Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Carry-on Kiefer
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 19 | Aired on 04.23.2006
Slime's been busy since last we saw him. He's scowling at a workstation that appears to be connected to the State Department somehow. Much as Chloe is. A fresh window pops up and he exults, "There you are!" He immediately calls Hayes in her office, and tells her that Chloe's trying to access the State Department through a CTU node. He starts technobabbling about how he found her, but Hayes is less interested in his kung-fu than in Chloe's actual location. It's only a matter of seconds before Slime has figured out that Chloe is at Cabana Buchanan. What's more, a Tac team is less than seven minutes away from there, and Slime is dispatching them now. "Good," says Hayes, and hangs up with an order to keep her posted. But now that the thrill of the hunt has passed, her doubts from before are clearly returning. At 1:56:04, she picks up her cell phone and dials.
She quickly gets a hold of Novick at Not Camp David, who doesn't appear to be doing much besides wandering around and looking at his watch. They make a little small talk, and then Hayes gets to her point. She recaps that they were taking orders from Vice President Gardner until about two hours ago, at which point President Logan gave the order to arrest Kiefer, "based on evidence he was unwilling to share with me." Novick already knows about that, and I love how the show freely admits that it was just fucking with us about the whole Vice President Misdirection subplot. Hayes asks if Novick has seen the evidence, and he stammers that he hasn't. "Who has seen it?" Hayes asks, and Novick doesn't have a good answer for that. "I don't have a good answer for that," he says. Hayes goads Novick about not being in the loop, but Novice says there's not really a loop right now: "The President is keeping his own counsel at the moment." "That's a first," Hayes scoffs. Get out of my chair, lady. Novick basically doesn't have anything else to say aside from, "It's been a strange night." He sells the hell out of it, though, complete with a dramatic pause and a shifty glance from side to side. It's like he knows that three minutes before the hour, something should really be happening. But Hayes has heard enough, and she ends the call. She sits down in front of her computer and types. We can't see the monitor, but she must be looking up the number for Cabana Buchanan, because that's who she calls.
Buchanan answers the call at 1:57:47, and the voice that comes out of the speaker is brief and businesslike: "This is Karen Hayes. You have less than seven minutes to get Chloe out of there." Buchanan tries to play dumb, but Hayes convinces them she's for real by parroting back the technobabble that Slime used to trace them. Buchanan picks up the handset to ask why she's warning them. Hayes starts to tell her story about how nothing has made sense until she heard Chloe's accusations against Logan through Shari. But then she spots a guy that we've never seen before climbing the steps to her office, and says that she has to go. Ominous. End of call. Buchanan tells Chloe they have to leave, and starts unplugging shit, starting with the TV they've been using as a big-screen. Chloe doesn't want to leave without finding the passenger list for Kiefer, and she keeps working despite Buchanan's protests that she'll be arrested. And then she goes split-screen up in the left corner. Kiefer's in the bottom half, trying to think of a way to impersonate a boarding pass. FLOTUS pours herself a nice big flagon of red wine in the FLOTUSuite. That should react nicely with her crazy pills. People from God knows where continue boarding that diplomatic flight. Audrey rides back towards CTU with Curtis and, presumably, Henderson. Logan looks evil. Buchanan keeps unplugging shit.