Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Low Noon
By M. Giant | Season 3 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.17.2004
Inside the house, Lady Mac is working on getting to her feet. A bruise is already forming on the left side of her jaw. She spots Julia standing over her, and her hostess instincts don't exactly kick in full-bore. Julia complains about the arrest for murder she's facing, but Lady Mac doesn't seem terribly sympathetic: "I told you to keep your mouth shut. It's nobody's fault but your own." Any chance of Julia not whipping the handgun out of her purse and pointing it at Lady Mac just went down the toilet with that remark. I should really be seriously pissed off at the unlikelihood of this development, but anything that could end in Lady Mac's death is something I'm all for at this point. Brother Palmer dashes in to join the effort at talking Julia down, but she's not going for it. She tells Lady Mac, "You have been lying your whole life. You are not going to lie your way out of this." Lady Mac readily admits that, yes, her pants generally reach temperatures normally found on the surface of the sun, but she's for real when she promises that now that she's going to be the First Lady, she'll talk Palmer into giving Julia a nice, juicy pardon. She turns to Brother Palmer for confirmation, but he can't manage more than a panic-frozen smile. Julia lowers the gun, wanting to believe Lady Mac. But wanting doesn't make it so, and she plugs Lady Mac twice in the gut. She goes down.
Remember what I just said about wanting to believe? Forget that. I want to believe Lady Mac is dead, and thus it is so. Not to dis Penny Johnson Jerald, because she's great, but that just makes me all the more glad to see her freed from having to play out these increasingly absurd subplots. Perhaps we should take just a moment to eulogize the memory of Lady Mac. Please turn, if you will, to the speech made after the death of her Shakespearean namesake: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Can I get an amen?
Brother Palmer crouches over Lady Mac, plumbing new depths of uselessness. Julia cocks the gun and he turns to face her. She tells him she's sorry, puts the muzzle of the gun to her temple, and pulls the trigger as Brother Palmer bellows, "No!" And now Gina Torres is free of this show as well. Brother Palmer weighs his powerful government position against the reality of being an African-American man in a house containing two freshly dead bodies in a nice neighborhood. Or maybe he just checks out and cradles Julia's body in his arms. He shrinks into the upper right of the screen. Soul Patch appears in the lower right, knowing that any shot he ever had with Ann Coulter is totally blown. On the left, Palmer fiddles impatiently with his cell phone back at Division, unaware, as far as we know, that ten vials of the virus have been secured. And then we're back to full screen in the subway station, where Kiefer is positioning his agents. Special Agent Charlie Brown reports that they got the station shut down before anyone on the train had a chance to leave. Well, that's some good news. If nothing else, they can fill the place with concrete. It's 12:00:00. Which is when the virus is supposed to be released. We'd better not come back next week to find everybody already dead.