(S05E15) It's funny that after five years of elaborate disguises, wearing tight dresses and bright red wigs and bright blue wigs and faking Eastern European accents, the biggest and most difficult disguise that Sydney Bristow has had to don is ... herself. Or, more accurately, Syd pretending to be Anna Espinosa pretending to be Syd. Kudos to Jennifer Garner for giving a good performance as Anna. She could have just played herself (since she was herself), but she plays it just differently enough to make you believe it's Anna underneath.

I  love how Abrams and company are just going full steam ahead with Rambaldi. It's a lot like the earlier episodes. They really want to explain everything and end this the right way.

Syd/Anna has to join forces with Sark to obtain The Rose, which is in a prison in Rome. Vaughn and Dixon back up Syd/Anna (nice scene between Vaughn and Dixon, where Dixon gives her a picture of Isabelle). What is the Rose, besides a Bette Midler movie from the 70s?  No one is sure. But Sark has an idea on how to get into the prison: blow up an OTB place and get arrested. Breaking the law on purpose to get arrested so they can find something inside? I think I saw that on an old Three Stooges short. I mean, what if there was more than one prison in the area and they went there instead?

Sark fakes an attack in jail and beats up some guards so he can control the locks in the jail to get Syd/Anna to out of solitary so she can find The Rose. Sydney finds it, only it's not an "it" it's a "him," a guy who looks like Colonal Sanders after a day at the spa, all nice and groomed. He has a rose tattooed on his arm, and gives Syd/Anna something. She doesn't understand, and he tells her that if she doesn't understand, she'll never stop the Rambaldi prophecy.

I like how, even though Sloane is evil and obsessed, he still cares for Sydney. When he finds out that "Anna" killed "Sydney," he says that she deserved better, and attempts to choke Anna (Sydney). Marshall makes the alarms go off in the prison to distract Sloane (amazing what Marshall can control from thousands of miles away and how quickly - change traffic lights, access computers in prisons). Sloane takes the final piece of the Rambaldi puzzle and escapes. Vaughn saves Syd from a guard and goes to meet his daughter.

Sloane calls Syd when he realizes it was her who he was choking. He calls her a survivor, and thanks her for giving him everything he needs to fulfill Rambaldi's prophecy.

By the way, the B plot in all this, and by B I mean BORING, has Rachel finding out that Thomas lied. She confronts him and Thomas tells her the whole story. They spend the episode trying to find a car of all things, and hotwire it to give to Korman, the guy who killed his wife. She was killed by mistake. It was supposed to be Thomas killed. Korman gets into the car and tells Thomas not to follow him, but Thomas planted a bomb in the car.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I wonder where the writers were going with this story.  Was it supposed to connect to Prophet 5, or be a new standalone story if the show was picked up for a sixth season?

Next week: the two hour series finale! On Monday night!