S2 E11 – A Higher Echelon

Sydney is at Francie’s restaurant and Francie has been watching her, and something about Sydney made her ask what she was thinking, and Sydney flat out tells her, “I have a crush on a guy at work.”  When Francie prompts her about whom he is, Sydney goes on. “Someone in my department, we’ve worked together for about a year now.”  Francie is happy to hear that Sydney is finally moving on and asks what his name is. At this Sydney gets a huge smile on her face and tells her, “Michael… And He’s… I don’t know how to describe him. He’s smart and he’s funny…. He’s so cute.” Francie does want clarification as to whether he is hot cute or goofy cute and Sydney looks at her and tells her hot cute.  Can I say finally a full admission from Sydney as well?  We’ve known that she likes him, but to hear her say it, well it is just great and about time.  Francie wonders why she hasn’t met the guy yet, and Sydney admits that he has a girlfriend, but that it is irrelevant because the bank has a policy against co-workers dating.  At this Francie tells her for the millionth time that she could quit. And they argue for a moment, but Francie finally tells her that she hasn’t heard Sydney talk like that in forever and that nobody works harder than Sydney does, and tells her that maybe she and Michael are destined, and maybe he can quit.

Back at the Rotunda Sydney gets there and can see that something is wrong, and after asking about it, Vaughn tells her that Marshall was abducted.  The CIA extraction team was about to go in for Marshall when they saw another team take him instead.  They have confirmed that it was associates of Couvet.  Jack explained to Sydney that the CIA has teams searching for him in LA and in London, but Sloane didn’t seem overly concerned, he changed Marshall’s access codes and he has requested a replacement for OP tech.  The biggest problem is that Marshall had emailed the information that he retrieved in London to SD-6.  Vaughn gives Sydney her counter mission for Vietnam and then tells her that they will find Marshall.

After being at SD-6 and learning that he is the number one suspect in Emily’s murder and finding out that his clearance has been revoked Jack goes back to the Rotunda and talks to Vaughn.  He tells him about Arianna Kane the agent in charge of the investigation and how she is now on a witch hunt to prove that he killed Emily.  And since he was away on CIA business when the events of her death took place and SD-6 does not have the documents for those missions they need to create more solid proof that he was doing what he told SD-6 he was doing.  Jack also informs Vaughn that while he didn’t kill Emily, he does have secrets and the last thing he and Sydney can afford is someone discovering that Jack’s loyalty doesn’t belong to SD-6.  While Jack is speaking you can see that since it affects Sydney, he is going to do everything that he can to help Jack.   In fact it’s kind of amazing all of the things that they do to prove that he was in those locations. 

While in Vietnam Sydney was unable to perform her counter mission, so she explains to Vaughn that SD-6 has everything that they need to gain access to Echelon, and that they could be on by midnight the next night.   She tells Vaughn how happy Sloane was when they returned, and it makes both of them sick.  Then she tells him that what made it worse for her was Sloane saying that he was praying for Marshall when she knows what his level of concern really is.  Then poor Vaughn has to tell her the bad news about the team that went to search for Marshall, how they reached a facility that had been abandoned and it had a booby trap with four pounds of C-4, they didn’t make it back.  Because of the lost CIA men, the director has ordered the stop of all searches for Marshall.  Vaughn looks so sorry to have to tell Sydney this.  It definitely can’t be easy always being the person to have to tell her the bad news.  But I guess if you think about it, I think Sydney would prefer to hear it from him rather than anyone else.  She at least feels like she can take comfort with Vaughn when he does deliver the bad news.

Francie and Will are chatting about how much Sydney has been working and Francie is annoyed, Will tells her that Sydney loves what she does, and it’s important to her so they need to lay off her about quitting.  Then Francie tells him that Sydney mentioned a new guy and that Will should’ve heard her talking about him and that she sounded so happy.  At this you can see that Will knows exactly what Francie is going to say, and he knew it was coming, but he still looks disappointed.  But Will does go digging for more information.  He finds out that it is a guy named Michael, and that they aren’t dating, but Sydney is pining after him.  Then before any more questions could be asked Francie tells him that the mailman left him a note, he has a package at the post office.

Will makes his way to the post office and Vaughn is waiting in the back room for him.  Vaughn tells him that he did well on the test, and Will jokes that it’s good to know he’s not a sociopath, so Vaughn keeps up the joke and tells him that he didn’t say that, but he does have a job.  I like the scenes between the two of them.  Seeing Vaughn transition into being Will’s handler of sorts as well.  But even though they both have feelings for Sydney, they still act like they are friends and I think that they do consider each other friends honestly.  They go into more detail about the new job and what Will would be doing, then Vaughn tells him welcome to the CIA.  Before they can start to say goodbye, Will speaks up and tells Vaughn, “Listen, Obviously you’re a good guy, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this job, and what I’m going to say is inappropriate.”  There is a good pause here for Will to get ready to tell Vaughn what he’s going to say, and Vaughn is a little anxious to hear it, because I can guess that he is smart enough to know that if Will is going to say something inappropriate to him, it will be about Sydney. “Sydney cares about you, and what you guys have or don’t have means a great deal to her. I want to make sure that you respect that.”   Nothing more is said, but Will gives him that look of, if you hurt her, I will kill you.  Vaughn is happy to have confirmation about how Sydney feels, and having Will essentially give him permission to go after it, means a lot to him.

Marshall was being held in a building in Mexico City.  He agreed to rebuild what he sent to SD-6 for Suit and Glasses man, but sent a signal into SD-6 while building it.  It turns out that Marshall worked out a way into fooling them; he programmed a ping pong game for them instead.  Luckily Sydney arrived just in time to save him.

The CIA was running into problems with trying to shut down the access points for Echelon and find the terminal that SD-6 would be going in through, but Irina convinced them to let her have access to the CIA network and she was able to stop SD-6 right in the nick of time. 

Arianna Kane found brain matter inside one of Jacks SD-6 weapons, and upon further investigation it belonged to Steven Haladki, the CIA agent that Jack killed who was working for Khasinau and was an ass to Vaughn.  Arianna Kane set up a meeting with Jack to get his cell’s SIM card from his phone to confirm his alibi with cell towers, and to ask about Haladki.  Vaughn is monitoring the meeting from a nearby van.  When Jack is asked about Haladki Vaughn is a little surprised to hear the news that Jack had killed him.  I think that Jack knew he would have to answer some questions when he got back to the van as well, so he told Arianna why he killed Haladki and made sure that Vaughn would make sense of what he was hearing.  After a switch of phones Jack hands her a SIM card that has the correct locations on it, but has to make a quick getaway when he sees that the ink was still wet on the SIM card.  Vaughn and Jack and a very awkward ride back to the command center, they didn’t talk about Haladki, but they were both thinking about him.  I think Vaughn knew that he had to kill Haladki to get the information about their Taipei trip, and since that involved Sydney, Vaughn won’t do anything, but he isn’t happy about it. 

After all of this other drama was figured out Sydney and Vaughn meet back up at their storage unit.  Sydney tells him about Marshall actually ending up saving her life when they had to jump out of a window in Mexico City, and that her repayment was to bring him back to SD-6.  Vaughn reminds her that bringing Marshall into the CIA wasn’t needed any longer, she understands but feels bad that Marshall has no idea who he is really working for.  Sydney asks Vaughn for confirmation that it won’t always be like this, and he tells her that it will end.  When Sydney asks him that, I think she is more asking if they will ever have a chance to be together, and his reassuring her that it will end is him telling her that one day, they will finally be able to be together.