Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Nuclear Family Meltdown
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 8 | Aired on 02.15.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Dana's life continues to fall apart, with her colleagues increasingly suspicious of her activities, and Kevin and Nick having no intention of letting her off the hook. Dana nearly sacks up to confess the truth to Cole, but is prevented from doing so by bad timing and her own apparent decision to take Kevin out instead. So Arlo shows Cole surveillance frames of Kevin getting in her face, which they think means Dana's cheating on Cole. Which means even more of CTU's staff is getting distracted by her nonsense.
Hassan's daughter Kayla tries to talk sense into her father, but that only drives him further down his rabbit-hole of paranoia. Hassan's shady security guy secretly agrees to let her see Tarin soon, but I think we all know how that's actually going to turn out.
Kiefer's hour starts out pretty rough, what with having been captured and tortured by Sergei Bazhaev's men. A situation for which Walker blames herself, and Hastings is right there with her. Farhad isn't happy to hear that the delivery of his fuel rods has been delayed, but there's not much he can do about it, and in fact Bazhaev kicks him out, dispatching Josef to return him to his people. Which is probably just as well for Farhad, after Kiefer frees himself to call CTU and run amok in Bazhaev's restaurant. Once in custody, Bazhaev offers to give up the rods in exchange for full immunity for himself and Josef, and President Taylor agrees to the deal. But when Cole and his team show up to capture the rods, they only find the transporters dead and the rods gone. And it looks like Bazhaev's surviving son Josef was behind it, because he's decided to double-cross his dad and sell the rods to Farhad himself. Clearly, he is not aware of the new situation back at HQ.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!In tonight's previouslies freeze-frames: President Omar Hassan, Kayla Hassan, President Allison Taylor, Dana Walsh, Sergei Bazhaev, Renee Walker, and Jack Bauer. Looks like Hassan's daughter is about to find herself with a lot more to do.
Dana finds a quiet hallway to call Kevin and ask where the hell he is. She reaches him at a strip club, and he apologizes for not calling as soon as they were clear, like he said. She should get used to him not keeping his promises anyway. "We got caught up celebrating our score," he says, clearly over the part where Nick assaulted a police officer. He steps away to the bar to continue the conversation as Dana brings up that little factor. "Why you gotta focus on the negative?" Kevin asks, and invites her to join them at Starlight in Jersey City so she can get her cut. Dana of course wants no part of that; she just wants her apartment key back in her mailbox and him out of her life. "Yeah, that's not gonna happen," Kevin says. Dana reminds him they had a deal, and he actually seems to feel kind of guilty as he says they can get rich doing this. Then Nick comes over, grabs the phone and explains the new dynamic for their little partnership. In fact, the first words he has ever said to her are, "Look, bitch!" He takes over from Kevin on the blackmailing tip, and yells, "You're going to be our golden goose, okay?" And then he hangs up. Charming. But at least he asked if it was okay.
As the call ends, Arlo finds Dana in the hallway, and wants to know what's going on with her already. "Who was that?" he demands. "Kevin?" Dana is stunned, and asks if he's spying on her. At least Arlo only thinks Dana is cheating on Cole, but he threatens to tell him if she won't. That out of the way, he leads her back to the floor, updating her on how Kiefer got himself nabbed by Russians whom they now can't track.
We catch up with Cole, still at Vladimir's garage and explaining over the phone to Hastings why that is: they found the underground exit the Russians took, but the trail goes cold at a drainage junction. Hastings asks him if Walker saw anything, and as Cole looks over to where she and her jimmy-leg are getting attended to by a paramedic, he says she's "pretty messed-up," blaming herself for what happened. Hastings completely agrees with that last part. "Without Vladimir Laitanan, we have no lead to finding Bauer or the nuclear materials." He wants Cole to bring her back to CTU for debriefing, and Cole suggests a psych evaluation as well. A few hours too late for that, I'd say.
Hastings sees that Dana's back on the floor, and asks what was keeping her from monitoring chatter with the NSA like she was supposed to be doing. Chloe steps in and takes the blame, saying Dana had to fix one of Chloe's technobabble-related screw-ups. Hastings is satisfied with that story, probably because it includes Chloe screwing up, and slouches off to update President Taylor. As soon as he's gone, Dana thanks Chloe for covering. "You can thank me by putting aside whatever it is that's bothering you and helping me find Jack," Chloe says. "He's my friend and he's in trouble." Dana settles down to work, while Arlo looks disappointed that he didn't just get to watch a big blow-out. Dick.
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