Episode Report Card M. Giant: A | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT We still have Logan to kick around
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 21 | Aired on 2006.05.08
"Five hundred feet!" Kiefer tells Evans, who responds, "We're not gonna make it." Because he's Evans. Kiefer's too busy hauling back on the control yoke to argue.
Driving down the highway, Curtis spots the plane coming in low and hot, but it looks a lot more level than it should given the view from the cockpit. He calls CTU to let them know.
Kiefer relinquishes control to Evans. "Touch us down!" he orders. Evans Evanses that they're going too fast. I don't blame him for being leery of landing after a panicked approach like the one they just had to execute, but it's not like the F-18 is going to let them circle around and try again. "Touch us down!" Kiefer roars. His fury is such that it raises the stall speed of a 727! Mere physics bows before the Velvet! There's an impressive external shot of the plane buzzing the first overpass, so close that the camera on the ground shakes. Those CGI pixels must be motoring. Evans sets the plane down hard on the freeway. Luggage starts falling out of the overhead bins in back. The F-18 reports that the plane has touched down, and peels off to return to base in a disorienting point-of-view shot that for a second makes it look like Kiefer's plane is rolling into the ditch. But it's not. Yet. Now Evans still has to get the plane stopped before the next overpass, and it doesn't look good. Smoke pours from the landing gear tires, and it looks like it's only a question of whether the bridge supports will shear off the wings and ignite the tanks full of enough jet fuel to reach Frankfurt (fuel which Evans probably should have jettisoned a long time ago), or whether the wings will slice through the support columns and bring the bridge deck crashing down on the plane. But thanks to the magic of CGI and some highly suspicious editing, Evans manages to bring the plane to a stop with just feet to spare. Kiefer and Evans both pant in relief. I'm glad to say that in all my years of flying, I've never experienced a landing that rough. Even in bad weather, with wicked crosswinds and pitch dark and snow and the tires bouncing on the tarmac, I always say to Trash: "Any landing you walk away from is a good one." She fucking hates that.