Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Ex-Ex-President
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.14.2006
Outside, his true opinion of all of this becomes apparent when he meets up with Walt. "She's having another one of her delusions," he says. He tells Walt about FLOTUS's claims about her connection to Palmer's death, and says, "She thinks she's in the middle of one of her own conspiracy theories." Ah, so this has happened before. I bet she gives great interview when Barbara Walters gets her to go off-script. Walt asks what they should do. "Nothing," says the doting husband. It's 7:44:32.
7:50:13. Chloe rides in the back of a cab, Kiefer flies his stolen helicopter, and FLOTUS tries to get her shit together. At CTU, Edgar approaches Spencer and asks if he's talked to Chloe this morning. Spencer lies that he hasn't. Edgar's worried that Chloe hasn't gotten there a half hour after leaving her apartment (as we know, it's a short commute), he can't reach her on her cell phone, and "she sounded strange when I talked to her." "She always sounds strange," Spencer smirks. Edgar says he's going to run a locator trace on her phone, but Spencer assures him she's fine. "I saw her about a half hour ago," he says. Edgar's confused. "Do you really need me to spell it out?" Spencer finally says, and then Edgar isn't confused any more. Then he's just sad. Aw, poor jilted geek. He obviously thought he had the inside track to that action. Spencer again assures Edgar that Chloe's fine, and goes back to work.
Chloe's cab arrives at the oil refinery, and she gets out, probably giving a shitty tip. Meanwhile, Kiefer is circling the field overhead, resolutely ignoring Derek's repeated requests to tell him what's going on. Finally his persistent whining does what a trained torture expert couldn't and breaks through Kiefer's wall of silence: "A friend of mine is in trouble," Kiefer explains. "I needed to pick her up in a hurry." He comes in for a windy, dusty landing.
Chloe is running to the refinery's gate at 7:51:55. It's locked, of course. When she starts to scale the fence, she discovers that it's loose near the ground and she slithers through, leaving behind her jacket and a hunk of skin. Kiefer's waiting by the chopper when she runs into view and straight into his arms. She asks what's happening, and Kiefer says they're going to find out as Derek watches the reunion through the helicopter's windshield. Kiefer asks her if she can help him get remote access to CTU archives. She says she can't with her laptop, but there's a place at Cal Tech where it can be done. Derek hops out of the chopper, to say hi I guess, and Chloe asks who he is. Kiefer says he'll explain in the car, but she says she cabbed it. Kiefer looks briefly flummoxed to hear that Chloe didn't want to get into a vehicle that was almost certainly wired to blow her sky-high, but then remembers that they have this handy chopper right there. And with Kiefer's problem-solving abilities, I'm sure he'll even be able to figure out the parking shortage at Cal Tech. Helicopters are actually fairly easy to parallel-park, from what I hear. He orders Derek back into the craft and ushers Chloe inside as well, then gets in at 7:53:15 and starts her up. The helicopter, I mean, not Chloe. As the rotors begin to spin, Chloe looks up and sees two vehicles screaming into position outside the gate. And, uh-oh, one of them is the white van from earlier. "How did they find me?" she babbles in panic. "I don't think they ever lost you," Kiefer says. The bad guys have taken a set of bolt cutters to the chain around the gate and are on their way in. Kiefer's passengers are telling him to take off already, but the rotors aren't spinning fast enough yet. "We're not going to make it," Kiefer says as the white van and a black sedan speed towards them. He orders his charges out of the helicopter, telling them to stay close by. He gets out himself and throws a couple of smoke bombs from the chopper's emergency kit, obscuring the vehicles' approach. That done, he gives Chloe a gun and sends her and Derek running into the refinery. And the man-purse goes back on. I hope that thing gets SAG points. The pursuing cars stop to regroup, unable to see a thing through the haze Kiefer's thrown up. Jeff Kober sends the sedan through the smokescreen that isn't being blown away even a little by the whirling helicopter rotors nearby, and he himself advances on foot. Bald Guy holds his position. Too bad for Bald Guy, as Kiefer appears almost literally out of the smoke and kills Bald Guy with a knife, all quiet-like. That'll learn him not to kill Chloe.
Chloe and Derek run through the pipes of the refinery until Chloe chooses some apparently arbitrary hiding place and they both crouch down. Now they're safely out of sight from one direction.