Episode Report Card Erin: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Papa, Can You Hear Me?
By Erin | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.22.2003
We switch quickly to the black private dick who's the sex machine to all the chicks. Except, instead of sporting an ankle-length black leather coat, classy 'fro, and couple of guns, Richard Roundtree, a.k.a. "Shaft," is modeling a worn set of army fatigues while playing a nice quiet game of speed chess in the park. He takes a kid for fifty bucks and is in the process of reorganizing the board when a one-hundred-dollar bill lands in front of him and Jack says, "I'll put you in checkmate in ten moves." Shaft looks up and says, "Yeah, if I play with mah eyes closed." Jack takes a seat as Vaughn kind of parks it at the next table.
Jack and Shaft make a little country overthrow small talk and Jack introduces Vaughn. Shaft asks if he's Bill Vaughn's kid. Vaughn goes, "Yeah. He was my father." I actually thought this was kind of funny because, duh! If you're Bill Vaughn's kid, then let's assume he's your father; I assume this is intentional, a way to show that Vaughn is caught off guard. And yes, I giggled out loud. Jack and Shaft play chess as Jack fills him in on the extraction. The details aren't really important here, except for the part where Jack says something about Sloane being involved and Shaft says, "Weeeelll…look who's putting the band back together." Hee.
Basically, all you need to take away from this scene is: A) Victor Garber and Richard Roundtree are totally cool, B) Michael Vartan is even attractive when he's just sitting there listening, and C) the op's going to be tough, they can't use lethal force, there'll have to be at least another five freelancers involved, and it's going to cost Jack a small fortune. Jack tosses an address down on the table and tells Shaft to meet him at that address in two hours. Then he checkmates him. As Jack and Vaughn walk away, Vaughn observes that they just agreed to pay Shaft two million dollars. Jack stoically responds, "Three." This indicates that Shaft gets a mil above and beyond the ops, probably for putting the team together and getting the stuff. Or something. Who knows? Michael Vartan's pretty.
Spy Daddy's Super-Secret Storage Warehouse of Weaponry. A storage door slides up, and Jack and Vaughn enter a room that is just chock full of various weapons and sundry hunting supplies. AK-47s, handguns, what looks like missiles -- um, does the Self Storage over on I-95 allow shit like this to be stored at their facility? Like, what, has Jack been, um, collecting this stuff all these years just in case? In case of what, global thermonuclear war? Good god. Vaughn's all, what in the HELL is this? Jack's all, oh, just a little hobby of mine. Jack then opens up a safe door, revealing approximately three hundred stacks of cash wrapped neatly in plastic. What, does he collect MONEY too? Syd's the luckiest girl in the world. If my ass got captured by the NSC, my dad would probably just chuck some cookbooks at them and order them to clean the grill. All my father ever collected were cookbooks and Calphalon cookware and that shit is sitting in my cabinets right now, just DREAMING of the day it can burn my rice.