I enjoyed this episode, where the people you think are in control are precisely the people you think are in control. It's not a case of fooling the audience into thinking that someone is doing something when they're not, it's more about the pleasure you get from wondering what exactly the people in control are doing.

Sometimes a satisfying lie, Sydney, is better than...

4.3 -'The Awful Truth'

This is a very smoothly written episode. It admits the sections of itself which are there purely for action value, but the interpersonal relationships in parts ofthe cast are becoming really interesting. There don't seem to be any developments on the Syd/Vaughn or Syd-Dixon front, which is a little worrying since those two relationships really ought to be front and centre in the show. But it's possible that that's to come. For now, there's plenty of interesting stuff with Nadia, Weiss, Jack and Sydney. And of course Ron Rifkin smoulders away with so much conviction that the fact he doesn't have anything to do gets completely forgotten.

-So, yes, the scene in the Bahamas at the beginning is there entirely to remind us of the equilibrium position of the show in its fourth Season, and to let us have some fun. The Vaughn/Dixon pointless fight scene was funny. Vaughn's English accent has a tinge of Australian, (I hope this isn't some kind of gothic accent STD). One question in this scene is why on earth the bank manager and boss of the safe would need to get involved with sorting out a little skirmish at reception. Ask no questions...

-You've got to love Marshall blaming his extra pizza on his son's appetite. Marshall very often seems to be shown eating, and to draw a bit of attention to it here is fun.

-Much sparkage between Weiss and Nadia. Excellent work by Weiss, I'd say.

-I love it, despite the fact that it's a cheap shot, when Jack has to interact at social occasions. The whole section about the e-vite is extremely funny. Play the stonewall humour against the emotionless mask, Mr Garber.

-The Badenliege seem to be this Season's undisclosed nominal bad guys for when Abrams and crew can't be bothered to think up an excuse for doing some cool stunts. It always seems to be either Germans or Russians.

-The ladykiller joke is funny because Sloane doesn't play it as a joke at all- kind of reminiscent of Buffy writing. Talking of the Whedonverse, I believe the next two episodes are by Jeff Bell and then Drew Goddard, and I'm very excited by the prospect.

-If 'acclimates' as opposed to 'acclimatises' is a word, I've never heard it before.

-Jack uses Nadia's psych results in a much subtler way than merely telling Sloane that she is unfit for the job. This was my initial worry with this plot-line; Jack of course would never do that considering Sloane has a vested interest in his daughter's ability, and Jack is all too-aware of the reflection between himself and Sydney and Sloane and Nadia.

-'It's like talking to my conscience'. I dunno if this is supposed to remind us of that ludicrous section about Vaughn being Sydney's soul-mate in the third Season.

-The overheating watch is a nice little touch; everyone ignores Marshall when he rambles on about there being an overheating problem, but Syd burns herself when she tries to put it back on her wrist after the laser is used. Always listen to the geek.

-Some of the situations asked of Nadia in her psych test are directly comparable to things that Sydney does with her master thief in the episode, and we're shown rather than told that Syd does the same things as Nadia, just as we see Dawn in 'Potential' doing the exact opposite of what Buffy says is a good way to fight a vampire. Sadly, Jack has to underline this subtle bit of plotting later, for the remedial audience.

-Those vast, vast wicker chairs are really good-looking. I want some.

-Who is the master thief? One of the delights of Bishop is that he is never out-witted by Sydney- it takes Nadia to finally end him, and up until that point Sydney and he are fighting tooth and nail for tactical advantage. Although Sydney does deliver the Valta, it's good to see Syd put up against a genuinely worhty adversary rather than many of her enemies who seem to have great reputations and be outflanked in three minutes flat. So Sydney, Bishop but also Jack, who manages to wrest emotion out of Nadia at just the right moments and for just the right occasion.

-Instead of being left in the Tippen role, Weiss gets brought into APO very quickly. I have to say that this tendency to just bring everyone across immediately is suspect plot-wise, but since it enhances the character interaction, which is what I'm most interested in, I can't complain.

-Marshall gets angry with Vaughn's harrying, and is told that it's good after he tells Vaughn to shut up. It's nice to see him have a little confidence in himself for once, but the immediate apology and trademark niceness are perfectly observed.

-I wondered whether when Jack was showing Nadia that file he actually was showing her something Sydney didn't know- this would tie up the issue about the file in Wittenberg being only about Irina's execution.

-I'm sure that car park has been used before and not in Spain

-I thought that maybe the revelation as to why Nadia had buried a dozen bullets in Bishop's body might be the male/female dichotomy which Jack had been indirectly hammering at throughout the psych evaluation, and that the twist was that Jack had told Nadia about Bishop's misogyny and got her extremely angry, so that Jack harnessed his instability for good reason. By comparison, the idea that Jack told her Bishop killed Irina is relatively unsubtle, but it does reveal Jack's wonderful twisty plotting. Syd, like the audience, knows he's up to something, going as far as to ask him what it is, but we never get to the bottom of it until the end, when we get Jack's rather good line in which the title sits.

So a perfectly fine episode. Now let's see what the Angel alums can do.

TCH