Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Girl Troubles
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 5 | Aired on 01.25.2010
first. "Are you kidding me?" Kiefer rages at her. That's right, Kiefer. You've just been Punk'd! Chloe apologizes that they were focusing on Kiefer's follow. "Just tell me where they are!" Kiefer yells. Meanwhile, Vladimir has his men lead his captives down to the water's edge.In other splitscreen windows, Hassan gets up from his desk, Farhad looks way too pensive for a guy who's got two free hookers to play with (dude still has his tie on, as a matter of fact), Dana returns to CTU, and the doctor examines Oleg while Josef watches.
Chloe has now located Walker by the GPS on her earpiece, I guess. Maybe that should have been their plan A, no? Anyway, she's near Newton Creek. Kiefer asks about the TAC teams, which are at least ten minutes away from Walker. Whipping his car around in traffic like Undercover Brother, Kiefer yells, "Tell them to move it! Put me back on Renee's comm! Dammit!" Does he want Chloe to do those three things in that order? Because she still might not be totally up to speed on all of CTU's new damning software. At least she patches him back into Walker's earpiece, because she hears Kiefer explaining that they were following a decoy and TAC teams are ten minutes out. "Do whatever you have to to buy time," he tells her.
Vladimir orders both Ziya and Walker to their knees. Ziya's still pleading for his life, and Vladimir tells them to shut up and gives them one last chance to tell the truth. Ziya begins his story, and gets shot dead at the beginning of it. Looks like he got a thumbs-down. "No!" Kiefer says upon hearing the silenced shots, because he was so attached to Ziya. Oh, I guess he's worried it was Walker, because he starts calling her name, like she's going to answer him. But after a moment, he can hear Vladimir saying to her, "Amazing. You didn't even blink." She doesn't blink when Vladimir puts his gun to her face, either. She just whispers, "Do it. Just get it over with." Kiefer asks her what she's doing. He really needs to shut up before Vladimir hears him. Vladimir refuses to pull the trigger until Walker tells him who she really is. "Fine, you want the truth? I'll tell you the truth," she says. "You were right." Is she about to blow her own cover? "I am sick," she says. "I'm so sick of living like this. Truth is, even if you let me walk right now, I have nowhere to go and no one to go to." A tear leaks down her face as she says, "You don't want to do this deal? Fine. Then you might as well kill me because this deal is the only thing that I have." Kiefer begs her to stop, but she goes on, telling Vladimir, "Besides, you wouldn't be doing anything that I haven't already tried myself." After a long moment, she tells him again to do it. He presses the barrel against her forehead, then uncocks the gun. So they're cool now? "I had to be sure," he says. "You understand, right?" She says she does, as Kiefer nearly pees himself in relief. Vladimir smiles and orders Ziya dumped in the river. Walker? Still not smiling. She's probably wishing she'd thought to hold onto Ziya's thumb. She could toss it in the river right now and nobody in charge would ever know.
Kiefer, meanwhile, has forgotten to tell anyone back at CTU what's going on. When Hastings asks him for an update, Kiefer says the TAC teams need to stand down. "She's in. They bought her cover." It's 9:00:00, and fortunately he got the word out before Vladimir and Walker were surrounded by CTUmobiles. Even Walker would have had a hard time explaining that one.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.