Episode Report Card Gustave: B | 5 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Midnight at Casa Kiefer
By Gustave | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 11.05.2001
Back at Kiefer's office, Kiefer is in the middle of putting on a more professional shirt -- a charcoal grey cashmere long-sleeved polo. The bod, or at least what we can see of it from the side, looks pretty good, but it's a strange angle they're shooting it from. Maybe Kiefer's been working out only the left half of his body, so they're only shooting him from his good side. He puts his cool-dad outfit into his brushed aluminum storage unit and lets George Mason in. You know George Mason is evil because he's played by the actor Xander Berkeley, who played the evil Secret Service man in Air Force One. In fact, it's a law: If there's a movie that has a character with a double-crossing CIA agent in development, Xander Berkeley has to at least get a read-through before they cast it. Xander tells Kiefer that the shooter is probably German and is arriving in the U.S. today. Then he hands him a chip of some sort and explains that it will help him get into any secured database nationwide so he can do a little more investigating. Kiefer asks who is the source on this information. Xander refuses to tell him because it's classified, but drops a dark hint about Palmer's politics and how he might shut down the agency if he becomes president. Yeah, like someone could just shut down the CIA if elected president. Kiefer asks Xander to at least call his boss and ask him for clearance so Kiefer's ass is covered. Xander agrees, makes a comment about Kiefer "finally learning to play the game," and asks Kiefer if he can use his phone.
Kiefer leaves the office, ostensibly to get a cup of coffee, and has Nina patch in so he can hear the call -- which turns out to be to "Time and Weather." He's just pretending to make the call for Kiefer's benefit. Frantic mandolin plucking starts to play on the soundtrack. Kiefer goes to the hall closet, which is piled with aluminum suitcases -- probably the modeling portfolios that belong to the ad agency they're using for interior shots. He selects a tranquilizer gun, hides it in an empty binder, and, despite Nina's look of concern, returns to his office and shoots Xander in the calf. As Kiefer wrestles Xander to the couch, Nina enters and closes the door. "You are out of your mind," says Nina. Kiefer explains that Mason is holding back information, so they have to blackmail him into spilling his guts. He dispatches Nina to investigate George Mason's offshore bank accounts and see if he skimmed any money from a drug arrest he made last year. He hands Nina that chip or whatever it was that George gave him that apparently gives you super investigative powers or something to help her with the trail. He tells her to get the information before Xander wakes up in less than half an hour. In the struggle, the scrapbook of Spawn of Kiefer has fallen on the floor. I guess he pocketed it when he searched her room. Kiefer notices the scrapbook and starts to look through it. The time is 12:34:23.
After a commercial break, the time is 12:38:40. The screen splits in four to reveal Eurotrash and Groupie Gal talking -- probably planning a covert blowjob in the airplane lavatory -- in the upper lefthand corner; Spawn of Kiefer, telling Rick some more about her dead father in the lower lefthand corner; Senator Palmer dictating something to his secretary in the lower righthand corner; and Kiefer making a phone call on the upper right. The phone rings at Casa Kiefer. Bride of Kiefer answers it, breaking a tea cup in the process. It's Alan York, the father of the slutty friend of Spawn of Kiefer, whose name turns out to be Janet. He's discovered his daughter missing as well and wants to know if Bride of Kiefer knows where they've gotten to. Bride of Kiefer takes Alan York's number and promises to call him if she hears anything.