Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Crushed Velvet
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 1 | Aired on January 13, 2007
Buchanan picks this moment to storm back into CTU, his own cell phone in hand. "We may have spooked Fayed," Nadia confesses immediately, but Buchanan already heard the whole thing. "Dammit!" he roars at the O'Brians. "What were you thinking?" Chloe says it's her fault, and tells Buchanan to fire her. He says he'd fire them both right now, but can't afford to lose the manpower. Plus it's only the first hour. He gets right up in Chloe's face and says, "Don't think you're the only one mourning Jack. You're not...We may have sacrificed Jack for nothing." Morris isn't looking at anyone. Chloe stands there, red-faced and guilty. Even her hair is less flippy. It's 6:46:09.
At 6:52:12, Karen leaves the Oval Office again and calls Buchanan to see whether they've heard from Fayed. Buchanan breaks the news that Fayed caught Chloe and Morris's satellite transmission. I sure have missed the way Buchanan always waits until after the commercials to break bad news to his superiors. Karen goes ballistic. Standing next to a bust of that notorious habeas-corpus-suspender Abraham Lincoln, she tells Buchanan, "If these attacks don't stop, there are people willing to tear up the Constitution in the name of national security." Oh, like that would happen. Buchanan says he'll call back as soon as he hears from Fayed. Karen apologizes for her tone, Buchanan says it's okay, and they hang up. Just like the newlyweds they are.
It's 6:53:23 when Fayed arrives back at his HQ with his henchmen and a beaten-up Kiefer, whose cleaning-up, alas, didn't endure all that long. Fayed's tech guy reports that CTU hasn't tried to track them again, and that the money's been wired to the proper account. Fayed isn't in the mood to call CTU yet, though, and instead leads his Kiefer-dragging henchmen into a back room. It's a lot like Kiefer's little clean-up area back at the airplane hangar, except the sharp objects are dirtier and much more numerous. Before being pushed into the room's interrogation chair, Kiefer tells Fayed to call CTU. Fayed punches and kicks Kiefer a few times instead. While Fayed strips off his jacket and unrolls a kit of instruments of a scarily ambiguous nature, Kiefer is forced into the seat. A chain is run between the cuffs on his hands and under the arms of the chair, and an EKG cuff is placed around his arm. His heart rate is at an impressively laconic 60 bpm. If I were in this situation, I'd have an extra zero or two after that. Fayed tells Kiefer, "The Chinese didn't leave me much to work with, but before you die, you're going to feel what my brother felt. I saw his body. I know how he died." Uh, Alzheimer's? Fayed bares Kiefer's left shoulder, and then sticks the point of a wicked-looking knife into the nerve bundle located there. Kiefer soldiers through the pain, sitting back in relief when Fayed takes the knife out. But then Fayed pours some clear liquid over the fresh wound, and Kiefer screams in a way Fayed finds much more satisfactory. After Kiefer's EKG finishes spiking and drops down to a more Zen-like hundred or so, Kiefer tells Fayed again Fayed to give Assad's location to CTU. Like Kiefer's in any position to be bossing anyone. In a "funny you should mention Assad" tone of voice, Fayed informs Kiefer that Assad's been talking about renouncing violence and negotiating. Preparing a long, sharp rod of some sort, Fayed walks around behind Kiefer and calls Assad a traitor to the cause. "And soon he will be dead. That's right, Jack. CTU is about to kill the wrong man. Assad isn't behind these attacks. He's come here to stop them. He's come here to stop...me." Oh, great. Nice intel, Karen. With that, Fayed jams the rod deep into Kiefer's back. Kiefer arches his back, his face almost orgasmic with agony. Either that, or the rod is acting as an antenna and Kiefer's suddenly getting some really good porn channels. Fayed pulls the rod out, drops it on the floor, and, on his way out of the room, informs Kiefer, "You will die for nothing." Wow, for such an amoral villain, he sure is eager to get on board with the episode's theme.