Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Undercover Brothers
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.12.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.This hour starts off angry and kind of stays that way. Taylor and Ethan are pissed at the FBI for losing Tony and Kiefer, Walker's pissed at Kiefer for playing her, and Kiefer's pissed when he learns about the homegrown CTU that Buchanan's been running with just Chloe and Tony. Still, he's on board to go back undercover with Tony for the next job. Which he does, and nearly gets killed on Emerson's orders, but instead he turns his murder room into an audition stage and gets to join the crew. And then he learns that the next job is to grab ex-Prime Minister Matobo and deliver him to Colonel Dubaku.
Some other stuff happens. Sean, worried about his wife's flight, unwisely impersonates Moss to push her plane to the head of the landing queue. Any repercussions from that will be felt in a later episode. Henry Taylor secretly meets with Sam, who hands him a drive containing evidence that Roger was not only murdered, but framed -- by someone near the top of Taylor's administration. We're supposed to think it's Ethan, because he's arguing more and more strongly for calling off the invasion, but I still don't like that looks of that Stevens guy. Walker visits the wounded Tanner in his hospital room, and makes Janis stall his lawyers while she tortures the helpless man into telling her Tony's next move. Awesome. She's come so far in four hours.
At the end, Emerson, Tony, and Kiefer burst into the safe house where Matobo is staying, but they're too late to prevent him and his wife from locking themselves into a panic room. If they want to get to Dubaku, which they do, they're just going to have to get Matobo out. And since we already know the FBI's on its way, they'll need to hurry.
By the way, Bill Buchanan has become quite the cold-blooded son of a bitch since we last saw him.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This hour's previouslies include a freeze frame for mid-level henchman Alan Tanner, the sniper who took out Gabriel Schechter a few minutes before 9:00 AM. Which does not bode well for Alan Tanner.
At the FBI's Washington Field Office, Janis calls over a very stressed-out Agent Walker and tells her that Kiefer and Tony were seen getting into a "dark-colored panel van." Which is correct, if bright blue is a dark color. Walker then goes to Sean, who isn't having any luck tracking the van through the traffic cams, for which he is (correctly) blaming the hacker. They can't even track the van's progress by which cameras are going dark? Maybe Chloe's going a little more sophisticated than that. Walker tells him to try, like, ATMs and parking garage security cameras. Why not YouTube, while he's at it? Walker completes her rounds by going to Moss, who is just getting off the phone, and tells him that someone's running interference for the fugitives on street cams. "Bauer must have worked out this escape with Almeida's people," Moss guesses, which is correct, but not in the way he thinks. Walker blames herself for listening to Kiefer. "Believing the Bureau was compromised? Someone on the inside working against us? I realize now it was him all along." Well, on the bright side, now she thinks she doesn't have to spend a lot of time looking for another mole. Moss is willing to share the blame, even when a blonde underling named Erica comes up to tell him that the White House is on line one. Of course it is. You don't put the White House on line four. Walker walks with him toward the conference room where he plans to take the call, promising him that she'll "make this right" by finding Kiefer and Tony. "Throw in the CIP device and maybe we'll be off the hook," he cracks. After he peels off, Walker bugs Janis some more, this time about the shooter who apparently caught an ambulance ride in from Tony's hideout at the docks. Janis pulls up the shooter's file. It's Alan Tanner, an ex-special forces guy who tried to get Gulf War Syndrome benefits after his discharge but failed, even after suing the government. Well, that would explain his anti-government bias. Bet he hates trial lawyers, too. Walker says she wants to know as soon as he wakes up.
In the conference room, Moss is having that phone conversation that nobody ever wants to have with the Oval Office on this show, even though sooner or later somebody always does. President Taylor and Ethan have him on speakerphone. They already know about Tony's escape, but want to know how it happened. Moss wisely just blurts out the truth: "He had the help of a former CTU agent that we mistakenly trusted, a man by the name of Jack Bauer." Ethan is surprised that Jack Bauer is anywhere but in front of a Senate subcommittee, and Moss has to explain that they got him out of there to help them find Tony. So really, there's no way to make this sound like it's not his fault. Ethan brings to bear his incisive powers of analysis by yelling at the speakerphone, "You and your people have royally screwed up, Agent Moss!" Taylor calls Ethan off and asks Moss if there are any other leads. Moss tries to explain about Tanner, and how he might be able to tell them something about Tony, but since nobody even knows when the shooter might wake up, Taylor starts yelling at him too, telling him that recapturing Tony is his only priority. Sweet, that means I can disregard the piracy warning at the beginning of this screener DVD!