Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Finger Pointing
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.17.2010
A CTUmobile screeches to a halt in the security tunnel entrance at 5:16:53, and Cole and Kiefer climb out, Cole on the phone insisting on being the first to talk to the dead men's wives. After he hangs up, Hastings intercepts him at the entrance, and while Kiefer is wanded by security, the boss quietly tells Cole, "I know you asked for more boots on the ground, but what happened happened...you put your opinion on record, it's gonna flag an internal review from Division. It's only gonna hurt us moving forward." Ah, so Hastings is a weasel. Awesome. Hastings turns to greet Kiefer, who tells him, "Sorry about the loss of your men." Hastings thanks him for that, and for finding a lead that has already panned out. Kiefer is also surprised at how quickly that happened, and agrees to be debriefed by Chloe right after he makes a quick phone call. As soon as he steps away to use his cell, Hastings goes right back to work on Cole, who objects to being asked to lie on record. Hastings weasels some more, until Cole suggests, "maybe you'd like to debrief for me," Oooh, no he didn't!
Kiefer reaches Spawn on the phone just as her husband is loading Teri into her car seat, and any hope he might have had that this call would go smoothly is dashed when her first question is where he is. "CTU," he says after a reluctant pause. Spawn asks if it's about what's going on a the U.N., which she can see on a TV news screen, and Kiefer says yes but it won't be long and he'll meet her at the airport. "Dad, what's going on?" she asks seriously. He says he'll explain later, and she insists on coming to pick him up there. Kiefer agrees to that, because nothing ever bad happens when Kim comes to CTU, right?
Having finished his call, Kiefer walks up to Hastings, who is still leaning on Cole, now by guilt-tripping him about how he was the only one who believed Cole could run field ops despite his tender age. Politely pretending not to hear any of it, Kiefer asks where to find Chloe, and Hastings pleasantly directs him upstairs. "Think about what I said," is Hastings' exit line to Cole. Intimidating.
Kiefer climbs the stairs to the mezzanine level at 5:19:15 and finds Chloe in a conference room. Sitting down, he says, "I'm sorry, but we gotta do this kinda quick." But instead of debriefing him, Chloe starts telling Kiefer she thinks Reed is innocent, and that the files were planted. She's even got traffic-cam photos of someone using the service entrance of Reed's building at about the time of the U.N. hack. She shows them to Kiefer, and the face of Toombs is plainly visible in them. Too bad they don't know who he is yet. Otherwise they might wonder how he was at Reed's building and blowing up the CTU helicopter at the same time. "What if he went into her apartment and used her laptop to break into the servers?" Chloe wonders. Kiefer's not convinced, and wonders why he's the one seeing this instead of Hastings. Chloe says the boss blew her off, but he might listen to Kiefer. Because there's such a great history of weasely CTU bosses doing just that. But it's not even going to get to that stage, because Kiefer's not listening to Chloe. As you'll recall, Spawn's on her way to pick him up to go to Los Angeles in an hour. What about the bags still at his apartment? Is he going to fly back for them next week? Or will he just fake his own death to get out of the rest of his lease? Chloe begs Kiefer to take ten minutes, arguing that if they have the wrong person, the real insider is still in place and acting as a serious threat to Hassan. "I'm sorry, Chloe, it's not my problem," Kiefer says. Ooh, cold. But on the other hand, it really is kind of about time he started saying that once in a while.