Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | 305 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Women's Work, Part II
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2010.04.12
It's 8:42:16, and we're back at the U.N. with Taylor already, ten minutes after we last saw her at McGuire AFB, some sixty miles away. Did Marine One go supersonic or something? The return to the U.N. certainly didn't take as long as the evacuation. She finishes a cell phone call and tells Tim the Russians are already leaking word of how they're going to "reluctantly" quit the talks. "They don't like wasting time," Tim sighs. He adds that her "guest" has arrived, by way of the freight elevator, and is now waiting in a conference room.
Taylor enters that conference room, and there's Logan, looking like a nervous frog, and accompanied by an aide played by Reed Diamond. Logan's also looking a little better than we last saw him, because then he had a beard and was bleeding out in the back of an ambulance back in Season Six. In fact, this episode is the first indication that he even survived that incident. On the other hand, his hair has thinned and his neck has thicked and he's got that ever-present flag pin stuck in his lapel. Nice character touch, that. His first words when Taylor enters are ones of sympathy over Hassan, for which she thanks him, remembering to call him "Mr. President." She asks to talk to him alone, meaning "lose the spook." Logan introduces his "executive assistant, Jason Pillar," and says he's trustworthy. Taylor drops the pretense and says, "Forgive me if I don't give much weight to your endorsement. He needs to leave." Which is pretty awesome of her, although I can't believe Reed Diamond was thrilled about showing up for shooting and not getting to do anything but nod and exit the room. The two presidents face off, standing on opposite sides of the long conference table. Taylor starts to bring Logan up to speed, but he already knows everything that's going on like he's been watching the whole episode with us, or monitoring the Kremlin's top-secret Twitter feed. "I have close friends in Moscow," he says with a modest smile. "In some ways, people there appreciate me more than people in my own country." Oh, because of that time he almost got the Suvarovs killed? I bet they get together and laugh about that all the time.