Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Won't Be Your Father Figure
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 10 | Aired on 02.26.2006
The Suvarovs' motorcade is traveling along a freeway that appears to have been blocked off both ways, because the vehicles that comprise it are the only ones in sight. In fact, the motorcade will appear to be traveling through a completely deserted Los Angeles for most of this episode, because there's no safer route for the Russian President than the one that takes him through footage from The Omega Man. In the back of the limousine, Mrs. Suvarov is nattering on about orange groves while her husband pouts out his window at not getting a quickie on the way to LAX. FLOTUS herself, who claimed she was riding along so they would have "more time to talk," is just sitting there distractedly. She covers well, though. Suvarov silently wonders about his chances for a threesome.
Up front, Aaron answers the ringing car phone and hears Logan saying, "Let me speak to my wife." Aaron lowers the partition to the back seat -- fortunately, not interrupting anything -- and tells FLOTUS that her husband's on the line. FLOTUS picks up the extension in the back and pleasantly says, "Hello, Charles!" He starts trying to talk, but she blows right over him, saying the Suvarovs enjoyed their visit and are inviting them to Moscow. "Won't that be lovely?" she says. Maybe, if they get to stay for more than seven hours. Logan instructs FLOTUS to tell the Suvarovs that she's needed back at Not Camp David, and that one of the follow cars will bring her back. "I don't think so, Charles," FLOTUS flutters. Logan says he knows what FLOTUS is up to, but he doesn't want the terrorists to release the gas. "Well, I guess we'll just have to figure something out before that happens," FLOTUS says. She hangs up on her husband's impotent sputtering, saying, "I'll talk to you soon." If she really wanted to get her way, she'd put him on speaker.
Back at Not Camp David, Logan's desperate. He floats the idea of having FLOTUS brought back by force, but Novick points out that if FLOTUS is desperate enough to put herself in harm's way, she'd almost certainly be prepared to blow the whistle to the Suvarovs. "And Suvarov will know that I gave him up for assassination," Logan says, looking even more terrified at that thought than the reality of his wife being in jeopardy. Bad husband! Bad! Novick asks, not for the last time, if Logan wants him to recall the motorcade or not. Logan just looks lost, standing there in a gastrointestinal urgency of indecision.
It's 4:07:16 at CTU as Audrey approaches Edgar's workstation and invites him to a "secret meeting" in the server room. Edgar's first question is, "Am I in trouble?" You are if you think this means you're getting any action, dude. Audrey leaves him alone, but she's too slow to avoid getting spotted by McGill, who's just coming down the stairs from his office. He charges over to Edgar and demands, "What'd Audrey Raines want?" Edgar says something about "DoD protocols" (which McGill should know by now is code for "I'm lying to you"). McGill looks around for someone else to beat up on, and his eyes light on the second-closest person to him, a pretty brunette named Carrie who's staring up at him with deer-in-headlights eyes from behind her monitor. He complains that she's supposed to be monitoring chatter, and she says they are. McGill bitches about it not being on his screen like he asked. Edgar tries to step in, but McGill snaps, "Mirror everything to my screen until we've secured the nerve gas. Is that clear?" Carrie says it is and McGill snots off, satisfied at having made another enemy. From his position of sitting around nearby doing nothing, Curtis watches him pass, his face troubled. Not troubled enough to look busy, but troubled nonetheless.