Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Unlovely Rita
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 8 | Aired on 02.11.2007
From the road, Kiefer calls in to CTU. He's crouched over McCarthy's body, saying that they intercepted a call to the LAPD from a witness that identified the shooter as a female in a silver pickup with a passenger fitting Morris's description. What a lucky break, and what an observant witness. Kiefer has taken McCarthy's cell phone off his body, and reports to Buchanan that McCarthy got a call five minutes earlier from a blocked number. Kiefer says that he'll upload the phone's data to CTU, and Buchanan says that he'll put Milo on it. But what about those traffic-cam frames? I want to see more of those!
At 1:22:56, Rita leads Morris into a dingy apartment hallway and holds the gun to his ribs while she forces him to knock on an apartment door. To the muffled voice behind the door asking who it is, she says she's McCarthy's "associate" with the "package." As they're quickly allowed in and rudely frisked at gunpoint by about three of Fayed's men, we can see the sweat stains under Morris's armpits. Fayed asks Rita who she is, and she cannily tells him that McCarthy's waiting to hear from Fayed: "If he doesn't get the money, he gives you up." Fayed asks if Morris is the engineer. "I'm just a data analyst," Morris insists. "You've got the wrong man." Fayed doesn't believe Morris, probably because he Britishly pronounced his title as "darter analyst." Fayed gives Morris a hard sock across the chops and has him forced into a seat. Rita demands her money, and Fayed says that she'll get it once Morris has finished with his job. Hey, that wasn't the deal. Unfortunately for her, Rita's to stupid to protest. Fayed turns to Morris and tells him what he knows Morris already knows: he has four suitcase nukes that he needs reprogrammed, and Morris is going to do that for him. Trying to sound brave -- which is difficult when your voice is shaking -- Morris tells him, "Not bloody likely, mate." In case you forgot Morris is British. Fayed nods to one of his henchmen, who pistol-whips Morris down onto his side. Fayed shows Morris a handheld electronic device and says that Morris is going to reprogram the GameBoy to function as a NukeBoy. Morris refuses again. So Fayed's henchman goes to work on him with a baseball bat. How very...American of him. Rita doesn't seem to enjoy witnessing the beating of a guy she delivered. Don't you feel bad for her? It's 1:25:22.
At 1:29:45, one of the act-in splitscreen windows shows Assad being led through a surface-level hallway of the White House. Meanwhile, Kiefer's still at the site of McCarthy's murder, on the phone with CTU and wondering why it's taking Milo so long to do the phone trace. Instead of explaining to Kiefer that commercial breaks tend to slow things down, Buchanan sends Nadia to look into it. She has to have at least one other thing to do this episode, after all. So far, all Milo's been able to figure out is that the call came from a land line, but its origin has been thoroughly disguised with several layers of technobabble. He's getting frustrated by obstacles that keep popping up on his screen. Chloe shows up behind him, calmly offering to help: "I know I screwed up earlier. I wasn't thinking clearly. Let me try this." Milo relinquishes the seat to her. After exchanging some technobabble with him, Chloe completes the trace in a few seconds. Nadia returns to Buchanan with Milo and gives the address. Kiefer also heard it, since he's on speaker, and asks which apartment he's looking for. Milo says that there's no way of knowing, since Fayed has tapped directly into the building's trunk line. Kiefer orders a covert perimeter (snerk) of CTU agents around the building and hops into a CTUmobile at 1:31:06. He's on his way. Back in the CTU Situation Room, Buchanan congratulates Milo on tracing the call. Milo says that it wasn't him, and turns to look at Chloe, who's dining on her fingernails out on the floor. "If you think she's ready, bring her back in," says Buchanan. Let's just hope she's not too rusty after being out of play for fifteen minutes.