Review of Episode 18: Mirage
5/4/2005
Vaughn: "Besides, I've got snipers everywhere if
he starts to get
inappropriate."
I thought I'd find Sydney masquerading as Irina to be squirmy,
creepy-incestuous instead of "Back to the Future"
fun-incestuous, but
instead it turned out to be touching.
A recurring theme this season has been telling someone how
you really feel about them, but indirectly. Jack loves Sydney
with all of his twisted,
fascinating little heart, and that's really why we all love
Spy Dad, isn't
it? But I was also surprised and moved by how much Jack loved
Irina.
Correction: loves, because I think Jack still loves Irina.
Another reason
why she might still be alive, in spite of everything; how
could he kill her?
I was also pleasantly surprised by the Doctor Liddell twist.
I thought he'd
be evil, or working for Arvin Clone, or both. It even made
perfect sense;
as Marshall observed, Jack is so disciplined and focused that
even his
delusions are lucid. And notice how in the previous episode,
"Doctor
Liddell" kept telling Jack to talk to Sydney, tell Sydney
the truth, stop
keeping secrets from her? That was Jack talking to himself.
Jack intimated that Irina disliked Sloane. ("I know
how you put up with
Arvin for my sake.") Seems odd that later she would cheat
on Jack with
Sloane, doesn't it? That has never made sense to me. (Unless
maybe Jack knew subconsciously that he was really talking
to Sydney?) I'd also love to see flashbacks of what Irina
said when Jack told her he was quitting the agency. I can
just hear her saying, "That would be so wonderful, sweetheart,
but you can't do it. Your country needs you."
The Auntie Yelena subplot is bugging me, and I'm not referring
to the medal Nadia has around her neck; I haven't found the
hook yet that will get me into Yelena as a character. I mean,
Irina was clever, sexy, and deceitful, and loved Sydney; Katya
is devious, charming, and outspoken, and has a yen for Jack;
but Yelena appears to be extremely evil, and so far, that's
it. Her concern for Nadia is most likely displaced devotion
to Rambaldi. She killed a bunch of people in this episode
without turning a hair, including her Charlie-Brown-as-a-nerd
assistant just because of a bad artist's sketch. Yelena's
dinner with Nadia and Weiss bordered on cute, but I think
that was entirely because of Nadia and Weiss.
Bits and pieces:
-- Four seasons and technically six years, and this was the
first time we
saw where Jack lived: a Spartan, stark apartment with one
photo of Sydney. ("Not much for clutter, is he?")
Says a lot about Jack. Sydney is pretty much it for him.
-- Hydrosec: "Hydro" means water, and "sec"
means dry. Dry water.
-- Yelena's bruises disappeared way too fast.
-- Did anyone else think that Jack was going to mutate into
Rambaldi?
-- How long will Nadia wear that bug? How bad is APO security?
Shouldn't alarms be going off already?
-- I'm still unsure of what was real and what was an hallucination.
Was
Monkey Guy real? Were the capsules in Jack's hand and calf
real? And where did Jack get the needles and pills that Sydney
and Vaughn found in his apartment?
-- "Dr. Liddell" talked about his rats: "Milo
lived to the ripe old age of
four." Milo? Was that a subconscious joke Jack played
on himself?
-- Have we seen the little girl who played little Sydney
before?
-- Sonia Braga was either wearing an extremely extreme wig,
or she has some major hair on her.
-- They said that they'd checked all the doctors in LA county
looking for
the one treating Jack. There are a helluva lot of doctors
in LA county;
that would take weeks.
-- Jack's handler died eight years ago.
-- Jack's apartment number is 301.
-- Marshall talked about the metal case named after a multi-national
corporation. A Halliburton? Was that this week's "Lost"
mini-crossover?
-- Nadia teasing Eric: "She asked me if you were tall,
dark and handsome. I told her you were tall."
-- This week's itinerary: Vienna, Helsinki, Jack's brain.
-- This week's hot look: Sydney looked softer and very lovely
in her
Laura-do. And the magenta hair is back! They seem to revisit
the magenta hair about once a year. Revisiting their roots,
pun intended.
I really liked this one. Four out of five spies,
Billie
http://www.billiedoux.com/
- Review by Billie Doux
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