Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Die Hard At CTU
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.06.2007
Out on the CTU floor, Morris is looking at a satellite image of Bloomfield, with Cheng's Hummer parked right outside, visible to the stars. This giant facility, and it doesn't even have so much as a carport. Milo tells Morris to do some technobabble with it, and then asks Chloe how LAPD's perimeter is coming together. Chloe drones an answer, and Milo notices from her tone that something's up. So Morris helpfully chimes in, "Chloe and I have split up." He calmly says that they're all still being adult and professional about it, and advises Milo to stay out of it. Milo can't agree fast enough. He's already had enough awkwardness for one day, and besides, if anyone starts paying attention to him, they might notice how completely different his hair is all of a sudden. Someone comes over with a transcript of Marilyn's statement for Marilyn to review. Remember Marilyn? Chloe says that she'll take care of it. Nobody seems to have a problem with a top analyst leaving the floor right before a major operation in order to do some administrative busywork.
In the CTU ready room, Doyle and his armored agents are getting locked and loaded. Nadia comes in and calls for attention, looking quite tiny among all the Kevlar in the room. She briefs the men on their mission, a task which seems to involve repeating a lot of stuff from the last episode. Long story short: they have to get inside Bloomfield, nab Cheng, and recover the component. And if they fuck it up, the Russians will attack the U.S. So no pressure or anything. Nadia finishes her speech at 2:07:22 and opens the floor for questions. Nobody has any. As the briefing breaks up, Doyle goes up to Nadia and says she's doing well. "I'm just trying to keep the roof from caving in until my replacement gets here," Nadia replies. Not to get ahead of ourselves here, but it's not the roof she needs to be worrying about. Doyle says that they're bringing every available agent to Bloomfield, and that if Cheng's there, they'll get him. Better hope he's there, then, since you're putting all your eggs in one basket. Nadia tells Doyle to be careful. Doyle nods, making that face he does when he's making a big deal of how he's not making a big deal of something. Leaving the ready room, Nadia sees that Milo saw the whole thing, and that he doesn't look happy. Although that might be because someone stuck his head in the toilet during the previouslies.
Mirroring the scene at CTU, a bunch of buff Chinese guys are also locking and loading. Except that these guys aren't in Kevlar; most of them don't even have sleeves. That is how buff they are. Cheng's tech support guy is there too, and he's learned Mandarin since the last hour. He and an arriving Cheng have a subtitled conversation about how Tech Support Guy needs to upload some data to the men. Okay, one never expects 24 to avoid stereotypes all the time, but the implication that all Asians are walking PDAs is kind of offensive. Tech Support Guy isn't sure the dudes can pull off whatever Cheng has planned for them, but Cheng is confident. He calls over the leader -- a guy who looks like an Asian version of McSteamy from Grey's Anatomy, if you can imagine such a gentleman -- and tells them that they need to finalize their attack plan so that they can attack "the target" in fifteen minutes. Doesn't fifteen minutes seem like kind of a short time to finalize an attack plan? Even for someone who's capable of conjuring a small army of commandos out of thin air? It's 2:09:03.