Episode Report Card M. Giant: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Unresolved
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 24 | Aired on 05.20.2007
Behind them, the CTU pilot is spinning up the helicopter's rotors. Before getting inside, they walk over to the nearest parked CTUmobiles and raid the arsenal in back. Nobody seems to notice them or want to stop them as Kiefer hands Buchanan a bulletproof vest and loads up a fresh man-purse full of guns for himself. Then they walk right over to the helicopter, where Kiefer gets in the back and Buchanan takes the copilot's seat. The pilot must have been too busy with his preflight checks to notice that his two sketchy passengers-to-be were just arming themselves to the teeth about ten feet from his windscreen. His inattention bites him in the ass when Kiefer puts one of his many guns to the pilot's head and orders him out. Not bothering to argue or even roll his eyes, the pilot hops out onto the parking lot. Buchanan immediately lifts off and takes them out to sea before anyone else on the ground even knows what's going on. I'm sure that's some kind of metaphor. It's 5:10:11.
Commercials. That ad for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is almost cool enough to make me wish I gave a shit. As it is, I'll be getting my fill of pirates soon enough. More on that next week.
5:14:33. Two F-18s are already in the air, streaking towards the target through the predawn sky. The lead pilot reports that they'll be in range in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes? On this show? During the final hour? Where did they take off from, Oklahoma?
At the White House, SecDef reports to the Veep that Russian troops are massing along the eastern rim of the U.S. base, which generally indicates an imminent attack. Hey, no fair -- Suvarov gave him two hours and it hasn't even been ninety minutes yet. But then, maybe even Suvarov didn't think he could move that many forces around the Asian map faster than a game of Risk. Tom gets Suvarov on the line and puts him on speaker. Suvarov brings up the trade that the Veep told him about earlier, and asks how that went. The Veep has to admit that "that didn't work out," but asks Suvarov to hold off juuust a bit longer before killing a bunch of his guys. As the Veep is explaining that they've tracked Cheng to an oil platform that's about to be blown out of the water by his own F-18s, Suvarov reads a clipboard he's just been handed. He gets out of his chair and gestures at it with appropriately foreign boisterousness. The Veep is just getting started on abjectly begging Suvarov to believe that he's telling the truth this time, but Suvarov cuts him off, saying he believes the Veep. It seems that the Russians have picked up a transmission from a Chinese submarine fifteen miles off the California coast, presumably en route to pick up the component. The Veep offers to hook Suvarov up with a real-time uplink to their satellite feed, which at Suvarov's end seems to involve having one of his generals open a laptop and put it on a desk. Well, that was easy. After ascertaining that the air strike is due in twenty minutes, Suvarov wishes the Veep luck. The Veep doesn't bother to respond, preferring to look at the jets on the Situation Room's one radar screen. The screen also shows the oil platform's position, and I just need to say that if that display is to scale, those jets are fucking huge.