Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Ex-Ex-President
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.14.2006
Finally, Kiefer leads the Evil Beamer back into the truckyard and says to his rearview mirror, "I got you now." Approaching a parked forklift with its blades raised, Kiefer whips his car into a hard right. The Evil Beamer can't quite match his trajectory, and it goes into a sideways skid that ends with one of the forklift's blades impaled straight through the driver's side window. Ow. Remind me never to cut Kiefer off in traffic. Kiefer stops and looks back, and although the driver's head didn't come flying out the shotgun window on impact, Kiefer seems satisfied that the chase is over. Clearly no one else is in the car, which is lucky for Kiefer. He pulls his sweatshirt hood back up, and drives out of the yard calmly, as if he didn't just kill a guy in a car chase. The motorcyclist rolls into view behind Kiefer, revving his engine as he watches him leave and thinking, Yeah, you better run.
Black screen with titles: "He disappeared to protect his secret. He changed his name and started a new life. He thought he was safe…Then Day 5 began." And then there's a plug for the season premiere. Which, by the time you're reading this, is already over. Sorry if you missed it, Sparky. I'll do my best to help you out.
By the way, thanks to Fox for not joining the season premiere "already in progress" when the football game went long. I might have had to write a strongly worded letter if that had been the case. But finally, here we go.
Wait, previouslies? At the beginning of the season? No fair! Sure, they start with a title card reading "18 Months Earlier," but I know previouslies when I see them. Anyway, you remember at the end of last season that Kiefer was supposed to get turned over to the Chinese for raiding their Embassy in L.A., but someone ordered Kiefer killed instead. So Kiefer faked his own death, and nobody knew he was still alive except Tony, Michelle, Chloe, and Palmer. This will be important during the following, which a title card and Kiefer's voice informs us takes place between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM. Weird that they're starting two seasons in a row at the same time of day. I can only hope that's a sign that this season will differ from previous seasons in other ways, by which I of course mean "be better."
A subtitle tells us we're in Mojave, California, where oil derricks are busily sucking liquefied dinosaurs out of the earth. A foreman is handing out pump assignments to the day laborers gathered around, but there's nothing for one lean, familiar face under its wide-brimmed metal helmet; it's Kiefer, of course. Any number of viewers are disappointed that they won't see Kiefer doing any pumping. The foreman apologizes to Kiefer, whom he addresses as "Frank," saying the pump he planned to assign him to is down for the day. Kiefer pleasantly says he'll try again tomorrow, and heads back to…well, wherever it is that Kiefer hangs his depression-era hardhat these days. And let me just give props to Kiefer for a moment here, for having the entire world from which to choose a hiding place, and yet still having the cojones to come back to Southern California. Masterful, really. I'm sure he's minimizing his chances of detection by commuting in from Thailand or something.