Episode Report Card M. Giant: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Velvet Underground
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 24 | Aired on 05.22.2005
At 6:19:24, Kiefer approaches Curtis, whose bullet wound wasn't fatal. I think all the Handsome Black Agent lives that have been lost over the years went right into him, somehow. He's Handsome Black Agent meets Highlander. "I'll be a lot better once we take this missile down," says Curtis stoically. Agent McCallan calls Kiefer over to the ImHelicopter; they've found ImhoTerror's shot-up GameBoy, part of which has survived enough to hold onto data that's currently being uploaded to CTU, where Potato Face and Lispy Skip furiously technobabble at each other while Kiefer listens on speakerphone. They decode "parallel columns," which Skip plots over a U.S. map in the hope that it's a flight path. To nobody's surprise, a diagonal red line starts tracing itself from central Iowa to -- where else? -- Southern California. "It's Los Angeles," Potato Face concludes. "It's gotta be?" Why? Why would ImhoTerror target Los Angeles, where the vast majority of his guys were working? Fortunately, the show has gotten more proactive about killing people before their motives quit making sense, so they don't have to explain themselves. Kiefer tells Potato Face to "run a time analysis," which causes a thirty-mile circle to become highlighted on the map. Buchanan says he'll call those coordinates in to the Air Force. The splitscreens go nuts as Buchanan gets on the phone and notifies his guy at the Air Force, who says his pilots are already in the air -- lucky, that. It's 6:21:12. Buchanan announces to the floor that the flyers should be able to find the missile quickly. "They'd better," says Potato Face, "since the casualty figures of an L.A. air strike would be over a million lives lost. Including ours." Since over nine million people live there, that number seems kind of conservative. Buchanan orders the military channel put on speaker, and in seconds the voices of Air Force pilots and officers are sounding out over the floor. Kiefer can also hear them over his earpiece. One of those pilots is shown in his cockpit, zooming past the Aon building in the second-worst special effect I've ever seen on this show.
While they're waiting for the search to turn something up, Lispy Skip asks Kiefer if the warhead could detonate if the missile gets shot down. Kiefer says it's unlikely, since it's designed only to explode when it hits the designated target. Skip pushes, and Kiefer downplays the risk, saying, "Yes, it's possible." As possible as anything else that has happened this season, I guess. Kiefer finishes, "But we don't have a choice. We're out of time here." He scans the sky as the fighter plane does a low-altitude flyby. And now it's up to the Air Force, as they calmly talk over their radios . We can hear them finding the missile, closing in, and locking an air-to-air missile on target. "Fox two, missile away," the pilot says, and launches. Everyone watches the sky or radar screens as the missile closes in, and Kiefer and Curtis at their rooftop vantage point can see a small, orange explosion off in the distance, over the city. If that image looks familiar to you, that's because it's in the dictionary next to the word "anticlimax." Although I'll admit that was mighty close, since the warhead was probably programmed to detonate over the city rather than on impact, so as to cause more damage. It was probably a fraction of a second from reaching its target coordinates and going off. "Splash one," says the pilot. "Target is down." The CTU floor breaks out into cheers. Lispy Skip and Potato Face actually smile at one another. Kiefer looks down and then back up again. But he doesn't smile, because it's only 6:22:55 and the major plotline has been resolved, which means the entire remaining thirty-plus minutes are going to be devoted only to what happens to him. And on this show, that's never good.