Episode Report Card Gustave: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mike Novick is back. Hide your heart.
By Gustave | Season 2 | Episode 7 | Aired on 12.09.2002
NSA. 24 is on a roll. For the third week in a row now, a new favorite from last season is being brought back. First it was Nina, then it was Lady Mac, and this week it's the moment the viewers have really been waiting for: PoorMan'sHumeCronyn…or should I say, "The Chief Of My Staff"? Yeah, I'd been doing a lot of thinking about The Silver Fox of 24 this summer. Wondering if and when our paths would really ever cross, and even indulging in fantasies of what it would be like to be truly together. In my dreams, we meet at a retirement community in Boca Raton, Florida. I'm just hanging by the pool, shooting the shit with the ladies from my bridge club. All of a sudden, I feel the heat of his penetrating gaze from nine deck chairs away. I look around just to make sure it's really me he's giving the eye to. It has to be. I wander away from my group and stand near some bingo tables, suavely pretending to be engrossed in the Golden Girls rerun being shown on the big TV in the rec room. I don't have to wait long. Soon he is by my side. Our arms accidentally brush up against each other, and the hairs on my forearms tingle. A noticeable bulge starts to emerge from inside his sans-a-belt slacks. "You know, you should really be wearing your flip-flops," he says, breaking the ice. "You could get athlete's foot from these carpets." "You're a bad, bad man, Mike Novick," I say, sipping my Cel-Ray soda. "You're going to break my heart." We make love back in his convenience apartment while his wife is out playing canasta and it's a hailstorm of passion. The lust becomes love, sacrifices are made, and soon we escape into the country, running a bed-and-breakfast in the Berkshires and supplementing our income by leading bird-watching tours of the surrounding areas. Most nights, we'd just stay home at our farmhouse. I'd make him his favorite meal -- Jimmy Dean pork sausage patties with a side dish of Green Giant Baby Lima Bean and Niblets Corn Medley -- then we'd sit on the back porch swing and listen to NPR or the crickets, wondering how we ever got through life without each other.
Anyway, PoorMan'sHumeCronyn enters Palmer's office and is surprised to see Lady Mac working away. They embrace. Lady Mac's girlish giggle sounds like a cry for help. "Did David ask you to come here?" asks PMHC. "Uh, no," says Lady Mac. "I decided to come on my own." If by "come on my own," you mean "stalk my ex-husband," then yes, Lady Mac is telling the truth. When PMHC asks how she is, Lady Mac tells him that she's had a tough year, but she's "learned from her mistakes" and "grown from misfortune." But I get the feeling that by "mistakes," Lady Mac really means "getting caught."