Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT You Can Take the Man Out of CTU…
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.08.2005
7:22:11. A stretch limo pulls up to a hotel entrance. DoDder comes out of the hotel, followed by Kiefer and the Secretary of Defense, played by William Devane. DaD is on his cell phone about the train bombing, getting confirmation that thirty-two are dead -- including, presumably, the half-squished woman -- and that they're thinking it was an act of terrorism. DaD tells Kiefer that when he gets to CTU, he should "get all the details and call me." I'm like, "Yeah, right, they'll just hand all of that over," and then I remember who Kiefer is talking to. Kiefer agrees. DaD then tells Kiefer and DoDder both that the meeting with "Richard" is to stay just between them. Then he shifts gears, saying to DoDder, "I tried to get a hold of you last night. Where were you?" DoDder doesn't say she was under his undersecretary. "I had dinner with a friend," she dissembles. "Anyone I know?" DaD asks pleasantly. DoDder lies that it wasn't. DaD smirks Devanely at her, then at Kiefer, and ducks into the limo. The Secretary of Defense couldn't get a hold of a top aide and it's not that big a deal? What if he'd wanted to start a war or something? I've seen public radio hosts get a lot more upset over less. Okay, just the one. Kiefer tells DoDder he'll call her from CTU, and she joins her dad in the car. Kiefer hops into his rented Kiefmobile, a late-model sedan. How the mighty have fallen.
CTU. Lispy Skip rings Potato Face's extension, which gives her an excuse to be snippy with him some more and exposition at the same time that he's been at CTU for over a month. Lispy Skip tells Potato Face he's transferring a call from a friend of hers. This friend turns out to be Lukas, whom Potato Face tells she can't take personal calls at work. He tells her it's not personal; he found something on the Net he thinks she should know about. This is his idea of an anonymous tip? Calling a friend and telling her who he is? How has he not gotten pinched yet? Idiot. Potato Face figures out that the code he found is something he wouldn't have even seen if he hadn't been pirating software, but Witless would rather talk about the fact that it looks like somebody is trying to set up a major internet attack, and that parts of the code weren't in English. "It looked Middle-Eastern," Witless says. "Arabic or Turkish, maybe?"
Meanwhile, across the floor, Special Agent Breck and Curtis are showing Driscoll that they've found a connection between TerrorTurk and a guy named "Maurice" who runs a dry cleaning place in Studio City -- a business owned by a holding company based in Ankara. Driscoll tells them to send someone named "Ronnie" over there, and they hop to. But not before is Curtis is tragically felled by a sudden, fatal bout of amebic dysentery. Potato Face comes up to tell Driscoll about the call from Witless (making sure to drop his name in there, like, the only thing he does worse than make anonymous calls is pick discreet friends) and about the internet virus, which she has in the last thirty seconds figured out was launched from a server in Turkey. Potato Face offers to get to work on it, but Driscoll tells her to concentrate on TerrorTurk and the train bombing and leave the virus to the FBI. Potato Face makes a julienne face. She looks weirdly tan this season. She's Baked Potato Face now.