Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Putting the "Dent" in "President"
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 16 | Aired on 04.03.2005
At CTU's staging area near the ImHideout, Kiefer gives last-minute instructions to Agent Castle. As he puts his communicator earpiece into place, he gets confirmation that explosive charges have already been set on the warehouse door. Good thing the ImHideout doesn't have any security features that might have thwarted this plan. Like, say, windows. Kiefer announces, "Gentlemen, we are a go," and hops into the shotgun seat of a CTU Humvee. The caravan is on the move, headed towards the warehouse at full speed. Kiefer's Hummer spearheads the charge while he cocks his gun and counts down to the order to blow the door. Were you able to get through that sentence without snickering? I also tried to work the word "thrust" in there, but it just came off too obvious.
A couple of minions are just standing around inside that door when it explodes extravagantly and Kiefer's Humvee blasts in through in a curtain of flame and splinters. The shooting starts almost immediately as Kiefer and the other agents pour out of their vehicles. ImhoTerror is seen running up a stairwell by himself. The IT minion orders his men to start deleting computer files. I now see that what I thought was a pair of suspenders last week is in fact a shoulder holster. As if IT people needed to be more scary. The shooting continues, and I'm pretty sure there are way more than eight bad guys in there. Kiefer hides behind a crate and readies his knife as an Uzi-bearing minion comes running towards him, unaware he's there. At the last moment he springs out, pushes the goon against the far wall, and gives him two quick, brutal knife-jabs that are enough to kill him quickly and silently. Kiefer turns, holding the body upright against the wall with his back as he switches back to his handgun, then moves on, leaving the body to slide to the floor. Not sure what the point of all that sneakiness was, but it was bad-ass.
The folks at CTU monitor the goings-on silently. Red flashes of gunfire sparkle on the green-tinted, infrared birds-eye view of the warehouse being displayed on the big screen. I'm not sure if that's how that would actually look. I could compare it to the night-vision shots on Survivor if that show had more firefights, but Mark Burnett has been ignoring that suggestion of mine since Season One.
Kiefer continues making his first-person-shooter way through the warehouse, taking guys out and eventually reaching the IT area. Between him and the CTU agents arriving at the flank, they manage to surround the bad guys and secure the space. Kiefer checks the corpses, saying, "ImhoTerror's not here. Notify the perimeter." Why? How would that affect the perimeter's life in any way? He goes to the IT minion's laptop, whose screen shows a multi-window display that includes a map of the U.S. with a red circle around Los Angeles and what are some art director's idea of flight vectors. "I can't stop this thing from deleting," he says. I don't know how he knows it's deleting in the first place, since there's no animated, eraser-wielding paper clip grinning at him from the monitor.