Episode Report Card M. Giant: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mole Patch II: Electric Whatever
By M. Giant | Season 3 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.03.2004
At another location that looks like it was also recently blown up but not rebuilt, two henchmen haul Bitchelle into an empty room and yank off the cloth hood that's covering her face. They don't seem too nervous about touching the clothes she was wearing the whole time she was at V-I-R-U-S ground zero. They leave her alone in a chair that they don't bother to secure her to, although her hands are still cuffed behind her back and her mouth has been duct-taped. She looks around in dismay. It's 9:11:12.
9:15:37. Soul Patch broods, Kiefer drives, Bitchelle enjoys her duct-tape facial, and Adam sits on the phone. Potato Face pulls up a strip of satellite footage on her screen, and looks none too happy at the conspicuous stretch of blank frames staring back out at her. She schleps over to Adam's station and interrupts his incredibly painful conversation with his terminally infected sister about the virus and suicide pills. Adam, understandably, would just as soon not talk to Potato Face right now -- even less than usual, in fact -- but she's insistent, and Adam tells his soon-to-be-dead sister that he'll have to call her back. He follows Potato Face back to her computer, and she shows him the missing frames. Adam is suddenly all business despite the tear streaks still on his face. They figure that the chances of Saunders's departure being contemporaneous with a random satellite glitch are pretty low, and Potato Face fears that Saunders has access to their systems. Well, not directly. Potato Face isn't ready to take her theory to Soul Patch yet; she wants Adam's help in confirming it. I don't know why Adam's screw-up (or "screw-up," as the case may be) from the last episode doesn't come up here, or why Potato Face went to Adam about this given her opinion of his current capacity, but if we don't go with it we'll never get out of here. "So if you could just do that and then you could call your sister back," Potato Face finishes. I suppose she's trying. Adam heads back to his computer, and they exchange a significant look across the CTU floor. I don't detect any unspoken lust in it at all.
9:17:39. Two uniformed guards let Soul Patch into the room where Spawnders is being held. In Kiefer's absence, her Stockholm Syndrome has worn off and she angrily asks Soul Patch why she's being treated as if she's done something wrong. Soul Patch apologizes and assures her that it's for her safety. But Spawnders is too smart for that, which is not a sentence I expected to write, ever. She's figured out that she's the only leverage CTU has against Saunders. Doesn't miss a trick, this girl. Soul Patch admits that it's true, but gives his word that Spawnders won't be hurt. Spawnders is more worried about Kiefer. What gave it away, Spawnders? Was it when he looked straight at you and told your father, "You know what I'm capable of too"? Soul Patch is still trying to reassure her when his phone rings. It's Saunders, wanting to talk to Spawnders. Soul Patch turns away from Spawnders to keep her from hearing. Yeah, that would work. Soul Patch reminds Saunders that they each have somebody the other wants, and that "If you so much as touch my wife, I will slit Spawnders's throat." Good thing he moved three feet away from her and dropped his voice to a whisper so she can't hear him. Saunders seems to believe Soul Patch, so he has the guard outside Bitchelle's room let him in. He rips the duct tape off her face, along with the residual dirt, oil, and makeup that soap leaves behind. He tells Bitchelle that he's going to let her talk to Soul Patch, and that she's only to say she's okay and being treated well. He has the guard remove her cuffs and then hands her the phone, while the guard points his gun directly at her face. On the line with Soul Patch, she recites her little script, then continues: "Don't let them do this…don't let --" Saunders snatches the phone away, and she is not shot in the face even a little bit. Now Saunders wants to talk to his daughter, and Soul Patch sets his phone in the speaker cradle on the table in front of Spawnders. Spawnders wants him to deny having anything to do with the V-I-R-U-S, but the closest he'll come is saying, "I'd never do something without good cause." Judging from the devastated look on Spawnders's face, she appears to have cracked his little code. Soul Patch has had enough; he takes the phone off the cradle and tells Saunders, "Let's do this." He's going to need thirty or forty minutes to fake some clearances. Saunders is cool with that. He even gives Soul Patch a number to contact him when he's ready. It's so nice to see people overcoming their differences and working together.