After escaping from her mother, Sydney is sent on a new mission: to perform a phone tap and then to acquire a briefcase of information. However, Laura Bristow isn't one to just let her daughter do what she wants.

I really do have endless admiration for this show, especially in its construction. While other series consist of endlessly linear plots, this episode, as several others before it, skips back and forth to tie up all its loose ends. It's incredible how JJ Abrams keeps it all in his head. Hell, there's not even time for a proper title sequence! Kicking off with Sydney back safe and sound, we learn of what happened after her capture last season. Immediately Laura Bristow is painted as a woman who won't take failure or abuse lying down, shooting her own daughter in the shoulder to show she means business. It's a powerfully shocking start to what is set to be an interesting relationship during the year, more so at the end of the episode when, without any reason to, Laura simply gives herself up to the CIA. Is she seeing the error of her ways? Somehow I doubt it.

There are a couple too many convenient elements about the whole set-up. Vaughn carrying a screwdriver around with him, while certainly splendidly prepared of him, seems awfully unlikely, thought at least it demonstrates that he can look after himself as well as any agent. It's the way he's found again that annoys me, as he turns up in Paris, conveniently exactly where Sydney has gone. The chances of her finding him in the city, regardless of the fact that Vaughn is being experimented on by Khasinau, who Syd is after, seem remote. On top of this, exactly what is meant to be happening to Vaughn? Why is he about to be cut about? Why start splicing bits of some people into others? It's never explained.

While we're on the CIA, I love the sequence near the end where Syd's mother plays sniper, suggesting that whatever happens from now on, she's liable to have a hand in it somewhere. The shock factor of Weiss taking a bullet works well, and leads nicely on to the funeral sequence where for a moment you think it could be his. While Sloane isn't present for much of this episode, he still retains a vaguely sinister presence throughout, although this does lead to another slight grumble in the way Dixon tells Sloane he heard Sydney used an unauthorized call sign yet she and Jack manage to cover their tracks. Their excuse is plausible, but after Syd fell under suspicion several times last season, I'm surprised she gets away with it so easily this time round.

Especially effective, though, is the fate of Will. Bradley Cooper plays his horror and terror exceptionally well, but what is done to him to cover up what he knows and stop him being an SD-6 target is simply horrible. Injecting him with heroin and dumping him in a drug den is especially twisted, although it does allow us to see the often-missing considerate side of Jack, who is actually sorry for what he has to do.

A good start to the season, starting off in high gear and continuing to impress.

****

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