Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 556 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Poison
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 15 | Aired on 2009.03.23
Just then, in his rearview mirror, he notices that the highly convenient LED display on the front end of the container is blinking. Kiefer stops the truck and gets out. He doesn't know what the blinking and beeping means, but that tear in the skin of the container can't be good news. At 10:55:20, he points a handy flashlight inside and sees a gas cylinder, broken off below the nozzle and venting its contents into the trailer. Kiefer's eyes bug out and he gasps as he recoils. Probably shouldn't have gasped. He turns to look from the abandoned stretch of highway where he's parked, to the busy city streets that look literally just blocks ahead of him, and decides he needs to handle this himself. Going around to the back, he takes a deep breath, holds it, opens the back of the trailer, and climbs inside, with the flashlight between his teeth. He makes his way to the front of the trailer, where the offending cylinder is. Fortunately it has a shut-off valve, which Kiefer closes. Well, that was easy. He exits the trailer and lets out his breath, coughing mightily. I don't know what he's worried about; if the Sentox nerve gas didn't get him a couple of years ago, nothing will.
And he's just about to get back into the cab to continue his drive when suddenly lead rains down on him from above. The bad guys have gotten a helicopter, and they want their toy back. Plus an SUV is coming up the road. Rather than trying to get back in the truck to try to outrun a chopper, Kiefer dashes across the highway and bounds over a fence into the rocks on the embankment while the shooting continues. He's totally pinned down while Stokes's men slide the bioweapon out of the back of the truck, allowing the helicopter to lower a tether and scoop it out of there. It's an odd-looking device, with rows of gas canisters arranged along a metal rack. It looks like California Closets did a custom job for Cthulhu. Kiefer raises his weapon as though he's about to take a shot at the helicopter, or the tether, but probably thinks better of it as he imagines what would happen if that thing hit the pavement. Both SUV and helicopter are soon gone into the night. "Dammit!" Kiefer roars. Of course.
It's 10:58:06 when Stokes calls from the inside front of his SUV. He spares a look back at Tony, bound and gagged on the floor in the back of the truck. He gets a hold of Hodges, now tieless and in a casual jacket. "The package is secure, we're inbound," Stokes angrily tells Hodges. Hodges asks about Kiefer, so this clearly isn't the first time they've talked since Kiefer made off with the goodies. Stokes says that Kiefer was there, but found cover. Dude, he went and laid down on the ground. You had a helicopter. You couldn't have wanted him that bad. As the conversation continues, we see that Hodges and Seaton are walking through some kind of weird lab, with work stations everywhere that are equipped with magnifying work lights, computers, UV canisters or something, and giant jiffy-pops. Hodges says that since Kiefer almost certainly told someone what he found, they'll need to hurry things up. On 24? Is that going to be possible without ripping a hole through the space-time continuum?