Episode Report Card M. Giant: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jailbreak!
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.12.2009
The guard parks Kiefer in a vacant office right across the hall and tells another guard to keep an eye on him. While the new guard takes up position outside the closed door, Kiefer dials his cell phone. At the other end, an artificially deepened voice answers, "Hello?" The voice appears to belong only to a mouth and a rather scruffy chin, but I have my suspicions as to who they're both attached to. Kiefer identifies himself and says that Tony Almeida told him to call by giving him an old CTU emergency phone code. And with that, the owner of the scruff removes the voice disguiser from his own phone and says, "It's Bill, Jack." For it is indeed Bill Buchanan. And like everyone who manages to survive more than a few seasons of this show, he's ditched his trademark business suit in favor of a black mock turtleneck. Furthermore, he's wearing his hair like he's on his way to a Rome fan convention. Bill asks where Tony is, and Kiefer explains about how Tony is under arrest at FBI-DC for the whole terrorism thingy. "We need to talk, Jack," Buchanan says, and promises to call Kiefer back on a secure VPN line in ten minutes. Kiefer's pissed about being blown off, but Buchanan hangs up on him anyway. You can't tell me that wasn't a teeny bit of payback.
We now see that Buchanan's standing in some lair that looks to be decorated in Budget Bond Villain, and a slim woman with long dark hair is sitting at a bank of computers with her back to the camera. She turns to Buchanan, and we see that it's Chloe, who has clearly lost all her pregnancy weight and more. "If Tony's been arrested, it's over," she frets. "Are you going to tell Jack everything?" Buchanan says that they'll have to, because they'll need Kiefer's help to get Tony back undercover. "He's our only hope," he says. It's 10:17:37. And shouldn't at least one of them be setting up that VPN line instead of staring at each other?
At 10:21:52, Henry and his Secret Service agent return to the White House, where Ethan intercepts them in the hallway. After dismissing Agent Getsch to a respectful distance with a look, Ethan begins smoothly handling Henry. "The president is in an impossible situation right now," he gently explains. "She needs your support. But you can't give it to her if you keep going off on these paranoid fantasies about Roger." See what I mean about that high-level diplomacy? He tells Henry for the umpteenth time that Roger committed suicide, but Henry still isn't believing it. "He wasn't depressed," Henry insists. "He had no reason." Ethan gently tells Ethan that Roger might have had a reason after all, that Henry just didn't know about. It seems that Roger was facing an SEC investigation for insider trading, using information he'd gotten through his White House access. Henry still has his doubts, so Ethan hands over the case file and explains that it was kept secret as a favor to the president. "My wife knew about this and she didn't tell me?" Henry asks, looking crushed. Ethan apologizes for keeping it from him, and is called away before saying much beyond the fact that Taylor doesn't know Henry's being brought in the loop now, and he'd like to keep it that way. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when the First Son dies under questionable circumstances as a result of an imminent screwing by a government agency. After Ethan heads off to his meeting at 10:24:04, Getsch approaches Henry and apologizes. "I felt I had to tell him, sir." Henry doesn't respond other than to give his agent a pained look and start looking through the file. So just to recap, Henry didn't know, but his wife knew, and now Henry does know, but Taylor doesn't know he knows. This subplot had better turn out to be important.