Wednesday, October 05, 2005

The "Be Safe" Theory

A poster (SReneeG) on the ABC message boards caught my eye with a very interesting post. She mentioned making a connection, or picking up on the use of the phrase “be safe.” This has been uttered at least once by each character as their friends and colleagues head out on dangerous, world saving missions, and though it would seem like a completely appropriate send off, I made an interesting connection as well. As I mentioned, I am currently in the middle of re-watching season 3. Last night I watched "The Crossing" episode in which Sydney and Vaughn’s plane crashes in the hostile fields of North Korea. Lauren is fully aware that Vaughn’s plane will crash and that he will die, and as he leaves for Dover to catch his plane, she whispers “be safe.” Aside from finding that extremely creepy, I found it extremely interesting. The line “be safe” is primarily used as a well-wish right before missions where the agent/agents are put in life-threatening danger or feared dead.

-In season 4, Vaughn told Sydney to “be safe” right before her cab was ambushed in Havana and she was buried alive. She was literally dead for several minutes before Marshall saved the day.
-Sydney added a “be safe” as she kissed Vaughn goodbye in this season’s opener. They’ve discussed bringing a child into the world and Vaughn exits the car to meet with Lehman. He walks off to meet his fate and at this point is merely presumed dead.

I am sure there are other instances in which the phrase is used and I am sure one could argue that every mission the agents go on is life-threatening. What are your thoughts? Are SReneeG and I conspiracy theorists, hell bent on finding a connection between any and everything? Or is this possibly another sly clue given to us seasons over in order to determine the fate of the agents?

3 comments:

SRM said...

Hi there, this is SreneeG again. :) Great connection to the phrase being used before extremely dangerous scenes. The connections I had made before were that Nadia said it a lot to Syd in season 4, and Dixon said it to Syd over the phone in the season 5 premiere. I thought maybe the phrase was something that possibly "bad" people are in on, but hadn't thought about the times Vaughn and Syd had said it as well. I guess the reason why I first saw it as some sort of conspiracy was because Lauren was the first one to ever say it. Thanks for expanding on the idea! :)

Girlscout said...

Oooh, good connection on the "bad guy" phrase idea though. That's definitely a possibility. I just heard Nadia will be back for a couple episodes, so, we'll see what becomes of her.

amy said...

good ideas....another thing i love to look for are all the 47 references. i am re-watching season 1 right now (getting another unsuspecting friend totally hooked on it!) and in the episode where syd and dixon get the FTL decoder out of the art gallery the code for the safe has "47" in it....the references to 47 are EVERYWHERE