Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Current Events
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 02.27.2005
Kiefer rides up the Rocklyn Building's glass-walled exterior elevator with Castle and two other helmeted agents. When the door dings and opens on the 29th floor, they spot a prone figure in the nearby hallway. The team quickly but carefully approaches it, with Kiefer on point, until Curtis swings out from behind the door frame. There's that awkward "good guys pointing guns at each other" moment, and now we know why Kiefer and Curtis already knew each other back in the season premiere. Which I realize is giving the writers too much credit for planning ahead, but they should take it anyway because it's not like I'm going to be giving it out all that freely. Curtis says that based on the conversation he overheard between ImhoTerror and Poor Man's John Malkovich, they have less than thirty minutes. Curtis thinks there are only four bad guys left on this floor. Kiefer wants it to just be him and Curtis going after the MacGuffin so ImhoTerror doesn't see them coming. As they walk to the stairs together, they tag-team figure out/exposit that ImhoTerror "inserted a sleeper" (that would be Ali, for those of you just joining us) into IDS and used the company's hardware to propagate the MacGuffin code. Oookay. Sometimes I think that if I knew more about computers than I do, this show would just be making me clutch my head in horror all the damn time.
They head up the stairs to the next floor, guns out. They emerge into a hallway, and Curtis gets all casual and gun-hidey when he sees a couple of office drones pass by some distance away. Kiefer grabs the door into the IDS office as a woman comes out, and Curtis quietly tells her to leave the building. They enter IDS together, and what they see horrifies them: they're at one end of an interminably long cube farm stretching as far as the eye can see, with busy Dilberts scampering about between the veal pens. It's basically an anthill with neckties. Kiefer stares out at the scene, looking like someone just dropped ice down the front of his shorts and he's trying not to react. "Did you get a description of him?" Curtis whispers. Kiefer confesses that he didn't. "It could be anyone," says Curtis. It's 5:47:48. Shouldn't some of these people be going home?
5:52:13. DrisKid goes into her bathroom, Kiefer walks slowly along one side of the cube farm, Curtis walks along the other holding a file folder he's ganked from somewhere, and the armored CTU agents are scouting the floor below. There are scores of people in this office, and they're all walking around, talking to each other, and generally being a hell of a lot more industrious than any group of office workers I've ever seen at ten in the morning, let alone nearly six PM. As Curtis and Kiefer slowly sweep the office, Kiefer notices a swarthy-looking guy sitting at a computer and looking around furtively. Kiefer's internal alarm bells go off, because not only is the guy sneaky-looking; he's practically the only one in the whole office who's actually sitting at a desk. He silently signals Curtis, and the two agents start to move in from their separate directions, readying their respective weapons. Just as they're about to break cover, the "suspect" reaches to grab his phone, and in so doing reveals what's on his monitor: a game of solitaire. Dude, it's 5:53. Go home if you don't have any work. Kiefer shakes his head at Curtis and they abort their move. Kiefer rubs his eyes all, "I almost blew that so badly." They go back to scanning the Dilberts, moving more slowly than any other person in the office and yet drawing the attention of absolutely no one.