Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT One-Term Wonder
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.21.2006
Up in the control room, Bierko is micromanaging: "With the last three missiles, make sure you overlap these population centers in San Francisco." Man, San Francisco is always getting the shit end on this show. The henchman starts tapping the weapons system keyboard.
Down below, Rooney has located a wheeled cart loaded with tools, which is just the kind of thing you want rolling around on a submarine during a crash dive or an emergency main ballast tank blow. He tips the cart over, with aurally impressive results.
Up in the control room, Bierko hears the crash. "Keep working," he tells his henchman, and pulls his handgun out of his Bond-villain jacket to go investigate. He almost immediately meets his other two henchmen down in the missile room, which seems rather geographically suspect to me, and tells them to come with him.
Above decks, Kiefer has led his guys into position very close to the control room. He holds a small hand-mirror around the corner of the gangway, and ascertains that there's still one bad guy in the control room. Kiefer tells McCullough that he's going to get into position. "When he's directly above me, signal me with the mirror." McCullough takes the mirror and the position from Kiefer, who belly-crawls down the corridor, unseen by the bad guy, until he's backed up against a console. He pulls out his switchblade and waits. Not three feet away, the bad guy hits a key on the keyboard, and little wire-frame illustrations of twelve missiles light up on the screen. Chloe reports in his earpiece that the missiles are armed and will launch in three minutes. Kiefer had better hope that the bad guy moves over him before them. Fortunately he does, and on McCullough's signal he stands up and jabs his knife into the bad guy's throat. "We're all clear," Kiefer growls into the mouthful of dark blood that the henchman is spewing forth onto his hands. Jesus, Fox, do you realize how early it is? Rupert Murdoch is going to have to have his "news" channel do some extra sucking up to keep the FCC off his ass this week. This is the most throat-stabbing-intensive hour of broadcast TV I've ever seen before eight o'clock Central. Weapons still drawn, Henderson and McCullough join Kiefer in the control room as he covers the aft entryway. Upon reaching the computer screen, Henderson reports that he's going to have to "reverse all these codes manually." I don't know what that means, but it sounds time-intensive. Kiefer asks if there's enough time, and Henderson, who's already at work, responds, "I don't want to be here any more than you if the F-18s take out this sub." Kiefer says he and McCullough will make sure Henderson is left alone to do his work, and he leads his doomed sidekick out to chase after the terrorists. I'm thinking that left alone in the control room, with access to the steering, Henderson could make quite the dramatic escape attempt right now if he had a mind to. And if the show had the budget to shoot a submarine chase. Maybe next year.