Pretty good episode, but leaves a great cliffhanger for the next episode to be amazing. Here's what happened.... (contains spoilers)
9.3
"Superb"
The episode starts after it is revealed that Sydney's mother was the KGB agent who killed all the CIA agents. She leaves the meeting in a hurry and Jack follows her out. They argue about how hard it was to discover the truth about her mother. Sydney goes back to her apartment and looks at the pictures and memories of her mother's. In the basement, she tells Vaughn about what it was like to find that out about her mother. She apologizes to him for her mother killing his father. They hug. Cut to Credit Dauphine, where a van with mysterious people pulls into the parking garage of the bank. They cut the camera wire to the garage and start breaking into the building. An SD-6 security guy goes to see what the problem is, but it hit over the head. Now, Sydney is in the basement. She tells Vaughn that she wants out because she wants something in her life that is real. Syd asks Vaughn is he likes hockey and asks him to go to a game with her, but he says she can't do this. Will is at work and is wondering if he annoys people. He tells Jenny that all he wanted to do was bring people back, but since he can't and is just hurting people, he doesn't want to do it anymore. Back at SD-6, the intruders run into the building, narrowly escaping the security measures. One man pulls off his clothes and uncovers a suit and grabs a coffee. "How do I look?" he asks. Sydney drives into the basement of SD-6, a little late after her meeting with Vaughn. Sloane is in his office, on the phone with his wife's doctor, when he sees an unknown face in the security monitor. Syd gets out of her car and a guy in the van talks at her. Then when her back is turned, he trains a gun on her. But, Jack pulls in and stops the guy's efforts by talking to Sydney. The security monitor registers the face; it's a man named McKenas Cole. In the elevator up to SD-6, Jack and Syd are talking when the elevator stops. Inside SD-6, a gas is released and everyone falls to the ground. Syd and Jack realize that this isn't just a blackout because it wouldn't stop security as well as the elevator. At the newspaper office, Will is in the bathroom when he gets a call that tells him to go to his desk, where there is a letter. The phone rings again and the voice says that inside the envelope is something to make McNeal talk. Inside SD-6, McKenas and his team start their infiltration among the passed out agents. At the office of the CIA, Vaughn is talking to Weiss when another agent walks in and tells him that he has to go see the CIA shrink, Dr. Barnett. In SD-6, Jack and Sydney narrowly escape the infiltrators and tap into the security camera of SD-6. They see the infiltrators, armed heavily, holding everyone hostage. McKenas Cole walks into the room of hostages and starts talking to Sloane about when he was left for dead and his fellow agents were tortured when Sloane left them there. Cole informs Sloane that he got a "kick-a$$" new job for someone called "The Man." The Man wants something that is in the SD-6 vault. When Sloane won't help him, Cole says they are going to the "conversation room" aka the torture room. At the newspaper office, Will has given up the story on SD-6. Now cut to Vaughn in his meeting with Dr. Barnett. He says he is not affected by the fact that Syd's mother killed his father. She asks about his relationship with Sydney, but it ends up with her saying that she has gotten information about a non-plutonic relationship between the two. He asks her who complained, but she won't tell her, so she says she'll just have to guess. Cut to Syd and Jack watching everyone. They see two people trying to get into the safe, and Jack informs Syd that there is C4 all over the building foundation that will explode if the safe is breached. Syd says they have to somehow get the scrambler Marshall made. Cut to the "conversation room," where Cole is about to interrogate Sloane. Sydney heads into the ducts to try and get the scrambler of Marshall's office. In the "conversation room" Cole tells Sloane that "he does not want him to open this box" and that he will if Sloane does not give him the codes to the safe. Cut to Will in a restaurant, where a girl approaches him and introduces herself as McNeal's daughter. She says Will called him, but he did not. She wants to talk to Will and help her father. Vaughn confronts the agent who told him he had to do to Barnett's, since he was the one who told Barnett about Vaughn getting Syd a Christmas present. At SD-6, Syd is in the ducts above Marshall's office. She takes the magnetic fish and tries to "fish" for the scrambler that's on his desk, she misses the first time and is about to get it a second time when two men explode something, knocking the scrambler to the floor and making impossible to retrieve by fishing for it. In the "conversation room" Cole's agent comes in and tells him that they are into the safe room. When Sloane won't tell him the codes to the vault, he opens the box and introduces the "needles of fire." Up in the main part of SD-6, Syd emerges from the duct and signals to her father, who begins doing something with the camera wires. A guy hears Syd and heads off to see what it is, but at the same time something catches Marshall's eye. Jack is doing Morse code through the light on the camera light, and Marshall brings it to Dixon's attention. Dixon fakes a seizure, then Marshall distracts the guards (and gets hit as a result), allowing Syd to escape. In the "conversation room," Sloane is about to get tortured with the needles of fire, but he stops him, saying Cole needs a pen. Cut to the newspaper office, where McNeal's office reappears, saying that she wants to stop the people who killed her mother and frame her father. Her godfather, who is her guardian, knows people who will send her away to safety and she will go away immediately if her father agrees to help Will bring down SD-6. Will opens the mystery envelope: it's a key. In the torture room, Sloane gives a fake code and the torture begins. Sydney begins breaking into the vault, followed closely by McKenas Cole and his people, but hides away in a vent when they try to break the codes. She has done something to the codes, and access is denied. However, Cole hears Syd and starts to shoot at her, then sends his men after her. The episode ends with her waiting to be found in the ducts.
