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Alias
A Dark Turn
original air-date: 03-02-03

Be Kind, Rewind: A bunch of people got incinerated when Sloane used the Rambaldi device to try to kill Kabir's ex-wife and Arvin finally got his hands on a missing piece of the manuscript. And after much pleading on Vaughn's part, Dixon saved Sydney from Kabir's clutches and joined up with the CIA.

If anyone out there was wondering why Lena Olin and Victor Garber got nominated for Emmys for their work playing Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko, then all they would need to do is watch this episode. "A Dark Turn" is a great showcase of both actors' talents and proves that while the focus of the show is usually on these two characters' super-spy offspring, Spy Mommy and Daddy's antics are sometimes more fun to watch than Sydney's.

In the opening scene, an elevator carrying three men plummets to the ground floor. The men are dead, but Mr. Sark comes along to relieve one of them of his wallet (after all, he won't need it in the afterlife). The wallet belonged to an arms dealer named Yuri Karpachev. The CIA wants to know what Sark wanted with the wallet so they send Jack to talk to Irina, who listed the man as a former contact when she first turned herself in to the agency.

When Jack arrives Irina doesn't feel like talking about Karpachev, but instead wants to know why Jack hasn't insisted that Sydney leave the CIA now that SD-6 is no more. Jack says that their daughter is stubborn and will not rest until Sloane is brought down. Derevko then tells Jack that Sloane was probably looking for a key card to Karpachev's safe where he used to keep a piece of the Rambaldi manuscript.

What Sloane doesn't know is that the piece was sold to a man named Shtuka who lives in Bangkok. Irina thinks that if she could meet with Shtuka and let Sloane know that she has resurfaced, then Sloane would want to meet with her and then the CIA would have a chance to capture him. Jack likes this idea, but doesn't think that Kendall will agree to let Irina out again.

In the meantime, Sydney, who has just finished playing hockey with boyfriend Vaughn (and I mean real hockey, no tonsils involved), is called into a meeting with a man named Mitchell Yager (played by Richard Lewis). After asking Sydney a barrage of questions Yager basically tells her that her good-as-gold boyfriend has been meeting with some shady people as of late and wants her to spy on him to find out what he's been up to. Well, pardon me while I scoff, but I didn't believe for a moment that Vaughn could possibly be up to anything all that treacherous.

The writers of this show would like us all to believe that every single character on this show has the potential to be good, bad or both and for the most part it works (Jack and Irina are great examples of this). But as much as they try, they cannot make Vaughn seem even the slightest bit dishonorable.

We later find out that the reason that he was meeting with all of these former KGB assassins and terrorists was because he wanted to make sure that they could trust Irina, the woman that murdered his father. His reasons are just and completely understandable. Unless they intend to have Vaughn join forces with Sloane at some point or have him off some innocent people I can't think of a way that the writers could ever tarnish this boy scout's white hat.

Kendall finally caves and agrees to let Irina go to Bangkok with Jack to meet with Shtuka. But before they leave Marshall implants a tracking device in Irina's shoulder while telling her how awesome her daughter is. Derevko saunters into the club wearing a leopard print dress and approaches Shtuka who is playing the let's-see-how-fast-I-can-jam-this-knife-into-the-table-without-stabbing-this-person-in-the-hand-game with some poor girl. Irina tells him to play with her instead. He does but Irina is the one who wins when she grabs the knife and stabs him in the hand, then kills him and his two guards after learning that the Rambaldi book is now in the possession of a man named Chang in Hong Kong. As Irina leaves, another guard appears and pulls a gun on her, but Jack saves the day when he fires first.

The two share a touching moment on the plane back to L.A. when Irina thanks Jack for saving her life and for raising Sydney. There is so much tension between these characters that every scene they are in just seems to crackle. On some level they love one another, but there is too much deceit and too many lies between them for them to really trust each other.

Olin and Garber don't even need dialogue for this to come across on screen; all they need to do is look at each other and the mixture of emotions on their faces just says it all. This is the stuff that good acting is made of and many other actors out there would be doing themselves a favor if they took some notes.

One of this episode's subplots involves Will having dreams about telling Francie that Sydney works for the CIA and that he himself is an analyst for the agency. What Will doesn't realize is that Francie's double is extracting information from him in his sleep to help Sloane get access to the CIA's satellite.

Irina and Jack obtain the pages from the Rambaldi manuscript by posing as inspectors in Hong Kong and when they return they learn that Sloane wants to set up a meeting with Derevko. Jack and Kendall agree that this could be the end of Sloane and make the necessary arrangements. Before she leaves with Jack, Irina asks to see Sydney. She tells her daughter that the mission is dangerous and that if she doesn't come back she wants Syd to know that she loves her. Syd reassures her mother that she will come back safe and at this point in the episode most of us were able to deduce that Ms. Derevko was going over to the dark side.

But before that happens Jack agrees to remove the tracking device from Irina's shoulder so that Sloane doesn't think she's "tagged". After some minor surgery the two share a heated kiss and then tumble out of view of the camera. Sure Sydney wanted them to get along better, but this probably isn't what she had in mind. Lucky for her, Jack doesn't kiss and tell.

The setup is of course ruined when Francie's double interrupts the CIA's satellite surveillance of the operation. Sark takes Irina to Sloane and she hands over the pages that he's been looking for and thanks him for "extracting" her. Jack, who has been duped by this lovely lady once again, is totally pissed and that's about where the episode ends.

J.J. Abrams may have some great tricks up his sleeve but we all knew that they weren't bagging Arvin in this episode (they save stuff like that for sweeps weeks), so Irina going bad was basically the only other possibility. So, despite having a pretty predictable ending, the episode is an awesome chance for Olin and Garber to shine during their shared screen time.

Best Line:

Marshall to Irina after implanting the tracking device in her shoulder:

"Wow. You're tough."

 



Rebecca Sparling

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