ALIAS – Episode 4 – SYDNEY
The Index
“I have a right to know.”

As you will see later on, this was one super episode. There was as expected a good deal of action and interestingly enough…Vaughn was not involved. However, what happened to him was pivotal to the entire Alias story: both back and in the future, at least I believe so.

Sydney enters APO to see Vaughn in earnest conversation with Sloane. She wonders what that is all about and goes to see Nadia who is talking to Weiss. It is Nadia’s birthday, which had been arbitrarily assigned to her by the nuns at the orphanage she was taken to when a child. Weiss wants to celebrate as does Sydney, but Nadia tells them she does not want a celebration. They are called into the briefing room.

In the briefing, Sloane tells them there is a Damien Blackwell, who created the Blackwell Index that essentially was a master record of blackmail. The Alliance, once thought dissolved, has begun to re-emerge and they want the index, which the CIA recovered. However, last night three analysts were killed and the index stolen. The decoder was found by the French Police, who do not know what they have. It is at the Paris Prefecture. Sloane tells Sydney he wants her to devise a way to be arrested.

Vaughn catches Sydney to tell her he is leaving for a few days. His uncle David, his father’s brother, had a stroke and now is in a coma. He is going to Mesa, Arizona to see him. He says his Uncle made promises to his father to look after his mother and him, but he was not much good at keeping those promises.

Dixon talks privately with Sydney. He tells her he has tapped Sloane’s private phone at home. He heard him talk to a former member who ran one of the SDs for the Alliance and he is at a hotel in Sarajevo. The man’s name is Miles Devereaux. He lied to the CIA when he said he did not have any leads. Forty minutes after the Blackwell Index was stolen, he called Devereaux.

“He’s using us—again!” He declares.

Dixon talks with Director Chase in the CIA Los Angeles Field Office about Sloane and what he is doing. He thinks Sloane is trying to re-form the Alliance again. Chase says she knows about the Index and what Sloane is planning. Right now, the evidence Dixon has is all circumstantial. He is to bring her something more concrete before she will act. He talks to Sydney and tells her he needs her help to copy the encryption code Sloane has at home.

Vaughn enters the room where his uncle is lying prone and ‘out’. He walks with the nurse who thinks he’s ‘Bill’. Vaughn says he isn’t. She is surprised, because she thought the way David talked, Bill was alive. Vaughn introduces himself as the son and she tells him her name is Rosemary.

Dixon meets with Sydney in a warehouse similar to the one, she says, she met Vaughn in while she worked for SD-6. Dixon tells her she has to give Sloane a corrupted disc instead of the real one when she goes to Paris. He wants her to copy the encryption code from his telephone so Dixon can hack into his calls. “I realize just how complicated things were for you when you were working at SD-6.” Sydney tells him she really hopes that for Nadia’s sake they’re wrong about Sloane.

They go to Paris. Sydney is dressed as a punk girl. She walks over to a car and spray paints the car. Weiss, posing as the owner, accosts her and yells for a police officer. Sydney is being a smart ass and uses the can to break the car’s window. She is arrested instantly.
At the police station, Dixon appears as the lawyer appointed by the U. S. Embassy. Nadia who is monitoring everything tells them it’s a go. Dixon turns and shoots the guard (I hope his gun was a tranq). Sydney runs out of the room. Nadia watches as she jimmies the lock and barely makes it inside before the two gendarmes go past the door.

In side, knowing there is a video on her and that Nadia can see her, Sydney hides the fact that she found the disc. Instead, she tells Nadia it isn’t there and she’s going to look at the other bins. She disappears from sight. Nadia is frantic. Someone is coming. Sydney tells her she found it and rushes out, knocking down the police officer who entered the room. He calls for back up. Meanwhile Nadia calls Weiss and tells him they are changing to plan B and to hurry. Sydney is forced to run up stairs to the roof. She doesn’t stop as the helicopter rises above the roof. She leaps for the runners and Weiss flies her out over the city.

Dixon informs Sydney that Sloane has turned the disc over to the CIA, following the protocols. However, he has made several calls to Brussels. They need to get the encryption device to trace them.

Sloane calls Sydney into his office to tell her he expected better of her—that essentially she did a stupid thing to disappear from Nadia and Weiss’ sight. Sydney smarts over the discussion then thinks of a way she can get into Sloane’s house. She tells him its Nadia’s birthday. She says Nadia didn’t want anything special made of the day and that maybe a simple family dinner would be appropriate. Sloane, surprised by the idea his daughter, had a birthday, thanks her.

Back to Mesa: Vaughn is watching a basketball game when the nurse enters. She asks about his father, saying that he was all David talked about before the stroke. She says that David had something for Bill and perhaps he meant it for Vaughn. She fumbles around in the bedside table and finding a small manila envelope, hands it to Vaughn. When she leaves, Vaughn opens it and finds what looks to be locker key.

That night Nadia tells Sydney she is glad that Sydney is willing to have dinner with her father. Ooops, Sydney looked guilty. At the party, we find Sydney, Jack, Weiss, Nadia, and Sloane conversing around the table. Sydney’s cell phone rings. It’s Vaughn and she leaves the table to talk to him in private. She is talking to Dixon actually and makes her way to Sloane’s office. She steals the code and is caught…by Nadia who came to tell her the birthday cake was ready.

Back at the table, Sloane makes a toast to his daughter, saying, “because of you, I am a changed man!”

Weiss brings in the cake, which we are led to believe he made with chocolate icing, chocolate cake, and chocolate mousse. Yummy! Nadia blows out the candles and makes a nice thank you speech and some of it is directed at Sydney. At home, Sydney is apologetic. Dixon knocks at the door. Nadia opens the door, sees him, and says, “Whatever you find out about my father I have a right to know.”

The next scene is at a bus station, probably in Mesa where Vaughn’s uncle lives. He approaches a bank of lockers, finds one with the number that matches the key’s and opens it to find a small package. Taking it out he finds a book—a diary. He recognizes his father’s handwriting and flips through it, noticing, oddly enough, the dates extend beyond 1979 when Bill Vaughn allegedly was murdered by Irina Derevko. The dates in the book show he was alive in 1981 and possibly longer—even alive at this moment.

Meanwhile things are heating up elsewhere. Dixon tells Director Chase that Sloane is meeting Devereaux in Brussels and that Nadia Santos and Sydney know. Dixon says it was necessary to tell her. Nadia and Sydney are together and on surveillance and follow Sloane to the dockyards. There they wait for Dixon and Director Chase. Nadia is assigned to the perimeter while Sydney, Dixon, and Chase enter the building where Sloane went.

They burst into the room to find him alone, watching a monitor. Sydney is shocked to hear her father’s voice. Sloane says Jack insisted on taking the decoder to the meeting himself. Sydney gasps and Dixon is stricken. “He doesn’t have it,” Sydney says. On the monitor, they watch as Devereaux inserts the fake decoder. They see nothing. Devereaux hits Jack in the face with his gun. Sydney wants to know where he is and Sloane says warehouse 37. Sydney tells Nadia to hurry.

Jack is tied up and beaten. He tries to bluff his way, saying Sloane betrayed him. Devereaux promises dire straits if Jack doesn’t tell him where Sloane is. However before they can do anything, Nadia driving a wonderful new Ford mustang (red) powers into the warehouse, sliding to a stop and gun blazing, drops all three conspirators. (I knew she was a good shot)

Sydney thanks her and Nadia says, “I hope you’ll do the same for me…”

Now back to Vaughn. He is trying to talk to his uncle, who shows no response. “Is he alive?” meaning his father. A nurse walks into the room. Vaughn asks for the other nurse, the one called Rosemary, the one who works the three and ten o’clock rounds. The new nurse tells him there has never been a Rosemary working here.

Director Chase and Dixon talk and although she warns him to be careful, she also tells him that he was added to APO to keep an eye on Sloane. He is to call her if there are any more suspicions that arise.

Sydney comes up as Chase leaves, “I’m glad it’s over.”
Dixon looks at her, replying, “Is it? We’ll see.” Leaving Sydney with an odd look on her face.

The last scene shows Sloane use the decoder on the Blackwell Index. He makes a call to Jack and Jack asks him, “Does it have what we need?” Sloane tells him it does and more.

REMARKS

I have so many…so some…off the top of my head…

We hear Nadia’s code name: Evergreen. (Does that have anything to do with the green goo.)

Notice Nadia was armed and dangerous with a gun that fired bullets instead of tranquilizers.

Irina Derevko: I know she wasn’t mentioned at all, but she sure popped into my head when Vaughn’s scenes came on screen.

Let’s review the Derevko/Vaughn scenario. According to Season One, Bill Vaughn was killed by Irina Derevko in 1979 when Vaughn was ten. That means while she lived with Jack and Sydney, Irina aka Laura, brutally murdered Bill Vaughn. The only way they identified him was by his dental records. This was the version given to his mother by the CIA (although they did not know then who killed him).

In Season Two, Derevko says to Vaughn in Trust Me, “You look just like him.” That was the first reference to Bill Vaughn by her. In Dead Drop, Derevko asks Vaughn, after saving Sydney’s ‘bacon’ in Fapsi headquarters, “How do you thank the woman who killed your father?” I’m beginning to wonder if she did in spite of what she said.

Next, we hear a little more about Bill Vaughn. Brill tells Vaughn his father rescued Nadia and took her to Argentina and that he was a member of the Followers of Rambaldi (FOR), a slightly kinder organization than the other one, Magnificent Order of Rambaldi (MOR). The difference I am assuming is that FOR is concerned with keeping the information about the greatest Rambaldi ‘secret’ still that…a secret. MOR is more interested in seeing the prophecies come to fruition. Bill Vaughn was FOR; Anna Espinosa was MOR.

We also learned from Katya Derevko that Nadia was taken from Irina Derevko the day after she was born and that Irina has been searching for her. Bill Vaughn took her from the KGB who was in the process of injecting her with the ‘green goo’. Nadia was six at the time. So was Irina aware of who had her daughter and where? Was she a member of the KGB then or not? We know intelligence agencies wanted to know more about Rambaldi, including the CIA.

When Jack asked Irina about The Passenger, she disconnected all communication with him. He has yet to hear from her. In fact, he admits he killed her to protect Sydney. According to him , in the first show of the season, Irina put a contract out on her eldest daughter. Jack told Sydney he did not know why she did it.

One fact everyone should put in his or her memory bank: The Alliance says Sloane was dismantled four years ago. That happened in Season Two…remember Phase One.


DISCUSS

Did Irina kill Bill Vaughn? When did she do it? OR is Bill Vaughn still alive?

Based on the summary above: Did Jack kill Irina Derevko? Tell us why.

Who is Rosemary? Why did she give Vaughn the key. Is she working for FOR. What will Vaughn do now? Should he take the book to Marshall to decipher?

Sloane and Jack: What is their continued connection and why? Does it have to do with their daughters? Do you think each is out to protect theirs?

Is Sloane a changed man as he says?

What are Jack and Sloane looking for in the Index? I’m asking if only to prick your memory or imagination. The first half of the season is over and now it’s going to be exciting as we head toward the end.

Irina Derevko is the mother of both Sydney and Nadia. Is she the real connection to Rambaldi? Both girls have different fathers.

How did Derevko know Sydney was the Chosen One? Is that information something she kept from her father?


GOD I love this show!