Well, as the turtle in 'Finding Nemo' says, repeatedly, and despite him being inappropriately old, Dude!

2.5- 'The Indicator'

Excellent episode, capitalising flawlessly upon the groundwork laid by the previous instalment, which at the time seemed like a climax in itself. By the time we get to Joni Mitchell's 'River' we have really been put through the wringer. When I got there, noticing that someone on the show had picked a song I thought (unspoiledly) was finely representative of Sydney's situation in the previous Season, and in fact included in a review, it was a complete delight. Though in a, your mother's sentenced to death and your father's a traitor way, obviously.

-Sometimes in an episode you're put in a good mood by a little slice of continuity which is barely hinted at but which shows thoughtfulness on the part of the director or producers. In the scene at Francie's new restaurant, which Jack enters just for a second to call Sydney outside, we see that the walls have been painted, as Jack suggested in the second episode of the season, with the colour red. The place looks warm and inviting. Jack is desperate to leave as quickly as possible, but perhaps in the back of his astute mind notices that what he says has been taken on board.

In the meantime, the episode focusses on Vaughn's research into Jack's Madagascan renegade mission, the sleeper agents of the KGB, the Trio, and perhaps by extension the CIA, and Sloane's slow mental disintregration, or the positioning of such tings as to suggest that to the cynical viewer.

-Vaughn has to gather various sections of the story together, finding lots of twos and eventually putting them all together to make fourteen. He tells Sydney that there is another, darker explanation of Jack's ordering of infra-red reconnaisance from the South Atlantic rather than any other intelligence, raising Sydney's hackles at the exact moment she feels she has connected with her father, who did a good and righteous thing in saving her life and not trusting her mother. He then bumps into an old friend through whom he discovers that the semtex has been lifted on Jack's orders. Finally, when Vaughn calls Sydney in to tell her of what he's found, Jack intercedes and sends Sydney off on her next mission. The two are left staring at each other, aware of the magnitude of each's next move. But if Jack was expecting to scare Michael with his Kasparov eyebrows and steely determination, this is not the case. One of Vaughn's most intriguing features is that behind his genuine affability lies a bravery in doing what he believes is right, made firm by his awareness of his smartness. He tells Jack in no uncertain terms that he will reveal his secret if Jack doesn't himself. What he never suspects is that through a different meander in this episode's ox-bow creating river, Sydney will come to the realisation of his betrayal, and that the betrayal is double.

When Sydney is on assignment in Vienna, she finds out what the Next Generation weapons are, and no, they're not photon torpedoes or phasers set only to stun. The children are being trained as sleeper agents, and then returned, Demon Headmaster style, to their parents to remark blandly that 'That was the best summer school I've ever been to'. It becomes clear to the viewer quite quickly from this that the puzzle pieces are all about ot fit together. Sydney's exceptional skill as a spy has manifested itself through this training. Irina Derevko's question to Jack about whether he had told her what he had done to her turns into a query about Jack's own programming of his daughter. And the casually slipped in '80's KGB reference makes us realise where he has got the idea from. Now it's just a case of sitting back in horror, and watching the assembled pieces you have already put together form the 3D jigsaw puzzle that Sydney completes, as she realises how terribly and beautifully the kaleidoscope pieces of the episode's structure have collided. She has been betrayed by believing her mother wired the building off the coast of Eastern Africa, and has testified her intelligence to the CIA. Furthermore, she was lured into spying, to the intolerable double life she finds barely bearable, by Jack's own callous experiment on his child, indisputable evidence that looking at her he sees only his own gullibility.

The scene with Jack and Sydney at the end is not a classic because each learns more about the other. It is a classic because we see Jack have to take blow after blow on the chin, to see his Hadean missions of the early 80's and the early 21st century reap their harvest of anger all at the same time. We don't feel sorry for him for being criticised for denying Sydney her free will, for the fact he 'took away my choices in life', but maybe we feel the shiver of Thor's thunderbolt as all his karma goes around and has come around with the synchronicity of swimmers twirling legs backwards in pointlessly elaborate formations. Still he stands there and looks steely, determined. Perhaps, like an armadillo, his strong unbreakable outside merely guards a softer centre where he is breaking apart. Jack posits sturdily to Vaughn a little more than half way through that 'your consistent shortcoming is your naive sense of morality'. Or in other words, Vaughn being a good man does him no favours. Jack suggests that being utilitarian, opportunist about stopping Evil is the only way to go. As veterans of morality plays, we know that that way lies impending disaster. It is about to break upon Jack like a tsunami.

And talking of father figures breaking apart, we see the beginning of Sloane's apparent breakdown in this episode. First of all, very uncharacteristically, we have the moment's pause in the big, routine briefing, where we usually expect him to be as shiny and faultless as the briefing table and the computer equipment. Next, he tells Jack about how he killed Emily, basically offering her compulsory euthanasia, (as opposed to the less controversial voluntary or passive forms), because he could not stand to bear the pain she would have to go through. The puzzle as to how much this excuse is truthful, and what portion of it is sullied by his unmistakable ambition might be rumbling through Jack's head at the few moments he's not neck-deep in his own issues. I as a viewer was stuck in the (somewhat familiar) situation of saying to myself, "Oh, that's alright then, he didn't use her as a bartering chip, he killed her to end her suffering", and then having to step back and feel the residual distaste for the fact the act was still non-consensual and that it may all be an excuse for the fact that Sloane's mad fundamentalist belief in Rambaldi pervades the essence of his being.

Then we see the glass of wine, the goblet on Banquo's table. There's a definite Macbeth resonance through this section of Sloane's storyline- the man who got power by sacrificing what he held dear, (Emily; Duncan/Banquo), but it is elaborated on more in the next episode. Here, there's just the symbolism of that sacrificial glass of wine, blood of Christ, shed for our sins that gives the shower scene that added creepiness. Finally here we find out about the cure to Sloane's poison, and start to wonder just how much of a conspiracy is going on about Sloane, and whether what appeared merely a moment of hallucination has in fact some real evidence behind it.

And so Sydney tries to explain to Will what it was like in sixth grade, and Will explains how he was never more than anonymous- that it was too early to say anything about his character. This cuts daggers into Sydney's soul; she was brainwashed so early, she thinks, that she had no opportunity to find out what she could have been, what she would like to have gone into. Looking horrible, she comes to see Vaughn, the only person who knows what's going on and is not playing her, feeling shot to pieces.

An element of her recovery begins with:

2.6- 'Salvation

The salvation is Derevko's from death, and Jack's from prison, the latter effected by Sydney because Jack makes her believe that he has the capacity of redemption, and that metaphorically, (and hence, Abrams makes it literally true), it lies through Sydney herself.

-We start with Vaughn's joke, a plea on behalf of Sydney to have some levity infused into her life. I was half-hoping there might be some really piteous, philosophical 'Joke' along the lines of Wesley in 'Underneath' here, but maybe that's just because the resonance of that scene, (the two halves of the one person 'we were never that close'), scares me and affects me a bit more each day; makes me think it was one of the greatest artistic statements of Angel's last season. In the meantime, here, outside my fantasies, we get what the Doctor whose paying proper attention to the current show ordered, which is that Vaughn makes Sydney feel happy again, just for that hundred and thousand moment before she plunges back into the high drama of her life. I suppose looking a touch deeper, the Grasshopper is an inadvertent metaphor for a double agent's position: everyone knows they're a spy, but no-one knows who they are actually spying for- everyone knows they're a grasshopper, but no-one knows their real name.

-If the final scene with dialogue in the previous episode gave Sydney's opinion of Jack, the scene pre-credits here allows Jack a little room with which to explain his own thoughts. He explains that seeing Sydney so young, (implicitly, I suppose, so weak), made him as a father want to give her all the tools so that she would not becom e a victim of the system he had become involved in. He hoped that she would be able to hold her own in the world. Of course, he had not expected Sloane to come to his daughter first, before she could become a member of the CIA, much like Vaughn's position in carrying on the work of his father. That Sloane 'got to you first' says Jack, is the thing 'I still can't live down'. In a way, it appears Jack sees Sloane's pre-emption as another claim of Sydney's paternity- in the same way that he threateningly assured Jack last season that it was a pleasure to look after her while Jack was indisposed. Either way, it clearly rankles with him not only for the status that Sloane has, but also because it has made Sydney have to live the corruscatingly dual life that he knows and regrets so much.

-Sydney has her own thoughts on this. Interestingly, the most critical barb of all is headed by a comment which, though perhaps sounding insulting to the New Steel Reinforced Emotions Jack, was a suggestion from Sydney that he used to be able to give off himself easily. You loved her so much that when she left you, Sydney hypothesises, you lost your soul. This is straight from the gall bladder to Jack's ears. Sydney hasn't had time to process and begin to soften her immediate reaction to Jack's double betrayal. If she had, she would surely notice that he is not so soulless that he merely plays for something- his moral ambiguity stems from a protection of people who he believes need help.

-Y'know, a friendship between two decent men, which goes nowhere and ends only in mutual respect, is unusual in drama, largely because it has virtually no dramatic scope for stories. But let me just say, before the whole thing gets blown out of the water and one ends up toting a gun at the other, that the meeting between Will and Vaughn in this episode warmed some cockles. It's delightful to see two reasonable, generous, intelligent, honest characters talk to each other without artifice for once. Vaughn's apologetic explanation that he can't get Will a job 'because you have a criminal record', underscored by the sardonic 'You're going to hate this' is nicely observed. So is Vaughn's generosity in allowing Will to work for a reward as part of his 'discretionary fund'. I'm not holding out hopes that there'll start having nights in with beer and baseball, but it's a nice vibe for now at least.

-After it becomes clear that Irina had Sark infect some of her own staff with the virus from the Taipei factory merely to test out her theory, much of the story, until we return to Vaughn's own infection right at the end, is based around Sloane again. This is the episode where his scenes become truly epic and Shakesperian. Firstly, it occurred to me that Sloane's water pouring, which started after the genesis of the Dying Wife storyline, has more than a hint of Lady Macbeth's 'A little water clears us of this deed' assertion. Sloane keeps pouring water, desperately hoping that after a few gallons he'll feel less guilty. Next of all, Sloane spies what he perceives as Emily, and it drives him temporarily mad, driving him eventually into a Church where he hopes he'll find his salvation, (Jack rather drily remarks, showing his constant cynicism to everything, that the Church is a symbol of Sloane's desire to atone. Nothing more poetic then, hey lad?) This scene has all sorts of resonances of the dinner scene where the ghost of Banquo sits in Macbeth's seat, thereby causing the new King a flurry of anxiety, and alienating all his guests, who are leery of him already. Finally, we see Sloane as the grave-digger in Hamlet, pummelled by rain as he orders Emily's casket to be unearthed. Inside lies nothing at all. Perhaps it wasn't just madness, thinks the audience, but a playing with Sloane's mind. The powers confusing Sloane, and almost making him crack at times, are analogous to the Weird Sisters and the supernatural itself.

A few other brief bits:

-The Kim Richey song that ends the episode is the same one that played, controversially, over the end of 'Shells', and I thought worked really well there as a summation of Fred's journey. Here it's also powerful.

-Is this infection that Vaughn and Syd are suffering for, standing in for 'love'? Or the virus of merely 'being a spy'? Or is it, coming from a different angle, Jack's criticism of Vaughn, their naive moral tendencies?

Eventually Sydney does something she's not done before, and lies directly to the CIA to save her parents. The results of this are likely to be big and unpleasant, since the allegation is dreamt up out of thin air and completely unsubstantiated.

But Sydney makes the effort because Jack has managed to communicate to her what she means to him. It's typical of Jack, but maybe we single him out too easily, typical of many stoic male characters, that they most easily say how much they love someone, or something, when the person is not present. When they can be unflinchingly honest without it seeming, as they might see it, hokily sentimental. The line that really got me was 'When I look at her, I see only the promise of my own redemption'. That is utterly beautiful writing. The promise of a redemption because Sydney is a better version of the double agent he tries to be. The promise of redemption because something he has created can be a force for good. And the promise of redemption because, ultimately, it is Sydney who can become the most important thing that Jack and Irina ever made together, rather than the deaths of the CIA agents. It made his daughter tear up. It made me cry.

Hope he doesn't get over-confident though. I sometimes cry at the end of Sesame Street.

TCH