1st Season
2001-2002
#1 Truth Be Told
#2 So It Begins
#3 Parity
#4 A Broken Heart
#5 Doppelganger
#6 Reckoning
#7 Color Blind
#8 Time Will Tell
 		#9 Mea Culpa
#10 Spirit
#11 The Confession
#12 The Box, Part 1
#13 The Box, Part 2
#14 The Coup
#15 Page 47
#16 The Prophecy
 		#17 Q&A
#18 Masquerade
#19 Snowman
#20 The Solution
#21 Rendezvous
#22 Almost Thirty Years
Other seasons
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

#1 Truth Be Told: Aired Sunday, September 30, 2001

We learn how Sydney Bristow, now a graduate student, was recruited while still in college to work for a covert divison of the CIA called SD-6. Sydney's doctor boyfriend, Danny, proposes marriage, and her female best friend, Franice, is thrilled for her, while her male best friend, Will, is disappointed. Sydney realizes that if she's going to build a life with Danny, he has to know the truth about her, so she tells him about SD-6. While she is in Taiwan for work, Danny leaves a drunken message on her answering machine, making it clear to the SD-6 spooks listening in that he knows what Sydney does. When Sydney get home, she finds her fiance dead in his apartment. She takes three months off from work, and when it becomes clear to SD-6 that she has no intention of returning to work, they decide she is a risk and send agents to kill her. She escapes with help from her father, whom she originally thought worked in airplane part exporting. Her dad admits that he, too, works for SD-6, and SD-6 is not a covert branch of the CIA, but is actually the enemy. Sydney runs from both SD-6 and her father, and manages to steal a new technology from Taiwan that she knows SD-6 wants. She delivers the technology to her boss, Sloane, to prove that she's back on the job, and then turns herself over to the CIA as a double-agent. She gets one more surprise when she finds out that her father is working as a similar double-agent between the two organizations.

top
#2 So It Begins: Aired Sunday, October 7, 2001

Syd moves into a new apartment with help from Francie and Francie's boyfriend, Charlie. Syd has her first official meeting with Vaughn and is in a rush to take down SD-6 as she knows it. She's stunned when Vaughn shows her how much bigger SD-6 is than she thought. Syd is officially introduced to her father within SD-6 as another SD-6 employee. She asks him if he knew that Danny was going to be killed, and slaps him when he says he did. Will can't stop investigating Danny's death, and tells Syd that he found out Danny was booked on a flight to Singapore the night he died. Syd realizes her father was trying to get Danny out, but just didn't get to him in time. Syd goes on a mission with Dixon to Russia where they steal some computer disks. Syd manages to get the CIA copies of the disks before handing them over to Sloane. The disks tell SD-6 that there is a Russian nuclear bomb buried somewhere in the U.S. and Syd goes to Virginia to investigate. Syd finds the bomb buried in a cemetery, and when she opens the coffin, it starts counting down two minutes. She makes a split-second decision and calls SD-6, where Marshall nervously tells her which wire to cut to keep from getting blown up. Later, Vaughn is furious that she called SD-6 instead of the CIA, but Syd stands by her decision. Vaughn says that SD-6 sold the weapon to bad-guy Hassan in Egypt, and Syd goes on a mission for the CIA to disable the bomb since she knows Hassan's bunker. She gets the core of the bomb out, but finds herself held at gunpoint holding plutonium. Vaughn finds out that he's no longer going to be managing Sydney for the CIA. Will turns down a young cute girl at work who asks him out.

top
#3 Parity: Aired Sunday, October 14, 2001

Will keeps investigating Danny's death to the detriment of his own work, and discovers that all the traffic cameras in the area of Danny's apartment were mysteriously out on the night of the murder. Francie feels like her boyfriend is hiding something from her and becomes convinced that he's cheating on her. Sydney and Will share a spontaneous kiss, but then don't know what to do about it. Sydney asks her father if her mother died the same way Danny did, and her father lies that she died in the car accident, just like Sydney has always believed. Vaughn tells Sydney that he's been replaced by a more senior agent as her manager. Sydney is so disgusted by Lambert, Vaughn's mysoginistic doofus of a replacement, that she insists the CIA give Vaughn any necessary promotion and bring him back as her contact. Sydney competes with an old enemy, Russian agent Anna Espinosa, to retrieve a box containing half of a painting with an important code on the back. Anna almost beats Sydney to the punch, but Sydney manages to steal the box from Anna at the last minute. SD-6 realizes that Anna's crew has the key to the box, so they agree to a tense meeting between enemies to open the box together. Anna and Sydney meet in a stadium, surrounded by their respective gunmen, and open the box together. They are surprised by what they find.

top
#4 A Broken Heart: Aired Sunday, October 21, 2001

Sydney considers giving SD-6 the wrong code from the suitcase, but Vaughn insists she give them the right code, because the only thing worse that SD-6 having it is K-directorate, Anna's organization, having it first. Francie enlists Sydney's help in spying on Charlie, and they catch him with a pretty blonde when he's supposed to be at law review. Charlie does a bad job of explaining himself when Francie confronts him. Jack goes through a regular psych evaluation at SD-6 and has a disturbing vision of Sydney. When meeting Vaughn, Sydney notices he's in a bad mood and asks him if he had a fight with his wife. He tells her he's not married, but admits he had a big fight with his girlfriend. Sydney and Dixon go on a mission to Morocco where they work with an old friend of Sydney's. This friend dies during their mission. Will tries to make things less awkward between him and Sydney by kissing her again, but he ends up doing the exact opposite. When Sydney is later stood up by her father for dinner, she calls Vaughn, because he is the only person she can really talk to about her feelings about her father and her dead friend who always thought he was working for the good guys. Will continues to research Danny's death and finds out Danny was booked to fly to Singapore with a woman named Kate Jones. Sydney and Dixon go to Sao Paolo with intel that a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Patel, is going to be planted with a bomb. They witness Patel being knocked out, kidnapped, and surgically implanted with an explosive.

top
#5 Doppelganger: Aired Sunday, October 28, 2001

Sydney and Dixon manage to kidnap Patel and remove the bomb from his body just before it explodes. Will continues to research Danny's death even though he promises Francie he won't. He hunts down Kate Jones, Danny's travel companion, who claims that she and Danny were having an affair. When Will confronts her with the information that her social security number says that she died in the '70s, she walks away. Sydney and Dixon are sent to bring a German scientist working on biochemical vaccines, Schiller, out of Berlin and back to SD-6. Vaughn tells Sydney that Schiller's knowledge could lead to the use of bio-weapons, and they make the bold decision to switch Schiller with a CIA agent. Sydney wants to tell Dixon what's going on, but Vaughn warns her not to turn Dixon into a double-agent when it's not a decision he himself is making. The switch goes as planned, but when "Schiller" doesn't give Sloan the information he wants, Sloan begins to suspect Sydney. Sydney gets the real Schiller to give her the necessary information, and passes it on to her father who passes it on to the fake Schiller during a violent interrogation. Using this intel, Sydney and Dixon travel to get a sample of Schiller's work, while Sydney is under orders from Vaughn to pass the sample to CIA agents and then disarm Dixon's explosives so that the CIA agents don't get blown to bits. What Sydney didn't know is that Dixon always plans a backup explosive device. Sydney is horrified when the facility goes up in flames.

top
#6 Reckoning: Aired Sunday, November 18, 2001

Syd thinks that her father was reponsible for her mother's death because an American agent who was trying to uncover KGB spies also died in the car crash. Sydney and Vaughn bond over losing a parent at a young age. Francie's boyfriend, Charlie, explains that he's secretly trying to become a musician, and was definitely not cheating on Francie. Sydney and Dixon steal an FTL decoder from an art gallery in London. To get the decoder to work, Sydney must contact and crazed assassin in a Romanian insane asylum, but she ends up being trapped there by a sadistic K-Directorate agent. Will hunts down the woman pretending to be Kate Jones, but when he finally convinces her to talk to him, she completely disappears. Sloan realizes there is a mole in SD-6 when the CIA is too obvious about downloading info from SD-6's mainframe.

top
#7 Color Blind: Aired Sunday, November 25, 2001

Sydney gets the necessary information from Shepard and helps him escape from the insane asylum. She also finds out that Shepard was the one who killed Danny. Charlie proposes to Francie. Will gets his editor psyched about his story about Danny just as he's having second thoughts about writing it. Sydney plans to go to Oxford to steal the Rambaldi artifact that FTL has. Jack proves to Sydney that he wasn't KGB. Sloane realizes that he has a mole. More...

top
#8 Time Will Tell: Aired Sunday, December 2, 2001

Sloane's search for a mole forces Sydney to take a polygraph test. Sydney battles Anna Espinosa again in the search for Rambaldi's journal. Will gets a new lead in his story on Kate Jones even though his editor has demanded that he give it up. Sydney again thinks that her father was working for the KGB. More...

top
#9 Mea Culpa: Aired Sunday, December 9, 2001

Dixon barely survives the run-in with K-Directorate in Argentina and doesn't seem to remember how Sydney used the CIA to save his life. Will makes contact with the mystery man on the other end of Kate Jones's bug. With help from her father, Sydney avoids a trap set by Sloane and proves herself to SD-6, however she is kidnapped when SD-6 notices her transmitting something without authorization. Francie starts planning her wedding. More...

top
#10 Spirit: Aired Sunday, December 16, 2001

Jack barely saves his daughter from torture and death by setting up another SD-6 agent to take the fall for her. Sydney goes on a mission to Kenya to find out Annini Hassan's new identity. Jack goes to Cuba to find Hassan and kill him for SD-6, but he's really going to fake his death in exchange for his client list for the CIA. When Jack is captured, Sydney goes to rescue him but is also captured. Will becomes more and more confused when he finds a reference to something called SD-6 on the recording from Kate Jones's car. Vaughn gives Sydney a thoughtful Christmas gift. Sydney and Francie make fun of Will for sleeping with Jenny. More...

top
#11 The Confession: Aired Sunday, January 6, 2002

Jack and Sydney successfully get Hassan to the CIA and make SD-6 think he's dead. Syd goes to Greece to retrieve one of Hassan's old weapons that cloaks missiles. Vaughn thinks he's found out that Jack murdered a huge number of CIA agents 25 years ago under orders from the KGB. Vaughn convinces Sydney to report her father with him to the CIA, but Jack surprises them by informing them, in front of the director of the CIA, that it was actually Sydney's mother who committed those murders. More...

top
#12 The Box, Part 1: Aired Sunday, January 20, 2002

McKenas Cole, a former SD-6 operative left for dead after a botched mission in Chechnya, is back and ready for revenge, taking over SD-6 in order to steal something from the vault for "The Man." Cole tortures Sloane for the vault codes, while Sydney and Jack worry about the failsafe mechanism that will make opening the vault explode all of SD-6. Will decides to quit the McNeil story, because he's hurting more people than he's helping, but McNeil's daughter comes to see him and he gets a key that may help. More...

top
#13 The Box, Part 2: Aired Sunday, February 10, 2002

After Dixon sends a message to the CIA asking for help, Vaughn disobeys orders and helps Sydney prevent the destruction of SD-6. With some covert help from the CIA, Sydney takes out Cole's team and gives what he was trying to steal to Vaughn. Sloane makes a sacrifice to save SD-6. McNeil's daughter convinces Will to pick up his story again, promising to leave town so her father won't have to worry about her. More...

top
#14 The Coup: Aired Sunday, February 24, 2002

Sydney and Dixon are sent to Las Vegas to bug a K-Directorate agent who will be setting up a meeting between K-Directorate and The Man, who not only invaded SD-6 through Cole, but destroyed FTL on the same day. Sydney finds out Francie's fiance, Charlie, was indeed cheating on her, and tells Francie. Will starts his interview with David McNeil and begins his journey in discovering what SD-6 really is. Jack tries to be more fatherly towards Sydney and advises her to stay in school when she thinks of leaving. Sydney and Dixon go to Moscow to spy on a meeting between K-Directorate and a representative of The Man. More...

top
#15 Page 47: Aired Sunday, March 3, 2002

Sydney and Dixon retrieve the Rambaldi manuscript from K-Directorate before the Russian organization can trade it to Mr. Sark for their second-in-command who is being held hostage. Sydney uses her friendship with Sloane's sick wife, Emily, to get into his house and steal a key blank page from the Rambaldi manuscript for the CIA. When the CIA decodes the seemingly blank page, it surpringly contains a picture that looks eerily like Sydney herself. Francie mourns as she sends back engagement gifts. Jack tries to scare Will into giving up on the David McNeil story so that Sloane won't kill the dogged reporter. More...

top
#16 The Prophecy: Aired Sunday, March 10, 2002

SD-6 figures out that The Man is an ex-KGB agent named Khasinau, and the Alliance decides to vote as to whether or not to declare war against him. Sloane decidedly wants Khasinau dead, and tries to sway the vote his way, but the director of SD-9, Poole, is in Khasinau's pocket, and tricks Sloane into killing an old friend in order to make sure that war is not declared. The Dept. of Special Research starts to investigate Sydney and the prophecy written about her on page 47 of the Rambaldi manuscript. Sydney and Vaughn travel to Rome to prove that the DSR is wrong about Sydney, but they only end up proving them right. Sydney is taken into custody as the horrible prophecy of what she could do is revealed. More...

top
#17 Q&A: Aired Sunday, March 17, 2002

The FBI detains and questions Sydney about her ties to a mysterious Rambaldi prophecy, and Sydney recounts the events in her life that led up to this point. Vaughn and Jack figure out a way to prove Sydney is not the subject of the prophecy and preserve her cover with SD-6, but they must extract her from the FBI to do so. Sydney realizes that her mother could have survived her car accident, and it must be her mother who is the subject of the prophecy. More...

top
#18 Masquerade: Aired Sunday, April 7, 2002

Sydney decides to hunt for her mother, but finds out that hunting Khasinau may help her attain that goal. Sydney finds herself working with an ex-boyfriend from her training days in order to steal a computer core from Khasinau. Distraught over the discovery that his ex-wife may be alive, Jack is forced to see a CIA counselor. Will and Francie find out that Sydney has been lying about her travels. More...

top
#19 Snowman: Aired Sunday, April 14, 2002

Syd's torn between following her heart and finding her mother after Noah (Peter Berg) offers her a way out of SD-6 just as a KGB tape of Irina Derevko surfaces. But once she makes her decision, an assassin steps in to change her mind---and all the rules. Meanwhile, Will and Francie confront Syd about her secret travel plans; Vaughn begins to hide his agent's info from the FBI; and Jack seeks out Barnett's aid after hitting bottom. Barnett: Patricia Wettig. McCullough: Angus Scrimm. Khasinau: Derrick O'Connor. Agent Grey: Don Took.

Rating: 4.8/7

top
#20 The Solution: Aired Sunday, April 21, 2002

In order to catch Khasinau and get closer to finding her mother, Sydney and Vaughn set up an undercover sale of a Rambaldi artifact with Khasinau's representative, Mr. Sark. But Sydney's cover may be compromised when an SD-6 agent is sent in to thwart the sale. Meanwhile, Will is enticed to continue his investigation of SD-6 when he learns the identity of one his kidnappers; and Sloane is forced to make the most difficult decision of his life when his terminally ill wife, Emily (Amy Irving, "Traffic," "Yentl"), tells Sydney that she knows about SD-6. Guest starring are Amy Irving as Emily Sloane, James Handy as CIA Director Devlin, Michelle Arthur as Abigail, Kirk B.R. Woller as exterminator, Tony Amendola as Barcelo, David Anders as Mr. Sark, Alec Maray as Sial, Al Faris as Salim Wahid, Zuhair Haddad as Sayyad and Nicholas Kadi as Algosaibi. Written by John Eisendrath and directed by Dan Attias.

Rating: 5.5/8

top
#21 Rendezvous: Aired Sunday, May 5, 2002

Life as Will knows it is about to change forever when he's sent to find the person responsible for leaking information to him about SD-6. Meanwhile, Sloane finds himself on the cusp of finally tracking down Khasinau when SD-6 captures "The Man's" right-hand man, Mr. Sark; Dixon becomes suspicious of Sydney's activities; and Sloane continues to await the Alliance's decision regarding the fate of his wife, Emily.

top
#22 Almost Thirty Years: Aired Sunday, May 12, 2002

In order to save Will's life, Sydney and Vaughn must destroy a familiar looking Rambaldi device, while Jack makes a risky deal with Khasinau's representative, Mr. Sark. Meanwhile, the CIA believes that one of their own is a mole for "The Man"; the Alliance comes to a decision regarding the fate of Emily Sloane (Amy Irving); Dixon's suspicions about Sydney intensify; and Sydney finds herself face-to-face with "The Man." Guest starring are Greg Grunberg as Agent Weiss, Joey Slotnick as CIA Officer Haladki, David Anders as Mr. Sark, James Handy as CIA Director Devlin, Amy Irving as Emily Sloane, Michelle Arthur as Abigail, Angus Scrimm as McCullough, Elaine Kagan as June Litvack, Derrick O'Connor as Khasinau, Ric Young as suit & glasses, Wolf Muser as Claudio Vesolo and Emily Wachtel as worker. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams.

Rating: 6.5/10

top
Other seasons
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5