Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Das Brute
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.14.2006
Outside, Curtis and his armored teams are getting ready to come through the door, and Kiefer's working on getting his skylight open. Malina's front door lock is defeated by some kind of incendiary strip that Curtis doesn't even have to stand clear of, and Kiefer's able to open a skylight with his pocketknife. Clearly Malina's fetish for security isn't so effective in meatspace. Kiefer starts climbing in through the attic. Meanwhile, at ground level, the first security door is compromised by a single bullet, followed by an agent running through the spidered glass. Hearing the shot and the crash, Henderson asks for Malina's weapon, and gets it. Malina grabs a machine pistol of his own from under the desk, and the two men take up position to try to hold off the cavalry. Kiefer's the first one in sight, coming down the stairs. Malina takes a few shots at him, but then the rest of the CTU guys are in the apartment. Malina manages to graze Curtis's arm with a bullet before Kiefer is able to take the suspect down. Henderson's nowhere in sight, and I doubt he's fired a shot. Kiefer comes down the stairs, roaring, "Christopher! Let me see your hands, now!" From behind the kitchen counter, only Henderson's hands pop up, the one holding the gun (which is pointed at the ceiling) appearing first. Kiefer secures Henderson and asks Curtis if everyone's okay. Curtis says he's the only one hit, but he's fine. That's quite an owie-face he's sporting, though. Oh well. It's not a complete 24 season until Curtis gets winged. Kiefer orders Curtis sent back to CTU, and asks after Malina. That gentleman's been shot in the hip. In a voice that suggests he thinks everyone's still shooting, Kiefer tells the medic to stabilize Malina and keep him alive. "I had him, Jack," Henderson says. "Thirty more seconds was all I needed." Kiefer still doesn't get it, so Henderson angrily spells it out: "I got him to lift the firewall. He was about to dump all of his files onto a flash drive before you jumped the gun and busted in here!" Kiefer slowly lowers his gun, the better to see his oh, shit face. Henderson says that now they have to waste time trying to decrypt the files on a mainframe, "So you'd better pray there's something on there that you can read." Kiefer swallows hard, or maybe he just prays with his Adam's apple. And then he remembers that even though Henderson is probably right, he's still the chump who's in custody. "Cuff him," Kiefer says, and while an agent is doing that, Kiefer earpieces that he's sending Chloe some files from Malina's computer. He also requests a CTU chopper sent to Malina's place, so they can get to Bierko's target as soon as they know what it is. Which, at the rate Chloe's working, shouldn't be long. Satisfied that Chloe has everything, Kiefer leads everyone out. Well, except Malina and the medic, of course, who I guess can take a cab. It's 4:47:54.
4:52:23. At the Not Camp David stables, FLOTUS has managed to drag Aaron away from the car and Agent Adams's body, and they're sitting up against a wall in an empty stall. I wish this scene were bad enough for me to make a horseshit joke, but it's not quite there. Carefully cleaning Aaron's bloody face with a cloth (and a shitty job she's doing of it too, given that seventeen minutes later he still looks like he fell off his bike), FLOTUS asks if her husband ordered Agent Adams to kill Aaron. "Yes, ma'am," Aaron says gently. FLOTUS gets all weepy again as Aaron adds, "I'm sorry to tell you the President was involved with much worse things than that." FLOTUS says she already knows. "I was going to let him get away with it." Aaron doesn't look too mad at her, probably because he's digging the attention. She says they need to make a plan. So he offers to get Adams's body in the trunk. However, he can't drive the car out, since Logan needs to believe he's dead. FLOTUS offers to be the wheel man, but Aaron tells her to get back before Logan suspects anything. He tells her to find Novick, and "tell him everything. Tell him to meet me here." FLOTUS agrees, and as she gives him the gory cloth and clasps his hand, she makes Aaron promise that he'll leave Not Camp David if he finds himself in danger. She gets up and leaves at 4:54:25. No kiss. Aaron's left there wondering how he's going to lift a body twice his size, when he couldn't even wipe his own face.