Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Out of Time
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.15.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.That stolen nuclear missile is probably going to be in the air for a few more hours, so we have plenty of time for the following: ImhoTerror has turned out to have at least one more escape in him after all. After he gets away FOR THE FIFTH TIME TODAY, the best lead CTU has is a record of a call to his cell phone from -- you guessed it -- DiCK. CTU hauls in DaD's son for another round of questioning, but even with the return of DaD himself, they don't find out much from him aside from the fact that heâ¦umâ¦likes boys. And that call to ImhoTerror was made by the female accomplice of a mystery guy with whom DiCK was having sex at the time. And you'll never guess who that female accomplice is, unless you guessed Naked Mandy, which of course you did. Palmer does what he does best, namely, lets himself get distracted from the main problem by an internal threat to presidential authority. But this time it's on the Veep's behalf, and he handles the situation rather efficiently, so it's okay. Soul Patch and Bitchelle call down the mother of all jinxes on themselves when they finally make up and agree to leave the counterterrorism racket together. So of course he ends up going out into the field with Kiefer and getting taken hostage by Naked Mandy. You suppose Bitchelle will commit treason to save his life? I think that would be only fair. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on 24: The Veep got pissed at Palmer for ordering an attack on the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles. Not that that will matter this hour. In fact, while recording the show, I accidentally hit the channel button instead of the volume button on my remote, and I ended up taping a couple of seconds of Girlfriends that were equally relevant to this episode. Dr. Besson takes us through a temporal wormhole with a moment from last week's episode that might as well have been part of that episode's previouslies. DoDder was pissed at Kiefer, but Lee directed Kiefer to ImhoTerror's latest hideout. Kiefer actually caught his quarry, but not in time to prevent the launch of the missile with its stolen nuclear warhead. The following takes place between 4:00 AM and 5:00 AM.
Kiefer and Curtis are still hunched over ImhoTerror's laptop. Over their earpieces, they learn from Soul Patch that CTU's efforts to locate the missile are thus far unsuccessful. Because a one-ton, flaming-hot cylinder of metal leaving a trail of fire over central Iowa at six hundred miles an hour before dawn during a nationwide air travel ban really blends in. Kiefer says he's going to have the building scanned for more clues, and then he's bringing ImhoTerror in to CTU.
Buchanan sums up the whole season in one word: "Unbelievable." Oh, wait, he's talking about the fact that ImhoTerror's people have a missile. Bitchelle has already recognized the missile from the webcam shot: "S-series cruise missile. Stealth technology. They must have smuggled it in piece by piece and assembled it on site." That's the problem with stealth technology: it's so easy to smuggle. You can walk right through airport security with a B-2 in your carry-on and nobody will have any idea. Lucky for the terrorists, because before they stole the football, they had no idea where in the country their warhead was going to come from. So in order to make sure they had a missile within practical a distance from a stealable warhead, they had to have smuggled in a couple hundred of those babies. Wonder where the rest of them are? Buchanan realizes that the missile's stealth technology means it won't be trackable on radar. Bitchelle has Skip show us all a handy graphic demonstrating that the missile's range of 1,800 miles puts every point in the continental United States within its reach. Soul Patch points out that the missile's speed of 600 mph means that it could hit either coast by the end of the season finale. Are we done with math for a while now? Buchanan says that assumes the missile is headed for a coast; otherwise it could strike at any time. Although why anyone would bother nuking us flyoverlanders is beyond me.