Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Chip And Dip
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.13.2007
The limo heads out behind an Escalade that's serving as an escort. Kiefer pops his head up above floor level just as the two vehicles drive past. Seeing Josh and Cheng in the back of the second car, Kiefer draws and opens fire on the Escalade, while still hanging onto the rope with his other hand. Kiefer's aim is true, because the SUV crashes and blocks the limo's exit. As he finishes emerging from the hole with Doyle and every available armored CTU agent behind him, the Chinese pile out of their cars and a proper shootout begins. Good thing there are plenty of crates and toolboxes for everyone to hide behind. The Chinese are getting the worst of it, so Cheng decides to makes his escape on foot, with two guards and using Josh as a shield. Kiefer orders Doyle's men to hold their fire. It doesn't work, but Cheng's little party still gets away. Kiefer tells Doyle to cover him as he hares off in pursuit, alone. On his way out, he slides across the floor, his ass making a hilarious squeaking noise as he casually takes out a Chinese gunman from behind. It's awesome. Run run run SQUEEEE! BANG! Run run run. He's gone before his last target even hits the floor.
At 3:16:52, four running figures dash into another area of the warehouse. One of them is Josh, whom nobody is even bothering to hold on to. Kiefer runs after them, recklessly shooting at Cheng's men as he goes. Clearly Kiefer has learned a valuable lesson from last hour, which is not to use guns that run out of ammo. He certainly isn't having that problem now, despite not stopping to reload. By the time Cheng reaches a stairway leading up, he's down to Josh and one guard. The three of them rush up it, Kiefer still running to catch up and shooting the whole way. When he reaches the staircase himself, his quarry is only a few flights above. Oh, and the comm. system must be back up, because he earpieces to Doyle that he's chasing bad guys up to the roof. Doyle copies that, and doesn't respond that he's pinned down in a pitched battle with Chinese mercenaries, so I assume that must be going pretty well for CTU by now.
Up on the roof, Cheng pushes Josh ahead up onto a catwalk. Before he can follow, Josh kicks Cheng in the face and runs off across the roof, to where I have no idea. Ah, I see -- looks like another catwalk. Yep, he's a Bauer kid, all right. Cheng leaves his surviving henchman to guard the top of the stairs and runs after the kid, his weapon out. When Cheng hears his last guard getting shot out from behind him by Kiefer, he turns and looks, and by the time he turns back, Josh has disappeared from the catwalk in front of him. Cheng turns back to Kiefer and futilely empties his automatic at Kiefer as his former prisoner dives for cover. Cheng turns his empty gun over in his hands, like he's going to find another round in it if he can just look at it from the correct angle. "Cheng, it's over!" Kiefer bellows as he covers Cheng. He approaches his nemesis, who is now standing in the center of the catwalk, and makes him put his gun down. As Cheng does so, the camera follows the gun, and we clearly see through the open grid of the catwalk that Josh is "hiding" beneath it, hanging from some pipes high over the factory floor. Either that, or he toppled over the waist-high railing somehow and managed to catch himself. As Kiefer offers to not kill Cheng in exchange for telling him where Josh is, Josh loses his grip on the thick pipe he's been hanging from and starts to fall. He catches himself by grabbing hold of a flimsy chain and hollers for help. Kiefer looks down, and when he looks back up, Cheng is, of course, gone. This catwalk is like some kind of dimensional portal. While the chain creaks ominously, Kiefer climbs partway down to him, reaches out one arm, and hauls Josh up to relative safety. Kiefer earpieces that he's got Josh but lost Cheng. Doyle, apparently having won his own shootout with Cheng's men, calls back that they're on their way up. Oh, and they're also setting up a perimeter, which means that Cheng's escape is all but assured. I finally get it: when CTU says "perimeter," they really mean "taxi stand."