"I trust you. It's everyone else that's the problem."
I wish that sometimes Alias was a little more clever and plotty with their episode titles. I like that the 30 seconds here actually refers to something in the episode, which doesn't always happen, but in this particular case, it seems that the 30 seconds isn't how long Nadia's heart has to stop before the Rambaldi cure works, but rather, how long our hope lasts that Nadia's actually going to get to live through the episode.
I also started to get suspicious about Renee's fate (much to my own dismay, because I simply have adored her this season,) but Syd kept telling Renee how good she was and how she should join and APO, and something about it set off alarm bells, because I didn't really believe Renee would ever get the chance to say yes, regardless of the fact that she decidedly refused each of Sydney's offers. I got suspicious that the choice would be taken away from her in the end.
First, though, we get Syd and Renee working together, and they really are a good team, even Syd sees it. Renee reminds her that she's a criminal, and Syd talks about official pardons, because, really, if they'll pardon Sloane, they'll pardon anyone. She tells Renee just to think about joining APO, and Renee says, "Ok," and then a beat later, "No." I love it.
Back to Nadia and her 30 seconds: Jack sure does look as though he believes Sloane is about to kill Nadia when Sloane's actually administering the cure. And that really gave me pause, because Jack knows Sloane, and so if Jack believes Sloane is capable of killing Nadia, even if it were to end her suffering, then that's something we should really give due consideration.
But Nadia survives, for the moment, thanks to the Rambaldi serum. Jack gets even more suspicious, and rightly so, because Sloane didn't fund the research into this particular cure quite in the way he explains to Jack, unless by "fund" you mean "sell his soul to Prophet 5 for it."
I really like Jack and Nadia's interactions, because I think Jack has never really been comfortable with Nadia, and I think it's not just the fact that she's Sloane and Irina's child and a reminder of that terribly complicated part of his life, but that part of him thinks that Nadia could turn out to be just a little too much like Irina - in both the ways he likes and the ways he loathes - and so he can't ever let his guard down.
In this episode, Jack and Nadia make small talk about the fact that Jack finally bought the hybrid car and I just broke down into hysterics at that point, because it means Jack and Nadia have previously made small talk about Jack buying a hybrid car and they're secretly surveilling Sloane to see if he's gone all beating-a-dilettante-to-death-with-a-crowbar-crazy again and the entire thing is so delightfully absurd.
Of course, Jack pulls himself together and makes a gesture to Nadia to remind her, good or bad, Sloane isn't the only family she has, and thank god for that, because, even though he really is getting a suitcase of clothes for Nadia from deep secret storage, Sloane is also getting Page 47, which, disturbingly, seemed to have been kept nestled next to Nadia's favorite sweater.
That's the point in the episode where I realized I'd never truly believed that Sloane loved Nadia more than Rambaldi, or even that he loved them equally. Any way you look at it, and no matter what empty protestations Sloane might offer, Nadia was first and foremost a tool in Sloane's quest, and though I believe he loved her, she was like an artifact, and once she had served her purpose, Sloane wasn't going to let saving her get in his way.
Nadia's death was horrifying, especially since it came after she revealed that she knew what was happening the whole time she was in her anti-killer-zombie coma and that she suffered every single moment because of her father's Rambaldi faith, and then, it ultimately kills her. Most disturbing of all, the circumstances of her her death revealed the secret message Sloane needed in Page 47. She was, in the end, the device that Sloane at first thought she was.
But Alias isn't done with giving our hearts serious wounds: Anna-as-Sydney kills Renee, so that poor Renee dies thinking Sydney killed her after all, Sloane goes full force crazy and we get his voice over while Jack finds Nadia's body and while Sydney finds Renee and I rushed right into the next episode, I See Dead People, because I figured if this was the point in the season where they started killing off characters I loved one by one, I might as well get the pain over with in one night.