Episode Report Card Sobell: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Safe and Sound
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 5 | Aired on 09.22.2008
As Mac the Knife leaves, we cut to Tricia holding the slip of paper Bellick gave her, and obviously ruminating on something. I am ruminating on those awful red acrylic nails she glued onto her own claws. So tacky when they're so obviously fake.
Meanwhile, in a dank dungeon somewhere, Gretchen endures. Some anonymous stooge comes by with a rusty bucket, saying helpfully, "I thought that urine might be getting a little stale, so I brought you some more." As he goes to change buckets, Gretchen whips out a leg and manages to fell him. He goes down right by her bench, and she wraps her legs around him, rending him incapable of scooting away. It takes her all of a moment to rear back as far as her shackles will allow, and she drives the now-free rusty nail right into the guy's temple. He screams, but nobody comes running. Gretchen quickly unlocks her shackles, rips off the duct tape covering her mouth, and heads for the door with a wild look in her eye. It's going to be a race between her and Mahone to see who gets to Agent Blots Out the Sun first.
We cut to Don Self asking Michael if he got the enhanced image files. He sure did. Don explains that for the first two cardholders, they've got names and addresses, but the last cardholder -- the one that Roland is staring at intently on the screen -- is General Von Baldy. (Or, as the show has labeled him "General Jonathan Krantz.") Don Self says ruefully, "This guy's a ghost." Michael clicks off without saying goodbye. Dr. Sara looks a little woozy, and she walks away from Michael and Roland. When Michael strolls over to see if she's okay, Dr. Sara says, "Most of what happened to me in Panama is a total blank, but when I was being held, I could hear Gretchen talking on the phone in the next room, and she was taking orders from the guy in charge, and she called him 'the General.'" We see Roland eavesdropping. Hands up, all of you who think that the One World Conspiracy came to him in prison and offered him a sweetheart deal along the lines of "work with these clowns and we'll let the rest of your family live." Anyway, the point to this scene is to establish that the final cardholder is the tippy-top of the One World Conspiracy, so getting his card data is not going to be easy.
Speaking of General Von Baldy, he's currently reminding himself that Agent Blots Out the Sun is too big to kill with his bare hands, as Agent Blots Out the Sun is currently skipping around Von Baldy's office and singing, "I told you so, I told you so!" General Von Baldy replies, "She'll come home. She always has." I'm thinking perhaps Gretchen has finally taken the words of Thomas Wolfe to heart and concluded that indeed, you can never go home again. Before Agent Blots Out the Sun can issue more reproachful bon mots regarding Gretchen and her irritating condition of non-deadness, a stooge comes in and shares the news that a Homeland Security Agent by the name of Don Self has been running enhanced image searches on General Von Baldy. Von Baldy is startled by this, and we see him exchange a long and meaningful glance with Agent Blots Out the Sun. It's sweet that these two are capable of non-verbal communication. Then again, when the message being sent is "Kill him" and it's being sent to such a virtuoso sadist, is it really that difficult to connect? We'll find out next week.