Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT There's No "I" in Kiefer -- Oh, Wait.
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.14.2006
It's 8:24:04 as FLOTUS stands before the misty water-colored memories of Palmer playing on her television screen. She's gotten her hair fixed in a completely different style, and is wearing a new outfit. The maid comes in to help her finish getting ready, and is subjected to her boss's reminiscences of Palmer while the poor girl is just trying to do her job. Walt comes in and asks about the time of the call from Palmer that FLOTUS is so het up about. She says it was between 10:00 and 11:00 the previous night, and Walt says he's off to pull the recording. But FLOTUS stops him and says of the President, "He doesn't believe me, does he?" Walt says he wouldn't say that, and FLOTUS chuckles darkly, "Of course you wouldn't say it." I'm glad there's finally a character on this show who's willing to help me out a little. Walt tries to dig himself out of the hole, but FLOTUS dismisses him. I wonder if he's still the only one she'll listen to.
Back in Wayne's study. Kiefer asks if Palmer had been acting unusual. Leaning against the far wall, Wayne says Palmer had been distracted since arriving in L.A. Without ceremony, he walks up behind Kiefer and sets the gun on the desk in front of him, then returns to his place by the door. Nice little moment there. D.B. Woodside is such a better actor when his characters aren't being stupid. Chloe comes in over Kiefer's earpiece with word that the decryption program is ready. Kiefer taps the keyboard, and little red squares dance up and down the computer screen like digital scrubbing bubbles. Wayne immediately recognizes the newly-decrypted file as the first chapter from Palmer's memoir. He wonders why Palmer would bother encrypting something that has printouts lying all over the place. Kiefer thinks they should compare the document to a printout to look for changes that might signal information that Palmer would have hidden there. And then, you know, encrypted it in order to draw attention to it. Wouldn't have been the first time that Palmer was inadvertently working against himself, but I'm glad it's the last. Luckily, Wayne has a printout handy, and they start reading. Shouldn't Wayne put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door or something so they don't get busted? Sit down, HoYay!ers, I'm not talking to you.
At CTU, Edgar and Spencer are snipping at each other over some technobabble, but what's really bothering them is what's going on with Chloe. Or at least it's bothering Edgar, and Spencer is just pretending. Edgar suggests that Spencer take care of his technobabble problem by logging in under Chloe's ID. He gives Spencer the password and everything. It's like he's saying, "You may be in her pants, but I'm in her files." Put the dicks away, boys. But even with Chloe's ID, Spencer can't log in. He and Edgar quickly determine that Chloe's already logged in remotely. Spencer wonders how Edgar can be sure it's really Chloe, which is a fair question considering how well-traveled her password appears to be. But Edgar knows it's really Chloe thanks to some distinctive technobabble about the way she set up her remote connection. "Even I don't know how to do that," he says. "Then she's alive," Spencer says ambiguously. Edgar calls Buchanan to give him this news while Spencer runs a locator trace on Chloe's remote connection. They quickly ascertain that Chloe is looking at building schematics and agent deployments at Wayne Palmer's building. "The signal's faint," Edgar says, which we can see by the fact that the flag showing the address on the computer screen is fading in and out. Even I know that's bullshit, but it's enough for Edgar to conclude that Chloe must be in an underground parking garage. Buchanan hangs up with Edgar and picks up the phone to make another call. At his side, Audrey wonders why Chloe would be doing this. Buchanan says she wouldn't, unless Kiefer was forcing her. Audrey, who is freaking me out by being the voice of reason here, points out that a guilty Kiefer wouldn't be sniffing around the scene of the crime while it's swarming with agents. "Jack can explain it to us when we apprehend him," Buchanan says. It's 8:28:27.