Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | 438 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Re-Juma-nated
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 12 | Aired on 2009.03.02
At 7:08:06, Juma and his men have made their way down a tunnel to where a metal grate separates them from a tiny alcove. One of them busts out a cutting torch. While he's working on getting through the rebar, Juma calls up an inside man: a maintenance guy in the bowels of the White House who confirms that he's in position. After he finishes up the brief conversation, another maintenance guy comes into the room with him, all unsuspecting. The two maintenance men make small talk about plans for Saturday, and the last thing Juma's mole says is, "I was looking forward to Sheila's cooking," before he plunges a screwdriver into his coworker's back. Now that's cold. I think he can forget about Sheila's cooking after that. With the first casualty down, the maintenance mole locks the door to the room, and slides a storage cabinet away from a patch in the wall where the plaster has been chipped away to reveal exposed brick. "All clear, General," he calls in over his walkie-talkie. By now, that tunnel grate has been dealt with, and Juma's cutting-torch guy pulls it away to reveal a small space crisscrossed with laser beams. He says they'll shut off in ten seconds, and then they'll have two minutes to get through. He doesn't bother to explain why. The lasers shut off right on cue, and the soldiers move in. Then they kick through those loose bricks that the maintenance mole revealed, and are inside the White House at 7:10:12. The maintenance mole is handed a set of fatigues of his own to change into so he can join the assault force. Yay, wet clothes to put on. You know, normally I can see the point of camouflage clothing, but if Juma's goal is to have his men move unnoticed through the corridors of the executive mansion, maybe they should be outfitted with business suits. And also, white. Meanwhile, the member of Juma's team who's flying the laptop is already logged into the Secret Service tracking grid, which shows the President as a red blip inside the Oval Office. Off they go.
In the hallway upstairs, a couple of Secret Service agents are on sentry duty when suddenly a knife blade protrudes from the chest of one of them. His partner gets shot by a silenced machine gun before he can react. Juma's troops assemble in the secured hallway, and the general checks the map on the laptop before telling them, "We will meet resistance, which we must counter quickly, silently. We have nine minutes until the next Secret Service roll call. We must find the President by then." It's 7:11:45, so actually they have more like eight minutes and fifteen seconds.