Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Small Consulation
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 12 | Aired on 03.04.2007
5:54:02. The Veep is live on the air, breaking the news about Wayne's assassination attempt. I'm thinking that if people's news broadcasts are suddenly interrupted during a national crisis by a live address from the Vice-President, they're already going to have a pretty good idea of what's going on before he even starts talking. The Veep's speaking from the Battle Bridge instead of the blown-up broadcast studio or the fake Oval Office set from earlier. I hope they just keep moving the cameras around the Bunker all season, until finally someone ends up broadcasting from the steam pipe trunk distribution venue. The Veep names the late Assad as the prime suspect, just as planned. He announces that he plans to push "an aggressive agenda of national security. One that will, out of necessity, suspend certain civil liberties. This is the price of war. Make no mistake. That is exactly what this is." Yeah, non-whites! Look out, you!
We're close in on Nadia as she's watching this from CTU, and she decides that, instead of complaining, she'd better make the most of however many minutes of freedom she's got left. She goes over to Chloe and asks whether she's heard from Kiefer yet. She hasn't. Nadia asks if they're monitoring Consular communications. From his place at the desk next to Chloe's, Morris (holding it together quite well for the five minutes he's in this episode -- which is still five more minutes than Milo is) says that they are, but that it's all encrypted. Fortunately, he's working on a way around it. A bit of Anglo-Russian technobabble later, Morris has some Cyrillic text on his screen that looks like it mentions the phrase "American agent" a few times. That's not exactly news, but Morris knows enough Russian to realize that it's saying Kiefer's in custody.
Buchanan's watching the Veep's address up in his office, but he mutes the TV to take the call from Nadia reporting Morris's news. Buchanan doesn't have a response to that. Nadia suggests that they notify the Veep, but Buchanan wants to hold off, since the Veep's already in trouble with Suvarov and doesn't need this grief on top of everything else. Instead, Buchanan tells Nadia to have Special Ops put together an attack plan: "I want to give the Vice-President the option to take the Consulate by force, and hopefully rescue Jack." And I want to see how excited the Veep gets when he has a real, honest-to-God chance to order an attack on some actual Russians during his first two hours in office.