Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bizarre Love Triangle
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 7 | Aired on 01.30.2005
Hey, who's that firing silhouette in the doorway? Why, it's Soul Patch! With a soul patch! Has it been twenty years already? He confirms that Kiefer and DoDder are okay, and the hero theme plays the three of them the hell out of there as they shrink to the top half of the screen and cut to black. At bottom, TerrorTeen and Mom are also fleeing. At upper right, DrisKid is awake again. Shit. And AIIIEEEE!sha is still looking sneaky at upper left.
It's 1:57:47 as DaD and Driscoll come out on to the CTU floor to watch Lispy Skip deliver the last few keystrokes on his tricky MacGuffin hack. He's enlisted Special Agent Breck to help him, but she gives him a bad code and he totally "Nick Burns, Computer Guy"s her away from her keyboard. He's just about ready to launch his program, but he wants another ten minutes to go over everything and make sure it's right. I feel him there. I can't remember the last time I posted an entry on my website with the italics right the first try. But the bosses won't give him the extra minutes, and they insist he has to do it now. Lispy Skip types a last few commands, clenches his pucker, and hits "enter." "I did the best I could, sir," he tells DaD. "I hope it works." "So do I," DaD says quietly. "For your sake," he doesn't add. Everyone turns to look at the big board with the map of the U.S. and the highlighted radiation logos blinking away. AIIIEEEE!sha steps closer to watch. We have plenty of time to wonder how information from the millions of gauges on each reactor have been distilled into simple, color-coded, binary symbols and then arranged on a real-time map of the country. "There's no response," DaD tells Lispy Skip. We can see that. Everyone continues to watch as the tension builds. Then one logo on the California coast blinks and goes green. I guess that's good. "There they go," says Special Agent Breck. One after another, the red logos are turning green all over the country. ["And someone on the 24 staff writes a fat check to the guy who wrote the WarGames screenplay. And the score." -- Sars] DaD grins broadly and shakes Lispy Skip's hand. Big bonus for Skip this Christmas. That was a pretty good season, don't you think? I suppose we'll have to wait until next year to find out whether…
But oops! Looks like the reactor on the Oregon coast is developing a red aura. That can't be good. Lispy Skip dives back to his computer, muttering, "Oh, no, don't tell me that." Driscoll wants to know what's going on. Skip explains that six of the reactors are "immune to the kill sequence." And indeed, in addition to Oregon, there are red icons near San Diego, Savannah, the Quad Cities, Southern Pennsylvania, and -- hey! The Twin Cities! Fuck you, Skip! "The shutdown codes have been completely corrupted," he explains. "Contact Kiefer," DaD booms in his best promo-clip voice. "Either he finds the people responsible for planting the override, or we're looking at a nookyular holocaust." So six Chernobyls make a whole holocaust now? Drama queen much? It's 2:00:00.