"Here - Cover your mother."

Continued from here.

Maternal Instinct



It's OK, honey, Mom and Dad are just having a little difference of opinion.

We open with the Alpha Black guy that Jack beat up and shot up, who is being transported in an ambulance, under guard. A Mack truck comes out of nowhere and slams into the side of the ambulance. They all survive, but not for long. The two guards are immediately dispatched by on off-screen shooter who then knee-caps AlphaBlack as he tries to scurry away. Welcome back, SpyMommy. She wants to know if AlphaBlack told her husband about The Horizon. He swears he didn't and she believes him. And the she kills him. Twice.

Sydney is with her new doctor, who confirms that she and the baby are fine and that the surgery done on her on the ship probably saved them both. Dixon pops his head in and tells her it's time to go. Aw, Dixon's taking her to her appointments. He tells her that Jack has been released from custody because AlphaBlack confessed.

Meanwhile, Devlin has showed up at APO, demanding to see all reports and files relating to the Prophet 5 investigation. He wants to know who leaked the location of AlphaBlack. Hmm, I wonder who that could be? Neither Sloane nor Grace look too pleased about this. In fact, the subplot of this episode centers around Sloane trying to cover his ass with the help of Grace and Rachel. Not much happened there, so we'll just leave it at that.

Syd (along with Dixon) and SpyDaddy meet in secret and hug. They figure out there's a mole (moley-mole-mole-mole!) in APO and decide to continue the Prophet 5 investigation in secret - or "compartmentalized", as Jack would say. It should be mentioned that Dixon is rockin' a new braided 'do. He's always been cool, so I say he pulls it off. Anyway, Syd tells Jack all about how Prophet 5 said they "had plans for" her, and how she gave them the wrong intel on The Horizon. She withheld the real map location, which was "Leo47Norte". Jack and Dixon figure out that it's an operation name and 47Norte was code for Paris. Jack tells Syd to go and pack a bag and get to a safe place, Dixon to go wait in Paris and he'll go back to APO to see if he can figure out the "Leo" part. There's a really nice scene in the car with Syd and Dixon where he tells her she waddles and she denies it and he agrees and says that actually, she teeters.

Syd enters her house alone - you'd think Dixon would have come in and checked it out for her - and who is sitting in her dining room but Lena F*ckin' Olin. She plays Irina so well, and it's really hard to read her expressions in this scene, but I think it's safe to say she's more wicked than ever. She tells Sydney that she came because she heard about Prophet 5 and her kidnapping and that everything will be alright (ha!) and Prophet 5 is looking for something called The Horizon and does Sydney know anything about it? Sydney lies and says no.

Jack's at APO with Marshall and they identify "Leo" as some guy named Jean Bertrand, who headed the Leo47Norte operation and is still in France. Jack tells Marshall to forward Bertrand's location to Dixon in Paris. Then his cell phone rings. It's Sydney. Guess who's coming to dinner, Dad?

We have a nice little SpyFamily reunion at Syd's house and Dixon calls Jack and tells him that he and Renee strapped Jean Bertrand to the hood of his car and hilariously drove around a parking garage at high speed until he cried and told them that the operation entailed delivering a package to a safe deposit box in a bank in Vancouver and that's all he knew. Well, he didn't tell Jack all that, but it's what they did. Jack then proceeds to tell his scheming, deceitful spy of a wife exactly where to find The Horizon. Jack! They need to go to Vancouver to get it, but Syd and SpyDaddy will have trouble getting transportation and contacts and protocols and whatever it is they need for a mission, because Prophet 5 is off-limits, officially. Irina graciously offers to go to Vancouver for them, but they aren't buying it - they will all go together.

Meanwhile, at Prophet 5 HQ, some goon tells Peyton that Irina is going to Vancouver to retrieve The Horizon. Peyton says she trusts her, but will go anyway, just in case.

At Queen's Bank in Vancouver, Syd, Jack and Irina pretend to be a rich, Italian family as a ruse to get to the safe deposit vault. Syd does some spy stuff on a computer and Mom and Dad knock the bank officer unconscious. SpyDaddy retrieves the package from the box, and it's as small as a paperback, is wrapped in old cloth and twine and is wired to self-destruct if anyone tries to unwrap it. Jack turns his back on Irina (Jack!) and she attacks. They fight and Syd walks in. This is not a fight between your parents you want to walk in on. Everything starts to click into place for Syd - her mother was the one who kidnapped her, she is part of Prophet 5 and she used her to get to The Horizon. Well, there's no time for this - the bad guys are on their way up to get them. Jack tells Irina (whose hands are now bound) to call off her team, but she swears they are not there with her and will kill her and take The Horizon. Just then, Sydney goes into labor.

They decide to hoof it up 4 flights of stairs to a helicopter that Irina was going to use for her extraction, by calling it with a beacon she stuffed in her bra and Jack just happened to have to reach in to get it...I'm just saying. Anyway, they get to the top and Peyton freakin' blows the helicopter out of the sky with a surface-to-air missile thing that she shoots from a lower floor. They come back inside and Jack gives Sydney his pistol and delivers the best line of the night: "Here - cover your mother." Syd and Irina go hide in an empty office while Jack heads off to dispatch the baddies. He does so with minimal effort but doesn't double-check his work - Peyton will live to see another assasination. While Jack was gone, Syd and Irina had a heart-to-heart, and Irina told her that she never wanted to have her. Ouch. But then she said that once she held her, she knew she had made a big mistake. You can't be a good mother and a good spy. She chose to be a good spy. Also, Syd accused her of wanting to take the baby and of killing Vaughn. Irina doesn't outright deny either accusation.

Sydney's really in pain now, the baby's close, but so is a bad guy and Syd has to give her mother the gun. Irina kills the bad guy, unties her hands and is about to leave with The Horizon when she looks back at Sydney. She approaches her and tells her that the only reason she saved the baby was because Sydney was her daughter. She decides to stay to help deliver the baby. Aw.

Jack returns and poor Sydney is an absolute mess and the baby is breech. Despite that, Sydney manages to push twice and deliver a perfectly healthy baby in about 3 minutes, which is ridiculous and absolutley par for the course with this show. As unbelievable as it may have been, that scene had me in tears with the Jack/Sydney stuff. Anyhoo, Syd has a girl, of course, and after she hands her the baby, Irina disappears. Don't worry, Jack says, we'll catch up to her.

She didn't abandon them completely - she calls Marshall and tells him that Jack and Sydney will need an extraction - and diapers. On the flight home, Sydney and Jack coo over the baby - I wonder what they will call her? - and Sydney gives Jack a knowing look and slight smile. Jack says, "I'll take care of it." Cut to Bhutan (Wikipedia says it's the most isolated country in the world) and a man on a horse delivers a message to a man who looks to be a monk. The monk closes the door and walks deeper into his house and tells someone offscreen the he has good news - you have a daughter. Hi Vaughn!

More Alias tonight at 8:00 PM on ABC.