Episode Report Card M. Giant: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Velvet Underground
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 24 | Aired on 05.22.2005
Back at the garage, Kiefer approaches Mandy to tell her they're trying to get her the deal, but it'll be void if the missile hits first. Mandy says she won't talk until "my representatives have confirmed my immunity." Kiefer just stares at her while I imagine this whole scene in a law office with everyone sitting around a table, but there's not that much to the approval. Instead, Curtis's cell phone rings, and after he holds it to the side of Mandy's head for a few seconds, she chirps, "Good." Kiefer asks again where ImhoTerror is. She answers, "The Global Center. A helicopter is waiting for him on the roof that will be taking him to a ship." Kiefer asks when ImhoTerror's leaving. "Now," she says calmly. I don't think she knows what the missile's target is, and not just because she doesn't volunteer the information. That remark will make more sense later. Something has to, after all. Kiefer gives the order to get the CTU helicopter ready. He adds that Mandy's hanging around until they can verify her story, and leaves her there to make creepy faces at everyone. Including Soul Patch, sitting in the back of an open CTUmobile with a big ol' bandage wrapped around his foot. He looks a little annoyed that nobody's bothered to drive him back to CTU yet so he can see his wife who left him twisting in the breeze.
Kiefer, Curtis, and another agent to be killed later jog towards the CTU helicopter. The rain has stopped, by the way. As they go, Kiefer instructs his wingmen not to use deadly force -- "even in self-defense." They understand, and the helicopter takes off with them in it.
Meanwhile, there's another helicopter on a roof across town, presumably that of the Global Center. ImhoTerror and his pilot approach the craft, the latter on his phone. "She's not answering her phone," he says, presumably referring to Naked Mandy. The pilot, prepping the chopper, reminds us all that Mandy was "delayed." "We're not waiting," ImhoTerror says. Oh, yes, we are. We're waiting just a goddamn minute, because I have a rant here. Never mind the fact that twelve hours ago ImhoTerror was resigned to the fact that he wouldn't get out of this alive, because even he couldn't have counted on CTU's repeated incompetence. What irritates me is that he had this veritable army of people working for him all over the greater Los Angeles area, all of whom had important things to do to execute the plan today. But he saves two seats on his escape helicopter for Naked Mandy and Naked Man, whose part in the plan was over with a week ago and who should really have figured a way out of the city on their own by now? It makes no damn sense, unless those seats were originally intended for other people who have since died, and ImhoTerror spends all of the commercial breaks calling people and telling them, "So-and-so got killed, so now there's room on the helicopter for you" until he got all the way down his whole line of succession to Naked Mandy and Naked Man? And that's another thing. Isn't Naked Mandy a little bit overqualified for the task he gave her? "Hmm, I need to hire this person who blew up an airplane and tried to kill the President Palmer so I can have her make a phone call. But then who will seduce and betray the Air Force pilot, and then search his doppelganger's apartment for damaging vital information? I know, I'll hire this anonymous, sex-voiced bimbo who doesn't know that guns can shoot through drywall." I can't believe I actually used to think that the only way to watch this show was to see every episode in sequence. Now that I've done that for a whole season for the first time, I realize how wrong I was. This show is actually better if you miss a couple of hours. Then, if you don't understand something, you can assume that you missed some vital piece of information that would make it all make sense. But when you see the whole season, there are still all kinds of things that don't hold together, plus you have information that actively prevents those things from making sense. And these days each episode practically stands alone anyway, with everyone working towards some short-term goal that's in line with the overall season arc which you already know anyway. Ah, well, now that I'm getting paid to recap every scene of every episode in detail, it's too late for me to go back now.
But I can go back to the episode, and I will. At 6:05:32, ImhoTerror walks over to the chopper to open the external luggage compartment so the pilot can stow something inside which we'll never see again. "How long before we get to the ship and international waters?" asks ImhoTerror, as if he doesn't know. The pilot says "ten minutes" anyway. "Something's wrong," ImhoTerror mutters to himself, and gets into the helicopter with the pilot. The rotors begin to turn.