Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Things Fall Apart
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.22.2005
Buchanan asks Bitchelle if she's going to be all right, and she says yeah. "I was gonna do what she wanted," she confesses. "I didn't call you right away…" Buchanan takes her arm, but not in a creepy way. "It's okay," he says. "It's done." He leaves her alone in her office to contemplate her NEAR-BETRAYAL. I guess that doesn't really have the same ring.
Kiefer's already organizing the redeployment of his men at the Naked Arms. Curtis has arrived, asking for a task. Kiefer wants him to have the LAPD start arresting any residents who aren't cooperating with the search for Naked Mandy. Hey, it's not 24 if somebody's civil rights aren't being violated. Curtis suggests pulling some guys off the search to act on any clues Bitchelle gets from talking to Mandy, but Kiefer nixes that, saying they have to make things look like Bitchelle is cooperating. Curtis agrees. Kiefer tells Buchanan over the earpiece that they're ready to go, and Buchanan says Bitchelle is still waiting to hear back from Mandy. They both comment on the fact that Mandy is apparently unidentifiable via voice or fingerprint. "She's managed to stay completely under the radar." Kiefer says their only hope is that Mandy makes a mistake. They finish the call, and Kiefer tells his driveway guys to move into their hiding spots.
Mandy watches out the window as cop cars and CTUmobiles clear out of her path. Then she walks over to Soul Patch and, without a word, zaps him with a taser. She stands there motionlessly while he flops over on his back. She makes sure he's unconscious, then gets to work. The taser goes into a canvas case laid out on a table, and she flops her holster leg up onto the same table to remove the weapon strapped to her thigh. The silenced gun goes into the back of her waistband, and the holster goes in the case, which she zips up. She looks out the peephole, and then turns around and leans nervously against the door before executing her last bit of preparation: a lipstick touch-up. Her comic-book-geek fantasy sequence thus completed, out to the open-air hallway she goes.
It's 5:20:16 as she makes her way a few doors down and taps on the door of her incredibly early-rising neighbors. The redheaded female resident opens the door and pulls Mandy inside, saying, "There's some crazy person loose in the building." She already knows about Kiefer? She and a guy in the apartment appear to be getting ready for work, as if they live in the real L.A. with its two-hour commutes rather than the one this show takes place in. Mandy asks to see another guy who lives there, someone named "Joz." Redheaded tenant calls out to Joz. The guy, seeing that Mandy's acting weird, asks what's going on. "Nothing, just weird stuff," she answers. Guy doesn't seem to want to let it go. Fortunately, Joz appears, looking forward to a busy day of playing "fat guy" in commercials for products that want to cultivate an "extreme" or "edgy" image. He sleepily but pleasantly says to Mandy, "Hey, what's going on, Rothenberg?" "Hey, man," says Mandy, then pulls out her gun and shoots him dead, freaking both other tenants right the hell out. That'll teach them to have parties on weeknights. "Shh, not a sound," Mandy whispers to her surviving neighbors. Redheaded tenant gasps into her hand in terror. It's 5:21:07.