Episode Report Card M. Giant: C- | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Day 6: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 6 | Aired on January 28, 2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Six minutes of breathing through a plastic bag leaves Kiefer's brother Graem (apparently I've been spelling it wrong all along) feeling more cooperative. He confesses that the family business was supposed to dismantle some suitcase nukes, but then McCarthy -- hired by Graem -- stole them and sold them to Fayed, and you know what happened to at least one of them after that. Tom blackmails Karen into quitting so that he can continue making America less America-like (which includes implementing charming measures like racial profiling of government operatives like our own Nadia), but I'm sure we'll see Karen again when she arrives back at CTU's L.A. office. Walid is tasked with stealing a smuggled cell phone off one of his fellow detainees and uploading the contents to CTU. The data enables Chloe to determine that the men aren't terrorists at all. They are, however, pissed when they bust Walid, and they give him a righteous beatdown. Graem leads Kiefer to McCarthy's office, but we already know McCarthy isn't there, since he's driving around, arguing with his girlfriend, and looking for someone who can help Fayed to activate his remaining nukes. But you know who is at McCarthy's office? Kiefer's dad (played by James Cromwell, not Donald Sutherland), along with a couple of his company's private security guys. Dad's been trying to handle this on his own to keep Graem out of trouble, but when he agrees to let Kiefer bring in CTU, Graem turns the tables, and Kiefer and his dad end up as his men's captives. This is not going to turn out well for Graem. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Watching the freeze-frames in the previouslies, I make the embarrassing discovery that Graham's name is actually spelled "Graem." I've been spelling it wrong all along. Not that it's embarrassing for me; I'm embarrassed for the writer who thought that parents who would name one child "Jack" would name the other "Graem." No wonder they turned out this way.
Wayne's presidential address is still going on, even though it started a few minutes before the hour. What was up with that, anyway? Did Wayne's press secretary used to work at MTV or something? We see that everyone at CTU has dropped what he or she is doing to watch the speech, while four stolen nuclear bombs presumably search for themselves. Wayne goes on about the strength and faith of the American people, and how we must rise above our bigotries and all that. DB Woodside is delivering the speech in this supposedly soothing singsong tone that I find quite distressing. Please stop talking to the country like it's five years old, Wayne. We get enough of that in real life. Also distressed is Wayne's Chief of Staff, Tom, who's watching the speech with Chad Lowe in another area of the White House Bunker. Tom turns off the monitor when Wayne has finished, and wishes the President hadn't made a promise he can't keep: "The American people have got to get used to the fact that these new security measures are a way of life, not some temporary Band-Aid." Which is scary as hell, but at least he admits it. Karen comes in to call Tom out on the latest raft of civil liberties violations he's been authorizing against Wayne's wishes. As Chad Lowe slips out unnoticed, Tom repeats his excuse that he's just getting things ready for when Wayne decides to implement them, "should he decide to act at all." Karen points out that Tom said the same thing about the detention centers, but those are already up and running. She wonders if Tom thinks she's some "bleeding-heart liberal." Tom goes into a whole speech about how the Constitution is great and all, but it was written in the days of single-shot muskets, not nuclear weapons like the one the terrorists just used to kill twelve thousand people in less time than it would have taken to reload one of those muskets: "I love the Constitution, but I won't be ducking behind it when the next nuke goes off." So presumably Tom's a gun-control hawk as well, right? Karen says that she's worried about the long-term damage Tom's policies will do to the country, and they start talking over each other like they're on Crossfire.