As a metaphor for Sydney's family life, the double-agent conceit does quadruple duty. Sydney yearns to be true to herself and the people she loves, but her job pulls her in all directions and pits her loyalties against each other. She longs to forge bonds, but this longing requires her to lie, conceal things and mistrust everyone. She is desperate for love, but her love kills. (Sydney has indirectly caused the death of one lover, literally killed another and is unable to consummate her relationship with a third because of company policy.) She wants to care about other people's problems, but she can't share -- or shoulder -- her own.

In another early episode, she explains that she was approached by SD-6 because she "fit a profile." Indeed. She learned everything she needed to know about the job right at home. Sydney -- and not a slick, supercilious and emotionally detached tough guy -- is the perfect woman for the job. It's perfectly tailored to her particular dysfunctions, after all.

Some of the job requirements:

A deep-seated sense of alienation. When she was approached to work for SD-6, Sydney was a college student who didn't like any of her subjects, wasn't speaking to her father, believed her mother to be dead and described her social life as being limited to the dorm salad bar.

A vague nihilism. Where there's harm, there's Sydney in the way. If the "dorm salad bar" reference just hints at a possible eating disorder, Sydney's decision to join SD-6 confirms her attraction to danger. Several times throughout the past two seasons, Sydney has derived courage from her despair. Her life is punctuated with loss, lies and betrayal; but every loss gives her reckless courage a boost.

A gift for shifts. A perfect chameleon, Sydney literally disappears inside her alias on each mission. She slips into alternative personalities and nationalities as easily as she changes her clothes. The ability to become whatever the authority figures in her life want her to be is obviously a trait she learned young.

A compulsive need to please. In between strenuous efforts to bring down the bad guys, find her mother, avenge her fiancé's murder, beat jet lag, resist her mad lust for her handler, repair the relationship with her father, learn to trust again, escape from torture chambers, obtain microchips from the larynxes of dead spies, not blow her cover, engage in hand-to-hand combat with trained killers all over the world, etc., Sydney has a poignant ability to sit still and smile sweetly as her friends prattle on about their petty problems. She also keeps the house neat.

A lifetime's supply of guilt. If you've ever wondered what part you played in your parents' divorce, think of what it must feel like for Sydney. Her mother married her father with the sole intention of betraying him, and even Sydney's birth was a function of her deep cover. For a while, it appeared that Sydney might turn out to be responsible for Armageddon, according to an ancient prophecy. As if this weren't enough guilt to be carrying around, Sydney eventually figures out that the woman in the prophecy is not herself, but her mother. Nobody likes to point the finger at Mom, even if she did abandon you for the KGB.

With any luck, the new Super Sunday format won't mess with the old formula. The last thing we want is to see Sydney reduced to a workaday spook. After all, she's a spy we can relate to; the perfect spy for the post-Cold War, post-Bond era: A Gen-X workaholic with good intentions, serious doubts and a truckload of emotional baggage, kicking ass for a better, more loving world.

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