Season 1, Episode 2

So It Begins

US Airdate: 7th October 2001

Writer- J.J. Abrams    Director: Ken Olin

Guest Stars: Greg Grunberg (Agent Weiss) Evan Dexter Parke (Charlie) Aharon Ipale (Aninni Hassan) Alex Kuz (Shcherbakov) Ravil Isyanov (Karpachev) Sarah Shahi (Jenny) Ammar Daraiseh (Supplier) Azdine Melliti (Bodyguard #1) John Storey (CIA Officer) Xavier J. Nathan (French Officer) Gregory Phelan (Student) Seema Rahmani (Sara)

Plot: The episode opens with Sydney running away from French guards at the Machlet corporation, holding a stolen satchel. She escapes through the top of an elevator and gets into a limo waiting on the street.

At home, Sydney tells Vaughn about her mission, and the structure of SD-6. She wants to destroy it within weeks, but he shows her that there is much more to it than the LA branch, and she is forced to accept that it will take much longer than that. 

Will starts asking her questions about her disappearing and what Danny had done to be murdered, but Sydney tells him to leave it alone. he carries on investigating. Sydney has to hide her shock when Will tells her that Danny had booked a flight to Singapore the night of his murder.

At SD-6, Sydney gets instructions from Sloan to travel to Moscow and intercept stolen files  with information about nuclear arsenals. 

In private, Sydney asks her father if he knew that Danny was going to be killed. He tells her that He had bought the plane ticket to Singapore so that Danny could hide from the SD-6 assassins. He had visited his home on that night, only to find that Danny was already dead. 

Sydney arrives in Moscow, and impersonates a hotel made to get into the room of the CRC rep who has the payoff money, while Dixon meets the people selling the documents in a Moscow club.  Sydney discovers that the payoff money is fake, and so races to the club, where she switches the computer disks holding the stolen files with plastic cocktails coasters, before she and Dixon knock the agents out and escape. Sydney hands the disks to Vaughn, who copies them and gives her them back. 

The files on the disks indicate that there is a cold war nuclear device still buried in the US, and Sydney eventually finds it in a graveyard in Virginia, rigged to a coffin lid. With two minutes till it blows up, she panics and calls Marshall, who tells her how to dismantle it.  Vaughn is angry, but Sydney tells him that she need someone she knew to guide her through it. 

Vaughn then tells her that SD-6 has sold the device to an arms dealer in Cairo called Hassan. Sydney goes to go and get the bomb back, without SD-6 knowing. 

Vaughn is told that he's being taken off Sydney's case  because the boss wants somebody more senior.

In Cairo, Sydney finds the bomb and quickly dismantles it.  She grabs its bright green core- only to find Hassan with a gun pointed at her head.....

Best Bit:

Sydney disarming the bomb in Virginia.

Music:

Roland Gift- Looking For a Friend

Kate Bush- This Women's Work