Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dead Kiefer Walking
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.30.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Post-exposure, Kiefer isn't done being exposed. He meets up with the CDC (including Dr. Sunny Macer from Season Three) to get stripped off and scrubbed down in the middle of the road, while Moss returns to FBI-DC and Hodges's men deliver the bioweapon and Tony to Hodges at Starkwood. Taylor drafts Olivia as her new temporary Chief of Staff moments before hearing about the biological threat and becoming determined to move in on Starkwood, whatever the risks. Olivia also drafts Aaron as her Secret Service protection, overriding his protests about being retired. Moss apologizes to Walker and asks her to debrief Kiefer when he arrives, as though he needs another debriefing this hour. When Kiefer returns to FBI-DC, he's infected but not contagious, because having him in quarantine for the rest of the season would be pretty inconvenient. Back at Starkwood, Greg Seaton says he'd rather spring Tony and give up Hodges than follow him to prison. Seaton offers up the bioweapon's exact location on the sprawling compound in exchange for immunity. While the FBI prepares to move on Starkwood, Kiefer doesn't even get to come along. Which is just as well, because Seaton was only playing Tony and sending the searchers to the wrong part of the compound. That leaves Moss and his men sitting ducks, to be surrounded by Starkwood mercenaries prepared to shoot if they try to continue the search. Good thing Kiefer hung back, so he can swoop in and save the day next hour, right?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We've got Larry Moss, President Allison Taylor, FBI Agent Renee Walker, Jack Bauer, Tony Almeida, and Jonas Hodges in this week's previouslies freeze-frames. I don't see anyone about to be dead in there, aside from the obvious-yet-obviously-impossible one.
At the roadside where Kiefer parked the semi truck so he could first fix the bioweapon and then get it stolen out from under him, a small army from the Centers for Disease Control has shown up in their hazmat suits and are now shaking all of Kiefer's personal effects into Ziploc bags. There are both red and white hazmat suits, lending the whole scene an "Alice in Wonderland" feel that I'm sure is totally unintentional. A red-suit leads Kiefer over to the CDC doctor in charge, who just happens to be Sunny Macer from the whole Inn Fection arc during Season Three. Small world. Kiefer doesn't recognize her because he wasn't in that storyline, but she asks him to get undressed anyway, so clearly they're not having any trouble breaking the ice. A couple of other guys are schlepping a portable decontamination pool over as Kiefer tells Macer what he knows about the bioweapon, which isn't much. She stares curiously when he takes his shirt off, revealing his old Chinese torture scars. "This is not a reaction. I've had these scars," Kiefer non-explains. A red-suit gives Kiefer a shot in the arm while he stands there in his blinding white boxers, and then he's invited to step into the knee-deep pool. Before doing so, he drops his shorts. Unfortunately, nobody yells, "Whoa, who told you to do that? Put that thing away!" Duly denuded, he submits to a shower, a scrubbing, and some creative framing straight out of Austin Powers.
Moss walks back into FBI-DC, and Janis immediately asks him why the CDC has shut down six miles of Highway 236. Moss tells Janis about the bioweapon breach, Kiefer's exposure ("Oh, my God," Janis says dutifully), and his assumption that Starkwood is bringing the bioweapon back to its HQ in Virginia, along with Tony Almeida. He wants Janis to pull together everything they have on Starkwood. She reminds him that it's practically a military base, and he says they won't do anything until they have proof. "Then I'll inform the president, and she'll decide how to proceed." Hey, watch the spoilers, Larry.
At Starkwood, the stolen helicopter lowers the weapon onto the trailer of a flatbed truck, and Tony is pulled out of Stokes's SUV and frog-marched into a building while he and Seaton exchange a long look. It's almost as though they know each other, which they don't yet, but they're about to. Hodges gets in Seaton's face and quietly shares his opinion that Tony's not going to tell them anything. "Know the psychology of your subject. It's in our manual," he says. So that's another of the lessons 24 teaches us about torture: it always works, except on the good guys. Seaton follows Tony as if he's been given instructions, which, if he was, I confess that I missed them. A Starkwood tech named Tom calls Hodges over and tells him the damaged canister has been isolated, so they were lucky. Which is why everyone was wearing gas masks when they took delivery of the shipment. "They know we have the weapons, so that's not so lucky," Hodges corrects. Tom says it's going to take two hours to get it ready, but Hodges says that's too long. "They're coming. And they'll be coming with everything they've got, and the only thing that's going to stop them is getting these weapons ready to deploy," Hodges insists. Tom promises to do the best he can, and with a frustrated eye-roll, Hodges sends Tom and crew on their way down the driveway with the weapon. Not to tell Hodges how to run his company or anything, but is this really something he wants done as a rush job?