Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Together Again
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 8 | Aired on 02.06.2005
AIIIEEEE!sha hits the exit at a dead run, Curtis and a couple of Redshirts gaining on her fast. She just makes it to her car, but Curtis catches her before she can stick her key in the door. "You're under arrest," he grits. He tosses AIIIEEEE!sha's purse and keys to a couple of plainclothes agents who got there awfully fast, telling them to search both. "I've got her," he says, dragging her back towards the building. But they're not more than a few cars away when the other agent puts the key in AIIIEEEE!sha's lock and the car blows sky-high. Good thing he turned into a dummy during the edit. The shockwave hurls AIIIEEEE!sha out of Curtis's grip and her head bangs hard against another parked car. Which reminds me: there's one thing I don't give this show enough credit for. Its real-time format means that no slow-motion or flashbacks are allowed (unless a character is watching security camera footage), so it has to make it clear what's happening in action scenes, even when a number of things are happening quickly. And, as here, it usually does a good job of that. Curtis is too shocked to be impressed, though; he stands there amid the screaming car alarms, having a major identity crisis: I'm clearly black, and I'm definitely an agent, and yet I just survived a scene with an explosion in it. I must not be as handsome as I thought. Either that or he's wondering why heaven looks like the CTU parking lot and why his personal afterlife features AIIIEEEE!sha lying on the ground unconscious with a bruised noggin. We cut away before he can explore the significance of that any further.
TerrorGringo, still carrying that canvas bag, hops out of his late-model sedan at 2:57:02 and heads toward a parked helicopter. The pilot meets him and explains that the flight's been grounded. TerrorGringo reminds the pilot that he has special clearance, but the pilot explains that the order was superseded by the DoD. TerrorGringo pulls out a gun and points it at the pilot. Well, well, I stand corrected. There was a more conspicuous way to leave the city than a specially-cleared helicopter flight: a formerly specially cleared, now no longer specially-cleared, now hijacked helicopter flight. Well played, TerrorGringo. Too bad you can't just get back in your car and disappear into traffic. Did you use the last drop of gas in your tank coasting into the parking lot or something? TerrorGringo forces the irritated pilot into the chopper and tells him, "Just get us in the air and fly east." The rotors start turning.
Kiefer pulls around the corner and spots the chopper getting ready to take off. "There it is," he tells Soul Patch. Since it's just them, he doesn't feel the need to say "I've got a visual" like he usually does. He cuts across a deep ditch to get to the helipad. The Secret Service isn't going to be happy about that when they get their truck back. He parks behind the helicopter, and he and Soul Patch move toward opposite sides of the aircraft, both with their guns out. Soul Patch, on the pilot's side, orders him not to take off. The pilot raises his hands in relief. TerrorGringo is yelling for the pilot to take off anyway, until Kiefer appears behind him and drags him out onto the tarmac. He hauls TerrorGringo over to the KiefMobile while Soul Patch covers the unfortunate pilot. TerrorGringo offers to pay Kiefer. Kiefer tells him to shut up, grabs TerrorGringo's cell phone, and tells Soul Patch to bring him the TerrorGringo's bag. "Put your hands behind your back," he tells his suspect, and shrinks into the upper half of the screen. In the lower half, DoDder arrives back at CTU for a hug from DaD. Kiefer is replaced by Curtis, watching AIIIEEEE!sha's car burn, and then by an unconscious Special Agent Breck, who's being loaded into a wheelchair. If anybody but Lispy Skip gets her as their Secret Santa this Christmas, it's going to be ugly. TerrorMom looks like death on drugs in the lower half, which she then shares with Special Agent Breck while Skip turns to look at the CTU big screen in the top half. It's showing that the reactor near San Diego is critical. Critical!