manifest on the flight he had put Sydney and Danny on. So when researched Kate Jones was no longer on the flight with Danny.
• Will gets a call about Eloise’s car and goes to pick it up, he finds a flower pin inside the car, but after hearing screeching noises when the flower was next to his phone he takes it to a friend who tells him that it is a government listening device, most likely from intelligence. 
• Dryer tells Sloane that he believes that Sydney is the mole.