Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT You Down with EMP?
By M. Giant | Season 4 | Episode 12 | Aired on 03.06.2005
It's 6:44:35, and Kiefer's pacing around ImhoTerror's old work area, starting to look a little tired. What, he's only been going at a dead run for eleven hours. Suck it up. He watches what looks like a whole shift's worth of MF employees walking past before Grayadder gets his attention. Apparently he's managed to pull off some successful technobabble and the screen is filling up with gibberish.
Back in Mr. MacGuffin's office, Old MFer curses that Grayadder is trying to rebuild some deleted files using a feature that's "not a documented function of the system. He must have used some hook left in the design." Good thing Kiefer brought Grayadder along, no? Mr. MacGuffin says, "They're going to find evidence we sold arms to terrorists." Say what? Isn't there a big difference between that and unknowingly employing one? Or is there something else we don't know? In any case, Old MFer says that they have to use the EMP now. The three men exchange glances, and without Mr. MacGuffin saying anything, Young MFer grabs the phone on the desk. A guy in a research lab elsewhere in the building answers, and Young MFer snaps, "Set it off… Open up the safety chamber and set it off now." The tech's like, "All righty, then!" and Young MFer hangs up. Mr. MacGuffin points out, a little late, that the EMP will signal to Kiefer that the company has something to hide. He's so not in charge. Young MFer says that Kiefer will just blame ImhoTerror, and Old MFer says that wiping out their electronic infrastructure is better than destroying the entire company. Okay. I'm sure that there's an untapped niche market for a defense contractor that uses abacuses. But maybe we should poll the other businesses in the neighborhood to see how they'd feel about having all their electronic equipment and data getting trashed. No? You sure?
Down in the lab, a giant steel door slides back on a ceiling-mounted track, revealing an inner chamber that contains something that looks like a pair of giant bathroom ceiling fans. The tech leaves the room as the device starts to charge up, then calls Young MFer to tell him it's done. Young MFer tells the others that "it'll take ten minutes to charge up before its release." Wow, I bet it gets tons of dates. We see it pulsing sinisterly in its chamber, evil green light blinking out of it while it makes an dastardly breathing noise like the hellmouth in Poltergeist. Kids, never play with EMPs. It's 6:46:54.
6:51:20. The pulse bomb is still pulsing, the bosses are still stressing, Kiefer and Grayadder are staring at a monitor, and so is Lispy Skip. Special Agent Breck reports to Skip that she's having trouble with the phone taps they've set up at MF. So they can just tap MF's phone lines? I wonder why we never get to meet the judge that CTU must keep on staff to instantly issue all the warrants they need. It doesn't take long for Special Agent Breck and Lispy Skip to discover that MF's power supply is wobbling like Katharine Hepburn on crack. Skip tries to call Kiefer but gets an "out of range" message. Skip tries the main MF switchboard, but that call quickly gets cut off as well. So the EMP emits an interference field while it charges up? I guess I'll go with that, because I don't know any better. Soul Patch notices that something's up and comes over to check it out. Lispy Skip reports that there's a phone blackout around the MF HQ. But Soul Patch knows what to do: Instant Messaging! Special Agent Breck sets it up for him at another computer.