Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bad Boys Eventually Get Quiet Time
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 11.17.2008
I don't know, because I'm all screwed up on the timeline, even within this episode. Michael's going in for surgery at 3 p.m., and he had just told his teammates they only had four hours to work, which implied that the team was having its powwow around 11 a.m. Yet we've just switched over to Gretchen's hotel room, and her booty-call message to General Von Baldy was for 1 p.m. So either Michael was talking really slow, or we've just leapt ahead a few hours, or General Von Baldy used his vast conspiracy powers to clear the L.A. freeways and show up at the hotel room early. And now, I have to rule out the last option because the minute General Von Baldy walks into the hotel room, Gretchen's cooing. "What took you so long?" (My guess: he needed time for the Viagra to kick in.) And then, oh God, I can't get into it. Just suffice it to say that when it comes to sultry personae, the "naughty schoolgirl" is one Gretchen can't pull off, and I wonder what Jodi Lyn O'Keefe did to piss off the producers and get stuck trying to act kittenish. Anyway, her "let me massage you, my poor, tense global puppetmaster" gambit fails pretty spectacularly, and General Von Baldy lashes out with, "I'm the one that taught you how to lie. I never thought that at the age of 63, I could still have my heart broken." Honestly, I'm surprised he still has a heart; he seemed forward-thinking enough to get his brain decanted into a Disney-crafted animatronic replica, just for that extra touch of assassin proofing. Anyway, with genuine hurt, General Von Baldy asks, "Why did you feel the need to steal my card? Don't you know that if you had waited just a little bit longer, you'd have had one of your own?" Gretchen's a sucker for man-tears, so she rushes forth to apologize, but the General pulls a gun on her. You'd think she'd have checked his jacket for that. Gretchen avoids being killed with the "I'm the mother of your child!" plea, and General Von Baldy lowers his gun with, "If I ever see you again, I'll shoot you on sight." He stalks out. Well, as far as break-ups go, that one seems pretty amicable, doesn't it?
And now, we come to the subplot of the episode that can be summed up in one paragraph. Here goes: having confirmed in the last episode that Trisha's a fed, T-Bag notices that she's wearing a jacket and correctly deduces that she's packing heat, probably because she might use it on him. So he works quickly with Gretchen kill two birds with one stone. The trap: they have a phone call wherein they talk about how the two of them have to meet the Scylla buyer one more time in a little post-war ranch house. Trisha rather obviously listens in and writes down the address. Then she and Don Self head over to the house, and once they're inside, they're captured by Fang and his people. The episode ends with the two agents in less-than-friendly company. No doubt there's a writer crying somewhere that time constraints kept them from showing a torture sequence.