Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Day 5: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 4 | Aired on January 15, 2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Now that Kiefer's in the hands of the terrorists, they force him to give CTU a new attack profile that'll lead Curtis and his men into an ambush. Logan is having second thoughts about signing the treaty under the circumstances, as is the Russian president. In the middle of planning the rescue operation, Buchanan welcomes his new boss, Lynn McGill (Sean Astin). If by "welcomes" you mean "barely endures." McGill's micromanaging appears likely to queer the whole operation, but his tight-assedness ends up saving the day. The hostages are rescued, the terrorists are killed, Logan's treaty is signed as planned, and Kiefer and Derek bond like motherfuckers. Unfortunately, McGill still wants to bring Kiefer into custody, even though everyone else has pretty much come on board with Kiefer's assertion that he's being framed.
With all of the hostage-takers dead, the TerrorTorch is passed to a guy who was pretending to be a hostage, but is really working with the bad guys. We see the fake hostage entering some underground vault, where he and some other guys crack open a Sam's Club-sized stock of sealed canisters with biohazard labels on them. You know that's not good. Also not good? Walt chloroforms the First Lady and steals back the FLOTUS/Palmer transcript before she can tell anyone what she knows. I'm telling you right now, I'm only willing to put up with that story line for as long as Jean Smart continues to entertain me. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Well, folks, this recap represents a milestone. It's the one-hundredth episode of 24, which means that there are officially enough episodes for the show to go into syndication. Soon, it'll be all over the double-digit cable channels. Even more than it already has been, I mean. It's a little embarrassing for me, because I'm on record as having predicted that the novelty would wear off early in the second season, just like it did with Murder One. So the lesson here is that all of my predictions are wrong. That said, I predict that this season is going to suck. Hey, it's worth a try.
On to the episode. After the rescue operation had to be aborted last hour, Buchanan is now responding by taking decisive action. Specifically, he's called a meeting of every speaking role in CTU, as well as, remotely, Curtis. Cringe, terrorists! You cannot defeat Buchanan's meeting-fu! Our guys still can't get back in touch with Kiefer after their transmission was abruptly cut off. Audrey wonders if Kiefer went dark on purpose, but Curtis doesn't think so, since their call ended mid-sentence. That doesn't necessarily mean anything; it's how I got away with ditching annoying people when I worked at a call center. Buchanan says they're going to have to proceed without Kiefer. Chloe points out that writing Kiefer out of the plan reduces the likelihood of success to less than twenty percent. Buchanan basically says that if they don't try at all, the likelihood of success is zero percent. Which would be lower. Even Chloe can't argue with that math.
At the airport, Kiefer is divested of his cell phone, which a minion hands over to Beresch. Beresch asks Kiefer what CTU's plan is. When Kiefer hesitates, Beresch ominously reminds him that he knows Kiefer cares about Derek, which is why Kiefer surrendered in the first place (the question of why Kiefer cares about Derek remains an open one). Kiefer folds, saying that the plan is for CTU to storm the north entrance of the terminal on his command. Beresch is so grateful for Kiefer's help that he doesn't kill Derek. I wonder if he knows that Kiefer is the one who blew up one of his guys last hour. I mean, we know that Walt told The Man, but we don't know if The Man told Beresch. In any case, since Derek's off the table, Beresch calls for another hostage to grease. Kiefer urgently tells Beresch that this isn't going to work, since the U.S. doesn't negotiate with terrorists, but Beresch figures that a wuss like President Logan will give up on his plan to sign the anti-terrorism treaty after another hostage-killing or two on live TV.