Episode Report Card Gustave: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Pardon me!
By Gustave | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 01.06.2003
Cate is sleeping in what looks like a Pier One Imports, or the dorm room of an Oberlin sophomore. Let's just say that someone who lives there has a hard-on for Persian tapestries. A man is in the room with her, "speaking Arabic" on a cell phone, according to the closed captioning. He puts a vial of something under her nose, and she wakes up. "Would you like some water, Cate?" says ArabicSpeakingMan. "Maybe some tea?" Uh-oh, it's a villain with hospitality. That's the worst kind! Cate groggily asks ASB how he knows her name. ASB knows more than that. He knows that Cate is "twenty-nine years old and [has] an economics degree from Stanford." "Who are you?" asks Cate. "My name is Syed Ali," says Syed Ali. Damn, I was so sure they were going to bring in a major celebrity to play Syed. My bad. Instead, they went with a vaguely hot soap actor. Cate reacts to his name, and then just as quickly tries to play it cool, admitting that she's "heard his name mentioned" but knows nothing else about him. Syed wants to know what she learned from looking in her father's files.
Cate plays dumb, so Pier One Imports spokesperson Kirstie Ali drags her over to a room in the back where Mikey Palmice is naked, bound, and being tortured by a Caucasian dude wearing a see-through plastic poncho and goggles. Oh, this isn't gay at all! Seventies icon Ali McGraw insists that he needs to know what Cate knows and who she told. Both Mikey and Cate insist that they know nothing, and therefore told no one anything. Uh, what is the point? Covering your trail a little too obsessively, are we? Cate insists that the files deleted themselves before they could even access them. Mikey backs her up while Poncho Dude takes an electric sander to a place below Mikey's waist that I don't even want to think about. Cate screams. Mikey screams. The time is 04:35:56 PM.
The time is 04:40:07 PM. Klockwise from the top left, PoorMan'sReneeZellweger waits for Reza at CTU while Reza does something; the Teen Twosome wait for something else. Meanwhile, Nina runs to "higher ground," followed by Kiefer. The militia guys are in hot pursuit. Nina hands Kiefer ammunition and calls out locations. They seem to be telescoping time during this gun battle, because it takes, like, ten seconds to kill everyone. Just as Kiefer is running out of ammunition, a CTU chopper appears in the distance. Kiefer and Nina "stay down" while the chopper makes a sweep of the militia dudes. Nina picks up the gun, loads it with ammo she secreted in her pocket earlier, and trains it on Kiefer. "I don't want to shoot you just yet but I just might have to," says Nina. She threatens to kill Kiefer if the CTU doesn't "stand down." She demands to talk to the president. "Now!" Since this episode aired, whenever my best friend Larry and I call each other, we open each phone conversation with "I want to talk to the president! Now!"