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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."
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