Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The EMP Strikes Back
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 13 | Aired on 03.13.2005
Unlike every employee everywhere, the guards start getting more into their task once the boss is gone, sinking a couple of heavy punches in Grayadder's gut and face and then slamming the fingers of his left hand in a file cabinet drawer a couple of times. Grayadder screams. Finally, Kiefer decides he's had enough and bursts into view, shooting down one of the guards. The surviving one grabs Grayadder and hides behind him in "human shield" mode, gun to Grayadder's bloody head and threatening to kill him if Kiefer doesn't drop his own weapon. But the guard really might as well not be there, given the intense stare passing between Grayadder and Kiefer for the next fifteen minutes or so. Seriously, that gaze is so palpable I could walk on it. I start to figure that they're communicating telepathically. Then my theory is borne out when Grayadder jerks his head to the left, giving Kiefer a clear shot at the guard's face. Kiefer takes it instantly. Nice! The guard drops, and Grayadder is quick to follow. Kiefer rushes to scoop him up and ask him where the printout is. Grayadder says he hid it in an office down the hall. "I know you're hurt, but we've got to get it and get out of here," Kiefer whispers. He hauls Graybattered to his feet and helps him out of the room.
Moments later, Old MFer comes running back, presumably having heard the shots. He shines his flashlight on the bodies of his dead guards, wishing he could bring them back to life in order to fire them. Instead, he rushes back out of the room.
Grayadder has guided Kiefer to the office he used for a hiding place, explaining that he hid the document "because I thought I might be captured." He's really not quite the dead weight we expected him to be, is he? Well, at least not until now. Kiefer quickly finds the printout and shows it to Grayadder, who admits that he couldn't make sense of the coded text. Yeah, we already know from the previouslies that it's encrypted. Kiefer folds it into his pocket, saying, "We need to get this back to CTU." "I don't think I could have held out much longer," Grayadder confesses. Rather than unkindly saying that he knows from recent experience exactly how long Grayadder could have held out, Kiefer says, "You did great." Aw. Grayadder's just lucky the electricity's out now. After making sure the hallway's clear, Kiefer says it's time to go.
It's 7:06:02 as DaD takes the floor at CTU to introduce interim boss Bitchelle to those employees who don't already know her. Special Agent Breck makes a potato face at the new boss, almost as if I'd decided to go with Bitchelle 2.0 as her nickname after all. Jeez, relax, lady. You don't look that much alike. DaD thanks Soul Patch for filling in, then asks him to bring Bitchelle "and everyone else" -- by which I assume he means Bitchelle's posse and people who have never seen the show before -- up to speed. While Bitchelle stares inscrutably at Soul Patch, he nervously launches into a veritable aria of exposition: ImhoTerror is a longtime employee of MacGuffin Factories, but CTU doesn't know how he got past MF's security checks. Ooh, I have a theory: there weren't any. CTU figured ImhoTerror is lying low to avoid detection, so their best bet was looking at ImhoTerror's files at MF. But while Kiefer and Grayadder were doing that, MF set off the EMP, wiping out the company's database. Special Agent Breck adds, "It also fried every electrical device within an eight-mile radius." Okay, stop right there. It's been a while since high school geometry, but even I remember that there's a big difference between eight square miles and the area described by an eight-mile radius. Not to smack you upside the head with my slide rule, but eight square miles is eight square miles. An eight-mile radius comprises over two hundred square miles, which represents over 40% of the landmass of the city of Los Angeles. Which, bullshit. Get it right, people. And secondly, either have two minutes of previouslies or frontload the entire first act with a bunch of stuff we already know, but quit doing both.