Episode Report Card Gustave: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The One Where Everybody Died, Part Two
By Gustave | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 11.18.2002
Elsewhere in the CTU building, Spawn is carrying JonBenet out of the building and assuring her that everything is going to be okay. I think that it's time JonBenet learned that when Spawn says "everything's okay," it's time to duck and cover. JonBenet has a seizure. Her eyes roll back in her head and everything. An EMT comes over and tells Spawn to "hold her down." But he says this with his face out of camera range so that the producers could save money by paying him for a non-speaking role and having his lines done in a voice-over. The EMT insists -- while still off-camera -- that JonBenet has to be taken to an emergency room. He rushes her into an ambulance, as if there weren't hundreds of other medical emergency situations that require his attention as well. I hope there's room for JonBenet in that one ambulance.
NSA. Everyone is having a big meeting, and Palmer is ruminating on the tragic fact that Kiefer's warning wasn't relayed back to CTU in time to save "all those people." Rolaide has this look on her face like she has a balloon filled with black tar heroin stashed in her rectum and the Turkish customs people have pulled her aside for questioning. Meanwhile, Raygun is kool as a kucumber. He asks the president if they can start going over an evacuation plan for L.A. Palmer says he'll address it later, and exits. Rolaide corners Raygun, out of earshot of the other uniform-wearing Presidential staff extras, and accuses him of being responsible for all those deaths. "I wanted to tell the president!" she hisses. "Well you didn't, Blanche," says Raygun. Okay, he didn't say "Blanche," but you know they totally should have at least had that in the first draft of the script. No one can resist a Whatever Happened To Baby Jane reference. They squabble some more about whose fault it was that Rolaide couldn't get through to the president. For some reason, no one remembers that last week Palmer was pretty much told by Raygun himself that he didn't want to phone CTU because it would blow Kiefer's kover. So then, for some reason, Raygun is threatening Rolaide with blackmail, even though it's not all that clear what Raygun has on Rolaide. I guess Rolaide has to keep her mouth shut now about Raygun's responsibility for what happened, but honestly, I can't understand why she fears him.
Back at The Madame Curie Memorial Secret Bomb-Making Warehouse, Mason is sitting on the tail end of the back of the ambulance, wrapped in a Red Cross blanket. Everybody in Red Cross blankets! Accessorize it with a jaunty gas mask, a turban, and those plastic sandals you stole from a bathhouse you visited last month in Prague, and it's the look for spring of 2003. Mason's new friend, the on-site doctor who looks like an older Paul Rudd on steroids -- the one who told him last week that he was dying -- approaches him to inform him that they've got all of Mason's stuff in the back of the ambulance, and they're ready to take him to the hospital. I must say that I'm intrigued by the idea of Mason having an expiration date, but I'm scared of this plotline. I see a potential for maudlin discoveries of Mason's tender side, and that frightens me. Mason asks the doctor hesitantly what his journey toward the great beyond will be like -- not the spiritual aspect of it, but the gross details like losing hair and bowel control and when that's all going to start to happen. SteroidalPaulRudd explains the progressive loss of Mason's bodily functions and offers to prescribe him something for the nausea. They're interrupted by a phone call. It's Soul Patch. From inside CTU. Calling on the office phone inside CTU. Think about it. What's wrong with this picture? Like, how bad was this bombing if they have their phones up within five minutes? I mean, yeah, Darlene looks like she's about to die, but otherwise, you'd think they'd have to talk on their cells to get a line out of the building for at least twenty minutes. Soul Patch tells Mason about the bombing of CTU, the structural damage, the nineteen casualties, and the loss of data. Apparently, Darlene wrote an encryption code for all of their intel and she's the only one who knows what it is. And she might die. Mason tells Soul Patch that he might not be coming back to CTU. "I'm not really in a position to help out right now," explains Mason cryptically. Soul Patch reminds him that a nuclear device is about to go off and half of his staff is dead. "So don't tell me you're still trying to cover your own ass!" says Sooty Soul Patch. Mason tells Soul Patch to "just deal with it." They hang up. Soul Patch makes exasperated yet sexy faces and gestures to fill time. And…scene!