Sydney and Vaughn’s relationship has been no walk in the park. It’s been hell and high water (remember Vaughn trapped in the flooded lab?) since day one and just when things were getting cozy- BANG Sydney is missing two years and Vaughn is married.
This picture is the one of the most poignant moments in Sydney and Vaughn’s relationship (episode 2.20 "Countdown"). Sydney lied to Vaughn about Dixon’s drug test. There in the park, enjoying ice cream Sydney confesses to keeping secrets from Vaughn. She explains that her parents where absent when she was growing up and she didn’t have anyone to disappoint until now. She apologizes for lying and not trusting Vaughn to help her. As Jenn256 mentioned to me when she sent in this picture, it is the first time Sydney expresses complete trust and honesty with Vaughn. He forgives her with a simple spoonful of ice cream and they wander out of the park arms around each other.
The song in the background of this scene is Aretha Franklin’s “All I Need.” The song so much reflects their situation. With all they deal with day in and day out, all they need to get by is each other, the trust and support of one another and each others love. I think season 4 and now in season 5 (in light of Vaughn’s “death”) we might have forgotten the bond between Sydney and Vaughn. As Sydney mentions to Rachel in “Solo,” Vaughn was always on the other end of her ear piece, helping her through missions and encouraging her when things looked grim. Now with Vaughn gone, we see that Sydney is struggling to stay afloat (literally on a barge in the middle of nowhere!) Whether or not she knows Vaughn is alive could affect her ability to trust him. Their love is strong- we know. And though their love was forged by SD-6 and Sydney’s dangerous double life, and challenged by Sydney’s missing years and Vaughn’s marriage, it has been far less than picture perfect. But I think this picture captures it perfectly!
Thank you Jenn256 for the picture and for your input! It was a great one to start with!
8 comments:
that is a great scene, nice summation GS!
G/S-
Some comments posted by me and anonymous toward the end of activity on the Connect the Dots thread got me really stirred up and interested in the possibility that Rambaldi has always been more central to Alias and that Irina has been more central to Rambaldi than we ever thought, and it seems to have been built into the very beginnings of the show. It would represent a shift of focus and possible clues to other mysteries to watch for. I haven't looked for photos to go with this, but I'd really like to explore it more.
Here are the comments:
Anonymous said...
We know that the Russians have been studying Rambaldi since at least the 50's, may be the KGB hired Irina because of her connection to Rambaldi,(remember the box with her name on it) Can Elena Derevko obsession with Rambaldi have been a coincidence ? I don't think so.
Irina is part of the Rambaldi stuff, her children are involved as well, and their involvement might prove fatal,Irina can't have become interested in Rambaldi only to find out later on that she was a part of it, and that her kids were as well, it would be too much of a coincidence, the logical explanation is that she is obsessed because she wants to free her family from the Rambaldi curse.
uncle111 said...
After rewatching Season 2's The Passage, I am changing part of my timeline. Here is the change- from:
1970- Irina recruited by KGB to marry Jack (already a ranking officer) and find out about Project Christmas, a mind conditioning method. Kasinow is her superior.
to:
1970- Irina recruited by KGB at age 18. She was to go to US and get involved with a CIA agent. Jack (already a ranking officer) was only one of the agents under consideration for her to seduce. Gerard Cuvee and Alexander Kasinow were her superiors.
With this change, it seems that the Russians might have not known about Project Christmas yet and they may have had another goal for Irina. Cuvee was her superior. Cuvee is also the one who headed up a project in The Passage part 2 to crank up a Rambaldi device using the plutonium core of 6 nuclear weapons. For all their effort they succeeded in reviving a 400-600 year old flower. If this flower was the orchid from season 4, then were Cuvee and his young agent, Irina Derevko, really after Rambaldi information from the CIA all along?
I'll add these comments now- The facility where Syd first meets Irina as an adult is the facility Syd first came across the Mueller Device, and Cuvee was there. The next time we see Irina and Cuvee together Cuvee is activating Rambaldi's cell regeneration device and revives a centuries old flower. If that flower was the orchid of S4, then we see Irina and Cuvee with the orchid and the Mueller Device, the 2 main components of Elena's The Flood plan.
I like it Uncle! I like the whole idea! Hmm, let me do some digging in my secret Alias vault and see what I can find.
I just realized I meant to post on Say Chesse Please. How embarrassing.
And besides that, I misspelled Cheese.
Great idea!
As for the article and the pic, you have surely hit the dot. Vaughn and Sydney have always been in that moment...embracing...in my thoughts of them. They are always together even when they are apart. For example, when Sydney returns from her missing two years, she and Vaughn may not be together in the sense that we all wanted, but they are together in spirit. You can see it when they look at each other...their gazes have this heat, this fierce love. Lauren even seen it and was totally thwarted by it...and she was just undercover. So yes. Sydney and Vaughn hold each other together. Each one strengthens the other. It's very disturbing to see (for me) that, even with Vaughn out of the picture, he's still right beside her. He's guiding her through the connection they share and the love that springs from them both. Guess it makes sense, then, that I don't completely agree with you GS about Sydney struggling to stay afloat. It's hard times for sure, but she still fighting the way she did when Vaughn was near her or right beside her (remember back in season three, many can say that she was struggling but it's not because Vaughn was gone because he's physically there with her). He's always there with her.
Uncle,
You don't think the Russians knew about Project Christmas?
I just rewatched Masquerade and Snowman, and I believe it was in Snowman that Sydney watched archival footage of her mother telling how she came to be with the KGB. She said that Phase 3 was to get information about Project Christmas.
Do you think that just became part of her plan as she learned about it? I tend to think the Russians may have already known about it first.
Andrew,
I'll have to go back and watch that again to check how she phrased it. I could be wrong. But, I know from the S2 episode The Passage that Jack was only one of the CIA officers the Russians had targeted for Irina to seduce. I would think that since Jack was heading up Project Christmas he would have been their primary target.
Add to that the comments from Anonymous and it makes me wonder if PC was something they either found out about later, or was a secondary goal to finding out what CIA had on Rambaldi. The 2-3 children we know of who were PC products (Syd, Nadia, Allison D.-is Sark in there?) have all been key players in the Rambaldi game. Was PC simply a part of the whole Rambaldi affair?
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