Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT What is it with chicks, man?
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 15 | Aired on 03.26.2006
9:26:54. Henderson is driving through the city in a car that he got I know not where, but I can say with certainty that the rear-projection street scene he's driving through was picked up from some bootleg distributor in Chinatown. Anyway, his cell phone rings, and it's the leader of the hit squad that drove Wayne Palmer off the road a half hour ago, calling from the arboreal wilderness outside Not Camp David. Where apparently a half-dozen heavily armed mercenaries can just wander around of an evening without having to worry about running into any Secret Service people or anything. "Is Wayne Palmer dead yet?" Henderson demands, just so we know who's after Wayne. The hitman apologizes for his sloppiness in letting Wayne get away, but promises to fix it. "You damn well better," Henderson threatens. "You know what's at stake." The hitman hangs up and the writer of the scene saves his Final Draft document and adds an item to next week's list of things to do: "Come up with what's at stake."
Inside the Not Camp David compound, Aaron is getting a little worried about what's taking Wayne so long. Hey, maybe he couldn't get a cab. Aaron exposits to another agent that he's going to go out and check on Wayne himself, asking the other guy to keep it quiet. The junior agent agrees and watches Aaron go, thinking that if he can just look a leeeettle sketchy at having received some borderline sensitive information, a producer will see the dailies and decide to write him a more pivotal role an episode or two down the line. And the thing is, he's probably right. It's 9:28:12, and that's the only scene we're getting inside Not Camp David this hour. A break from the Logans is always appreciated, when you're me.
Kiefer's up in Buchanan's office, accepting an icepack from his sort-of boss while Hayes tells him to calm down. I don't know why Kiefer's not in holding himself; I can't decide whether being CTU or not CTU is more likely to keep him out of there. Or maybe it's just that all their holding rooms are filled with either corpses or chicks. He's still insisting to Hayes that Audrey is innocent, and he's evolving a theory about how Audrey got dragged into this in the first place: "[Collette] must have gotten Audrey's name from Henderson," he says, explaining that it would have been a good way to get into Kiefer's head. Hayes must have read my recaps during her downtime at DHS, because she points out that these plans would have been made long ago, when Henderson would have expected Kiefer to be dead by now. But Kiefer also reads the recaps, because he points out that the bad guys have backup plans with backup plans that have backup plans. He doesn't use those exact words, which is why I can't claim it as a shout-out. And anyway, I think a more powerful argument would be that wrongfully accusing Audrey when Kiefer's actually dead would be more effective in distracting CTU, because we know they're not big on second-guessing themselves once they've got a warm body in the back room. Not having Kiefer around to defend her would keep them going down that path for hours. But it's not like anybody's going to start listening to me at this late date. Kiefer tells Hayes that they need to be interrogating Collette instead of Audrey. Hayes points out that Stenger has that airtight immunity agreement that Kiefer got for her. Kiefer concedes that, but says that if he can prove that Collette lied, her immunity agreement gets flushed, and then she'll lead them to Henderson and Henderson will lead them to the nerve gas and it'll be puppies and Christmas from here on out. He just wants to be allowed to work with Chloe to prove that Collette is lying. Hayes thinks it over.