Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Gassing The Gap
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 8 | Aired on 02.12.2006
So the terrorists are ready to go. They put on full-face gas masks, toss one to Kiefer, and ask him for the unlock code. Buchanan earpieces the code to Kiefer, which is AKC. Kiefer just stands there for a few seconds while the terrorists get more impatient and Buchanan just repeats the words "Alpha, Kilo, Charlie" more and more quietly. Finally, Kiefer calls out through his mask, "Echo, Bravo, Charlie." So Kiefer is not on board. I bet he'd have obeyed the order had it come from Palmer, and what's more, I bet Palmer would have given it. At CTU, McGill and Buchanan look disgusted. "Enter the correct code, Jack. That's an order," McGill snaps. When Kiefer says nothing, McGill "shouts," "Let them release the gas, NOW!" Way to establish your authority there, Mikey. Kiefer probably just thought he was getting a feedback whine or something. Henchman #1 angrily rips off his gas mask. "Make it work or I'll kill you," he threatens Kiefer, who has also unmasked. Kiefer insists there's nothing he can do, and Henchman #1 clobbers him to the ground, unconscious. Wow, Kiefer's undercover persona goes down a lot more easily than the real Kiefer.
Henchman #1 then calls Erwich with the bad news that they can't arm the canisters, and that "Rossler" says he can't help. "Do you believe him?" Erwich asks. Henchman #1 says he doesn't know, and offers to kill "Rossler" for Erwich. Way to be proactive. Erwich wants to hold off on that until they're sure they have an alternate method of releasing the gas. So while Erwich is carrying his satellite phone over to the Tinkering Henchman in the garage, Henchman #2 at the mall drags Kiefer's body into the room where they dumped the security guard's body, and handcuffs Kiefer's wrist to a table leg. As the Tinkering Henchman starts technobabbling down the phone at Henchman #1, it's quiet in the CTU Situation Room. Almost as quiet as in the security room, where the camera pans down from the monitor marked "PLAY AREA" to Kiefer's motionless form. It's 2:37:22.
2:41:44. Kiefer comes awake in a way that suggests to me that he wasn't faking like I thought he might have been. Let's hope he doesn't have amnesia from the blow on the head, or this season could take a very weird turn.
Out in the other room, Henchman #1 is up to his elbows in the electronic guts of the nerve gas canister while talking on the phone with the Tinkering Henchman. He worries that the valve might open without warning. "If you make a mistake, it could, so pay attention," TH warns. I don't know how he knows that without being dead. And even though Kiefer is in a different room, his two-way earpiece is still picking up the whole conversation clear as day for the folks in the CTU Situation Room. I guess that twenty-foot radius Curtis mentioned is what matters to the earpiece, not the number of walls in the intervening space. Thing must cost more than Chelsea Clinton. Kiefer tries to escape by lifting up the table leg he's handcuffed to, but the top is set into the wall and the leg won't go high enough. As Henchman #1 tells Henchman #2 to get the gas masks, Kiefer tries to reach the guard's body on the floor next to him, but the dead guy's too far away for Kiefer's stumpy little limbs to get a hold of. How much does it suck for him that no other guards ever come back to the security office?