Monday, November 07, 2005

The Scheme Team

They are up to no good. Jack and Sloane. They are up to no good, with good intentions. Maybe. Both men have a tendency to operate with an ulterior motive, with a hidden agenda; they have since day one. Sloane, as Director of SD-6, used his operatives to secure priceless Rambaldi artifacts, which offered him a glance at eternal life. Jack, as a CIA double agent, used both his ties at the CIA and at SD-6 to keep his daughter safe. Their relationship was one built on trust and friendship, threading back to their days as true CIA operatives. The interactions between Jack and Sloane, both past and present, have always been extremely ambiguous; lifted eye brows, staring contests and bits and pieces of information meant to suck us in. And after years of turmoil, deception, and faked deaths (Irina’s, Emily’s and Sloane’s), Jack and Sloane are together again, hatching a plan that may or may not be good for Sydney.

Season 4 first shed some light on the inner workings of the two amigos. As mentioned in my Bits ‘n’ Pieces article from last week, Jack informs Sloane that “The Russians are looking for Elena Derevko.” And Sloane in turn replies, “Then we must move up our time table.” Though it is known that Sloane and Jack were on a hunt to stop Elena’s endgame, could this also be referring to something else? What time table are they speaking of?

Later on in season 4, either episode 4.14 “Nightingale” or 4.15 “Pandora” Sloane states, “For twenty years Joseph Vlasko’s been off the grid. Now we find him, through Sydney of all people. He could alert Elena to our agenda, or worse, he could talk to Sydney, which would be a disaster. Unless of course, you want to destroy everything we’ve worked for.” For those of you who don’t remember Joseph Vlasko, he was a member of the group researching Nightingale, Jack shot him after he refused to give up Elena’s whereabouts. This all took place in the episode in which Sydney is trapped in the radiation room and Jack must expose himself to high doses of radiation to save her. Aside, Sloane’s statement struck me as odd. What could Vlasko have said to Sydney that would have been a disaster for Sloane and Jack? And what does it have to do with Elena? What exactly is Sloane referring to when he says, “…everything we’ve worked for?”

Now, with Sloane’s return to APO we can suspect that he and Jack are back on their band wagon. I began to think about Sloane’s role in the CIA and APO. It was a position granted to him by turning in the Rambaldi box, once he and Nadia had secured it. Now he has full access to the CIA and all its resources. When SD-6 was brought down, it was Sloane’s doing. He fed the information about Server 47 to Sark, who fed it to Sydney which led to the SD-6 raid and the end of the Alliance. Sloane must have known before hand that Sydney and Jack were double agents, or else the slip of information would have been useless. Was Sloane in the know all along? Has he been playing the CIA since day one? Has this been his endgame, working his way back into the CIA in order to complete his mission? And is Jack involved? These are questions I hope will be answered as season 5 progresses. What are your thoughts? Do you have any theories as to what Jack and Sloane are up to and who maybe in bed with them?

5 comments:

SRM said...

Great topic girlscout! One of my best friend, who I got addicted to Alias last year, was in town over the weekend and we had a s4 Alias-a-thon on Friday and a little on Sunday. We didn't get to watch the entire season, but I also wondered about Sloane's comment to Jack about losing "everything we've worked for". Relating that comment to what happened at the end of the season w/ Elena didn't make much sense to me. The only thing I could figure is Sloane was referring to the coverup of his water contamination at Omnifam, but that still doesn't seem to fit. Unfortunately I don't have any great theories as to what they're really up to, but I'm hoping it's something good. I'm also interested to learn what exactly Dean wants Sloane to do at APO, I doubt he's just going to be a spy for them, I would think there's an actual agenda behind that.

M said...

And to carry on your thought... what about the whole Blackwell Index topic... so far, we only know that Jack told Marshall to use it as a last resort in the end of S4... but didn't Sloane tell Jack that it "had what they were looking for" and "so much more" (or something to that extent)? What did they want it for? I didn't see Elena's name on there, so it was for a different end game....

Girlscout said...

Good point M, I forgot about the index. They stole it, but what for? Hopefully we will find out soon. I bet you Uncle111 will be able to shed some light on this subject. He had some great notes that I used for reference.

SRM said...

Yeah, great point M, we never found out what they needed it for did we? Hmm....

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to point out that in the original post, it was mentioned that Sloane must have known that Jack and Syd were double agents before he had Sark leak the info about server 47 to Syd...well he did!

Remember how Geiger had McCullough run the program that logged keystrokes and found that Sloane had initially typed that Jack and Syd were double agents into the report, and then chose to erase it? He DID know, and was going to expose them and then must have chosen not to do so...perhaps he realized he needed them to stay covert in his scheme to destroy the Alliance.