Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Day 5: 2:00 AM - 3:00 AM
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 20 | Aired on April 30, 2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.With help from Hayes and Buchanan, Chloe evades the CTU dragnet, and sets up in a hotel bar to try to help Kiefer find out which of the passengers on the diplomatic flight is carrying the recording. FLOTUS is having trouble keeping her shit together, and Novick is getting increasingly suspicious (when he's not busy acting as FLOTUS's valet, that is). Slime is also suspicious of some of the moves Hayes is making, but his tattling to Novick gets him nowhere. Kiefer's also getting nowhere; the passenger that Chloe thought had the recording...doesn't. And then Kiefer's cover's blown, and he's put in the position of being taken for a common hijacker. All he can do is try to search all the passengers in the cabin before the crew -- who are safely locked behind the cockpit door -- turn the plane around and land back at Van Nuys. He doesn't really have time for that, but Chloe comes through for him and finds out that Henderson's courier is in fact the co-pilot. With an assist from the captain, Kiefer gains access to the cockpit, possession of the recording, and control of the plane. So what else can Logan do but shoot it down? Next week, maybe we'll get to see how Kiefer's kung fu skills match up against a Sidewinder missile. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Shout-out to my year-and-a-half-old son, M. Small, who this week protested not being mentioned more often in these recaps by taping Tuesday's American Idol over three-quarters of 24. This recap is brought to you by him, and by Plan B.
At CTU, Hayes is back on the phone with Buchanan again, apparently having dealt with that "threat" that loomed at the end of last hour, which of course turned out to just be an innocuous distraction. Buchanan tells Hayes that before Chloe leaves his house, she's packing up some stuff so she can keep in touch with Kiefer. For Hayes, that raises the question of where Kiefer actually is, and Buchanan comes right out and says that Kiefer stowed away on a diplomatic flight out of Van Nuys Airport because someone on that plane has the Logan/Henderson recording that's been the subject of so much MacGuffining for the past month's worth of episodes. He adds that Chloe's been trying to find out which passenger has the recording. So I guess Hayes is totally in the club now. Just then, Slime bundles into her office with an armload of equipment for Chloe's "remote debrief" (which, to my way of thinking, is probably the best way to do that), saying the team that's picking up Chloe is only a block away from Cabana Buchanan. Hayes rather abruptly shuffles him off to set that up in the Situation Room, and he pissily heads out, wondering why she isn't telling him he's awesome. She gets back to her call and tells Buchanan how close the team is, and that he needs to get Chloe out now. Buchanan realizes he's going to have to give himself up to give Chloe time to get away, and Hayes says he'll be brought in and treated as a suspect. "We never talked," she adds. Buchanan lives on a really long street, because the Homeland Security car isn't pulling up until just now. Before they hang up, Hayes tells Buchanan to have Chloe call on a "dry channel," whatever that is, and gives a couple of extensions which Buchanan writes down and hands to Chloe. He hangs up and shoos her towards the back door. She asks a lot of time-wasting, expository questions, but he manages to get her out of the house with directions to a nearby hotel on Ventura Boulevard. He doesn't tell her to get them a room.
When the knock on the door comes, he takes off his dress shirt (it's funny how he slowly gets more naked as the season progresses, but he's still wearing a T-shirt), tries to muss up his hair (which is fairly unmussable), and answers the door like he just got out of bed.