Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Day 5: 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on January 14, 2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Season Five starts with a series of bangs. The shocks come fast and furious: Ex-President Palmer gets shot dead, Tony and Michelle get blowed up good, President Logan is about to accomplish something, and Chloe has a boyfriend. Meanwhile, Kiefer is hiding out somewhere outside L.A. under an assumed name, just close enough to come in to the rescue when Chloe calls him for help. She's figured out that the people who knew Kiefer is alive are the ones who are being targeted. Kiefer hijacks a helicopter, and his landlady's teenaged son Derek, to fly to the rescue. We meet President Logan's wife, who would seem to have a rather tenuous relationship with reality. Since Logan is about to sign a treaty with the Russian president, he so doesn't have time for her shit right now. He also doesn't have time for the warnings he's getting from CTU (where Buchanan, Curtis, Edgar, and Audrey are all back in play, along with Chloe's boyfriend, a weaselly little dude named Spencer) asking him to postpone the summit for security reasons. Kiefer and Chloe meet up just in time to get caught up with by the assassination team. Kiefer of course turns the tables on the bad guys, and gets the team's leader to reveal that Palmer was the real target, and that the ex-prez needed to be kept quiet -- although the assassin doesn't know about what. And then Kiefer kills the guy. Being freelance has advantages, I guess. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Welcome back, dear friends, to the fifth season of 24 recaps on Television Without Pity. Before we get started, I'd just like to say this: screw the greetings, I've got four of these bitches to write by Saturday. If you gotta pee, do it now.
Actually, I'm going to start with the DVD-only prequel that's included on the Season Four discs. A little warm-up exercise, if you will, because it's been almost a month and a half since I last wrote a recap and I want to be sure I still know how to do it. Pee during that, if you want.
The first couple of minutes of the prequel are the last two minutes of Season Four, conveniently beginning right where this page starts. The clock counts down the last few seconds to 7:00 AM and everything. And then it's replaced by the title, "12 Months Later."
In a suburban/industrial area of Chicago at 1:47:06 PM (which I can tell by the subtitles), a shiny silver rental car drives along a mostly empty street. At the wheel, of course, is Kiefer, looking pretty grungy in a dark-blue sweatshirt with the hood up. There's just no way to rock that look in shirtsleeve weather without coming off all dark-Jedi. Kiefer parks his car and gets out, adjusting his man-purse and his hood. He walks slowly but purposefully, hesitating briefly when a couple of guys hop out of a parked truck. Kiefer proceeds as if their presence there is innocent, which it quickly turns out to be as he walks past them. They don't say a word, but the fact that he's got his hood up on a sunny, warm day clearly makes them curious. Way to be inconspicuous, there, Kiefer. The only way he could stick out more would be to stop, turn, and look ba-- ah, there it is. Already I'm wondering how he lasted twelve minutes on the lam, let alone twelve months.
Nearby, a bright blue Prius pulls up and stops. Out of this car steps Chloe, formerly known as Potato Face. And I say "formerly" because her hair looks fabulous. Don't know what happened there. Maybe it's the cut, or the color, or the fact that this is the first time we've ever seen her in direct sunlight. ["It's got some body, finally. Maybe she busted out a weave? Regardless, I agree; it looks rad." -- Sars] She double-checks the crumpled note in her hand and wanders into the nearby truckyard. Where she's quickly grabbed and pulled against the side of a truck by Kiefer, who's been lurking there. "Are you sure you weren't followed?" he hisses, dashing any twisted hopes that this is some kind of romantic tryst. Which would have been dashed anyway, as we see when Kiefer pulls down his hood to reveal a greasy brown mullet.