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
One floor down, Ali steps out of his office for some reason and spots the CTU agents at the end of the hall. Castle orders him to freeze, but Ali instead darts back inside and shuts the door. He has just enough time to call ImhoTerror's cell phone and sound the alarm before the CTU agents run him down and shoot him. Of course, Ali's pointing a gun at them by this time, so it's not like they killed him in cold blood. It's like suicide by cop, but with CTU agents. CTUicide, if you will. "Last man down," Castle says into his walkie-talkie.
ImhoTerror is now staring around the office, trying to physically grow antennae out of the top if his head to locate the agents he now knows are closing in on him. He takes his gun from its "hiding place" under a sheet of paper and watches as Kiefer moves into view, then out of ImhoTerror's line of sight. But Kiefer's radar has already pinged, and he backs up to where he can see the man who is only visible as a pair of eyes glowering back at him over the top of a monitor. ImhoTerror stands slowly, like he's about to do something completely awesome, and he and Kiefer lock eyes. Kiefer calls Curtis's name. Now that ImhoTerror knows he's flanked, he opts instead to fire three shots into the ceiling. Anticlimactic. That's going to mess up his mock turtleneck. It's also going to send all of the drones into an instant, fleeing panic, making it impossible for Kiefer to get a clear shot at his vanishing quarry. He and Curtis try to tell people to get down, but two more guys running around with guns in a room where shots have just been fired aren't exactly helping. As they approach ImhoTerror's former position, Curtis spots the MacGuffin "well disguised" under Ali's desk. Kiefer tells Curtis to "secure it" and "call CTU now" before spotting ImhoTerror and haring off in pursuit, leaving Curtis to do what he needs to do with the MacGuffin. Poor Curtis. You think it'll be a bomb under the desk, or a stray bullet, or the ceiling collapsing on him where ImhoTerror shot it?
And now we begin one of those sequences that are such a bitch to recap because everything's happening at once. Curtis calls up Driscoll on the phone to say he has the MacGuffin. Lispy Skip, making his first appearance of the episode, puts Curtis on speakerphone and starts rattling off instructions. Except they aren't working. DaD happens by and decides to stick around in case something interesting is about to happen. A CTU flunky comes to tell Driscoll that "the clinic just called." Oh, for fuck's sake. Driscoll says the clinic will have to wait. The flunky starts to protest, but she repeats, "Tell them!" and the kid turns away. Also, they're out of time on the power plants. Skip figures that ImhoTerror must have modified the MacGuffin to lock them out. The splitscreens are going crazy as Lispy Skip walks Curtis through an absolutely riveting series of directions that involve function keys. Special Agent Breck reports that three plants are about to melt down, and indeed, three splitscreen windows show three pairs of cooling towers with steam pouring out of them. That's kind of neat. What's happened is that Curtis has given Lispy Skip remote control over the MacGuffin, so Skip types furiously while everyone stares intensely at him and steam continues to vent into the atmosphere and the suspense is killing me -- not because I think the plants are going to melt down, but because I'm waiting for somebody to pop up and kill Curtis already. Skip hits "enter" and everyone waits.