Episode Report Card M. Giant: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT If We Only Had the Nerve Gas
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 6 | Aired on 01.29.2006
Speaking of which, Yellow Tie is still riding shotgun with the truck driver, who exposits that once the cargo is on the ship, it'll reach "your country" in eight days, and it'll take another day for ground transportation to Yellow Tie's base camp. The driver offers to help get the canisters to the target, but Yellow Tie says they have ground transportation all set up to Moscow. And then they drive right through the gates to the seaport. Lucky for them nobody's looking for what they're carrying.
Logan's standing around in his Not Camp David Situation Room doing nothing, as you do when you're the President of the United States. Novick comes in carrying a DVD, which he hands off to the Secret Service agent at the door. Logan asks if FLOTUS has been found yet, and Novick says no, although the Secret Service is pretty sure she's still on the grounds. Well, yeah, I would think so. Presidential compounds tend to be tricky to get in and out of unnoticed. Logan's frustrated that the search is taking so long, and Novick has to calm him down again. Novick's job sucks. It's bad enough that he got demoted from Chief of Staff between seasons, but now his primary function appears to be mitigating Presidential freak-outs. Walt enters, and Novick says, "I was just setting up the video." He was? Setting things up is easy when you have Secret Service guys everywhere. Surprisingly, Logan doesn't complain that having a Secret Service guy running the AV equipment means one less guy looking for his wife. He explains to Logan that some terrorists made a little home video about the effects of nerve gas, and that's what they're about to watch. On the screen, a barefoot guy in a dingy room paces around nervously, then starts to panic, then starts to seize up while pink foam floods out of his mouth. Novick narrates all of this matter-of-factly, but the President has seen enough, and has Novick stop the video. That's one thing that would suck about being President: you'd have to watch a lot more snuff films. Novick has more bad news: the "Sentox 6" gas that was stolen is even more lethal than the gas they just saw at work. Impressively multitasking, he pulls out his BlackBerry as he explains that the stolen gas, if released in a populated area, will remain in a lethal cloud for much longer. I've found that that's also the case in weeks when I've eaten a lot of Thai food. Meanwhile, Novick's BlackBerry screen reads, "It's Jack Bauer. Call me on a secure line." In answer to the President's question, Novick says they aren't any closer to finding the gas. And Kiefer adds to his text message, "Tell no one." Novick excuses himself, saying that he has to make a call to the State Department. They get blamed for everything, don't they? Walt looks a little nervous as he watches Novick go, and seems rather distracted as his meeting with Logan continues. Yes, Walt is actually worried about getting in trouble with a boss that Novick just blew off in order to make a call to an until-recently-dead ex-CTU agent.