Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT O Brother, Where Art Thou?
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 5 | Aired on 01.21.2007
Kiefer goes to the edge to view the damage and pull out his cell phone. From up here on the roof, both flyers can now see the cauliflower cloud, and the one Kiefer pulled out realizes it's in Valencia, where his family is. Downer. He announces that he's on his way there, even though Kiefer tells him that the radiation will kill him before getting through to CTU and asking for Buchanan. While he's waiting, he tells the initial bloody guy not to let his friend go home, and that's both of them out of the story. Once Kiefer reaches Buchanan, he says that he's still in Grenada Hills, and Buchanan tells him not to go any further north. Kiefer asks how bad the damage is, and Buchanan tells him a square mile got flattened. He adds that Fayed's not done; there are still four suitcase nukes out there. "You need to pick me up," Kiefer says. Buchanan reminds Kiefer that he' out. "Not after this," Kiefer says. Aww, who's our brave little counterterrorist operative? It's 10:11:42.
10:16:04. Wayne has the present Joint Chiefs gathered around his conference table and the absent ones up on video conferencing screens. He says he knows that Fayed has to be state-supported, and he wants to know which state. A shortlist has been generated, but they've already talked to the ambassador of each nation on it and they all disavow any knowledge. One particularly crusty-looking admiral says that someone's lying, if not all of them. Wayne asks the admiral what he suggests, and the admiral wants to have the carriers in the Persian Gulf strike multiple targets in each country in question. Which would be kind of embarrassing if Fayed's sponsor turned out to be, say, Centralasia. The admiral boasts, "I guarantee you that if each of these countries has to sustain three major metropolitan nuclear strikes, they'd no longer have the time or the resources to play in our sandbox any more. These people want to live in the Stone Age, I say let's put them there." Rather than sending the Admiral back to his AM talk-radio broadcasting booth, Wayne starts politely empathizing with the admiral's emotions, but the admiral doesn't want to hear it. Tom leans forward and orders, "The President is talking, Admiral. Do not interrupt!" And thus a Joint Chief is silenced by the Biscuit. Wayne firmly assures everyone that there will be retaliation, but it will be only against the country's enemies. Refreshing, that. Wayne turns to Karen and asks what CTU knows right now. Karen shares what she learned from Buchanan earlier, which is the theory that the bomb was being assembled in Valencia for use elsewhere. "By the scientist that I released," Wayne points out. "Yes," Karen says. Well, technically, Numair escaped before Wayne could release him, but whatever. Karen says the worst-case scenario is that Fayed is still alive and has four nukes in his possession. So of course everyone is going to operating under that assumption indefinitely. Or at least until they're flash-fried into airborne isotopes.