Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Day 4: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 3 | Aired on January 9, 2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.With only three characters returning from previous seasons, someone at the show must have decided that one of those three had better become a lot more sympathetic. The amazing thing is that it's Potato Face, and it actually kind of works. She and Kiefer secretly team up to disobey Driscoll's orders. They're tracking a TerrorMinion that Kiefer hopes will lead them to DaD. But everyone else, from POTUS on down, wants the minion brought in immediately. And they're none too happy with Kiefer, either. DaD signs a war crimes confession for the kidnappers rather than watch them kill his daughter. TerrorTeen turns to TerrorMom for help with his idiot girlfriend and TerrorDad, but TerrorMom sells him out and invites Debbie into the TerrorHome. Poor Curtis is not only doomed, and stuck with the unenviable assignment of torturing DiCK, he's got a psycho ex-girlfriend who has blackmailed her way into a temp gig at CTU and has decided to get right to work stirring shit up. Potato Face has to watch Witless take a crunchy beating on a highway traffic-cam, until Kiefer finally intervenes. He still needs her help getting satellite surveillance of the TerrorMinion he's trailing, and she tries to come through, but she can't pull it off in time. When the TerrorMinion stops at a gas station, Kiefer figures the only way to stall him long enough is to stage a holdup. It probably seems like a good idea to Kiefer. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
This just in: my parents are, as of Sunday night's premiere, brand-new fans of 24. Which means it's more likely than ever that they're going to be reading these recaps. Hi, Mom and Dad! Hope you like them! They'd be better, but spending any more time on them would really cut into my Bible study.
Due to some graphic violence viewer discretion is advised. Somebody should have warned Potato Face.
Previously: Kiefer wanted to bring Witless in to save him from terrorists and also help find DaD. A terrorist overheard the conversation and got to Witless first. TerrorTeen delivered a briefcase and got followed by his idiot girlfriend, which TerrorDad said could bollix up the whole evil plan. Kiefer 2.0 reluctantly brought Kiefer along to pick up Witless, then got his ass killed, so Kiefer had to chase after Witless on his own. Curtis questioned DiCK about DaD and DoDder's kidnapping, which had been perpetrated by terrorists who now want to try DaD for war crimes and execute him on the internet. The following takes place between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM.
We open on Air Force One, looking very impressive indeed as it flies over the ocean. Is someone lost? That might have been a good metaphor for the last year of the Palmer administration. Oh, well. Keeler sits down to a meeting of what looks like whichever Cabinet members and Joint Chiefs happened to be on the plane. Others, including Driscoll, are patched in via video teleconferencing. Keeler brings the new viewers up to speed, with a little analysis thrown in: "Make no mistake: this country is under attack." What's more, "Intelligence indicates that the kidnapping may be a trigger -- the first step in a series of larger attacks." So that explains what the second half of the season will be about. Keeler asks his people what's being done. His campaign manager from last season, Poor Man's Tim Russert, who now appears to be Keeler's Chief of Staff, says that all of DaD's codes and protocols have been changed and the rest of the Cabinet has been sequestered. His maybe-Press-Secretary explains that the major media outlets won't be broadcasting DaD's trial and execution (even Al-Jazeera?), but they can't control the terrorists' use of the internet and they can't shut the 'net down without crippling the government and the economy. Okay, first of all, I barely know enough about the internet to get these recaps to Sars, but even I understand that the internet doesn't have some master switch somewhere that shuts it down. And I would also like to think that the command and control systems we're using aren't quite as 'net-dependent as this scene would lead us to believe.