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
Now it's Novick's voice ringing through The Man's digital sanctum. "I'm not comfortable with all this secrecy, Jack," Novick says on the audio playback of the call he was just on two minutes ago. Nice "secure line" you called on, there, champ. I've met stand-up comedians who are more secure than that. It's 12:09:26, and we can see that Walt is also listening to the call over his own cell phone. "Your man didn't do his job," The Man says. Walt blames The Man right back, and wants to know what he's supposed to do now. "At this point," The Man smirks, "There's only one thing you can do." Kill everyone? It's 12:10:17.
12:14:32. Yellow Tie and his truck driver stand around at the port, watching a crane lift their cargo container off of the semi; Chloe glowers through the only three seconds of screen time she's getting between now and the final act; and Kiefer's behind the wheel of a CTUmobile. If he's not CTU, why does he get access to the motor pool? They should have made him steal another helicopter. Meanwhile, at Not Camp David's stable building, Aaron and a couple of other Secret Service agents are looking for the First Lady. Why are they searching there when everyone thinks she's un-stable? No, don't get up, Sars; I'll fire myself. Aaron notices that one of the stall doors is slightly ajar, so he slides it open and calmly asks FLOTUS to come out. She does, but not without spilling her whole conspiracy spiel on Aaron in the process. She begs him not to let them take her away, but Aaron's just doing his job. Although he's clearly got doubts. But since the other two agents are back in earshot, he doesn't really seem to have much choice. The other two agents lead FLOTUS away while Aaron looks conflicted: torn between his dual responsibilities of following orders on the one hand, and swallowing crazy people's half-baked conspiracy theories on the other.
It's 12:16:15 as Buchanan catches Audrey woolgathering in the Situation Room. He confirms that the airports and the Highway Patrol are looking for the canisters, although there's no mention of the Sentox nerve gas specifically. Audrey assures him that "the bulletin only describes the missing canisters. There's no mention of chemical weapons." One of those statements can't be true, considering the canisters had the biohazard symbol stamped on them. But with the CHP and the TSA on the case, every route out of the city should be covered, right?
D'oh! We're back at the port. It looks like Yellow Tie's truck driver is in the cargo container, futzing with the canisters somehow. A small electronic device he sticks to the side of one of them gives the readout "UNLOCK CODE VERIFIED" when he presses a button. Those are fancy Thermoses indeed. Satisfied, he removes the device, shuts it off, and slips it into his pocket before putting the lid back on the crate full of canisters. He then leaves the container and locks it behind him, only to find Yellow Tie lurking outside and asking what he's up to. The driver says he was just making sure the canisters are secure so they don't knock around during the loading process. Yellow Tie assures him that he and his men already took care of that, so the driver hands over a bunch of customs documents and the electronic device, which he says is the remote trigger with the arming code. The driver asks for the rest of his money, Yellow Tie puts him off, and the driver walks away, clearly wanting to push it but deciding not to in light if what he just almost got caught doing. Once he's gone, Yellow Tie glances as the container suspiciously, aware that the driver may have been up to no good in there. Or, as the case may be, up to good.