Day 2: 6:00 AM -- 7:00 AM

Blip blip blip blip blip blip blip blip. 24. Previouslys. Palmer's cabinet invokes the 25th Amendment on him. PoorMan'sAlexanderHaig ascends. Chappelle "reassigns" Soul Patch. Soul Patch chloroforms Chappelle. Spawn goes back to pick up her things at NoDaddyNo Manor, and encounters DaddyStopTouchingMe. Over the phone, Kiefer talks her through a double tap. Alex "Hightops" Hewitt shanks Lady Mac and escapes.

CTU. Bitchelle runs into Soul Patch in the hallway. He asks her how Chappelle is doing. According to Bitchelle, he's still unconscious. "The drug I gave him is short-acting," says Soul Patch. "I'm going to have to give him another shot soon." I guess Chappelle got the same Fast-Release Demerol that Marie got. Gee, do you think they're laying the groundwork for the fact that Chappelle is going to wake up in the middle of this episode? "How long can we keep pumping him full of that stuff?" asks Bitchelle. Okay, Bitchelle? Soul Patch just "pumped him" at 5:47 AM. It is now 6:01 AM. That's a whopping fourteen minutes. Talk to me when he's been unconscious for as long as Jennifer North was in Valley of the Dolls when she went to Switzerland for that sleep cure. Soul Patch assures her that they only need to keep Chappelle conscious for as long as it takes to get Kiefer and Alex "Hightops" Hewitt back to CTU -- half an hour. They discuss the possibility of Bi-Carrie-ous blowing the whistle. Hey, here's a suggestion: Fire the ambivalently sexual hall monitor, already. She doesn't seem to do anything at CTU except stalk Bitchelle and refuse to follow orders. Have personnel show her the door. And then? When the sexual predator shows up to take her place, just have Soul Patch or Bitchelle take him or her into the broom closet or whatever and get him or her off. Take care of the sexual tension early on. Get it out of the way, and the Nosy Parker will lose interest and focus on their work. But no. CTU is like a KFC in a bad neighborhood. No one gets fired. Well, except for Soul Patch. And even he was only "reassigned."

Anyway, Soul Patch claims that Bi-Carrie-ous shouldn't be a problem, since he's given her a Whatever Task to keep her busy. Their conversation is interrupted by a male extra, who informs Soul Patch that Brad Hammond is on the line. For those of you who don't remember Brad Hammond, he was the guy from Division who came to inspect the premises. So, wait -- has he been up all night too, or is he just at work the day extra early? So get this. Brad Hammond is so anal-retentive, he is freaking out that he can't get a hold of Chappellewho has been missing for fifteen minutes and counting. Doesn't anyone have any idea how easy it is for your average high-level executive to hide? I mean, fifteen minutes is how long it can take for your secretary to put you through to the voicemail system. Fifteen minutes is how long it takes for me to go the bathroom, wash my hands, and grab some coffee from the coffee room. Waah! I can't find Chappelle. Dude, he's taking a leak. He's having his assistant hold his calls while he plays with his Zen sand garden. He's praying a really intense game of Freecell. He'saway from his desk. Jeez, where was Brad Hammond when an entire division of the United States Army was out of reach for an entire episode? I mean, hasn't anyone seen Nine to Five lately? Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda were able to hide their boss for months. Anyway, Soul Patch plays dumb and promises Brad that he'll have Chappelle call him as soon as he returns. Brad is temporarily mollified by that promise. Soul Patch warns Bitchelle that Division "knows something's up." "So what are we going to do?" asks Bitchelle. Soul Patch stresses the importance of getting Hightops there as soon as possible.

Speaking of Hightops, back at A Beautiful Loft, Kiefer is chasing Hightops through what looks like a tunnel made out of translucent rice paper. I guess it's an art installation in his neighbor's apartment or something. One thing about these industrial loft buildings: There's always someone living in one of the units who has a trust fund and does installation art "for a living." Like, when was the last time you bought a piece of installation art? Where is some art collector going to put Rice Paper Tunnel #41, by Terence Trust Fund? His dining room? As Hightops runs further into the maze, he bashes the light bulbs with his flashlight along the way so that Kiefer won't be able to find him in the dark. Hey, why don't you bathe in the Mississippi River so the dogs won't smell you either, Harriet Tubman? Unfortunately for Hightops, Kiefer is carrying a flashlight. It's not a big flashlight, by the way, for those of you who need to know these things. He also tries to slow Hightops down with the Sutherland Velvet Siren Call. "If you don't come with me, you know EvilChrisElliott will kill you," purrs Kiefer through the rice paper maze. "I just did what they told me," says Himmler Hightops, pausing at a hiding place atop what appears to be the interior of a Styrofoam reproduction of the Temple of Dendur. He unwraps a gun and keeps running. "Your only way out is to let me take youto CTU," calls Kiefer. Actually, that ellipsis was mine. He continues to beg Hightops to trust him and let him help him cut a deal in exchange for testimony. But not even the Sutherland Velvet can prevent Hightops from climbing up onto the roof through a series of cement tunnels. Kiefer chases him out into the morning light. He is nowhere to be seen amid the L.A. cityscape.

Back at EvilChrisElliott's Evil Condo, EvilChrisElliott is getting acupuncture on his face from a slinky Asian chick. And we all know that the combination of Asian healing arts and sexuality is a signifier of evil. Because only someone sick enough to blow up Los Angeles just to make a profit would also be the sort of person who'd do something decadent like have acupuncture in his own home office. And I would just like to say that I don't really trust attractive acupuncturists. Acupuncturists should either be elderly Chinese men who can barely speak English or middle-aged lesbians. If she's really hot, makes house calls, and she's wearing a black slip dress, send her back. She's evil. Anyway, while the Acuprostie puts needles in his face, ECE is talking to Max on the phone. Apparently Max is even more powerful than EvilChrisElliott. Jeez, I wish the chain of command would finish with one single "big bad," already. I'm getting tired of seeing an endless chain of the man behind the man behind the curtain. Last season at this time, we'd known about Drazen for several hours. Drazen was the big bad. This is the penultimate episode, and we just found out that EvilChrisElliott has a boss. If Max has a boss, I'm going to scream. ECE assures Max that once the U.S. goes to war, his stock value will go up. Meanwhile a, um, pneumatic young lady wearing lots of Southwestern jewelry lets herself into EvilChrisElliott's office. Apparently there are all these rumors that Terrorista Mandy would be back on 24 in the final episodes. I would venture to guess that this character, who is named "Eve," is the cause of these rumors. Last season the actress who plays Eve, Nina Landey, played a character named "Amanda." Apparently "Amanda" was some girl who Foreign Accented Terror Boss and Little Terror Brother were checking out in a restaurant and noting that she looked like their dead sister. I'm thinking that someone said "the actress who played Amanda is back" and that telephone-gamed into "Mandy is back." Or who knows? Maybe Mandy is coming back and this is all unrelated.

Anyway, this girl who kind of looks like Mandy but isn't her is wearing a tank top under a jean jacket and has long straight dark hair and, as I said earlier, a really impressive pair of breasts. And it's not just me who thinks this. The forums have been calling her Chesty McTitsalot (tm Suekel). Chesty is there to report on the ransacking of Hightop's loft. She was able to collect all of the incriminating source recordings, but she couldn't find Hightops himself. "Remember," Chesty reminds EvilChrisElliott by way of an excuse, "everything including Hewitt was supposed to have been vaporized last night." Hey, that's right! So then why are the two of them still in L.A., and why the hell didn't EvilChrisElliott cancel his home acupuncture appointment? EvilChrisElliott reminds Chesty of the importance of getting rid of Hightops. "If he gets brought in and testifies, there's going to be no place for us to hide," says ECE. The acupuncture needles in his "third eye" twitch violently.

Back at A Beautiful Loft, Kiefer spies Hightops on another, higher level of the roof. He runs over and attempts to climb a ladder to where Hightops is standing, but Hightops grabs the ladder before Kiefer can mount it. That's right. I just said "mount." Kiefer leans against the wall and clutches his chest. I guess the epinephrine and the Beroglide caught up with him. He shakes it off and climbs a pipe instead. Yeah, that's right, I just said "climb" and "pipe." He gets up to where Hightops is, and pursues him to the tippity-top of the building. Hightops is trapped. There's nowhere to go but down from where he's standing. Kiefer runs over to him, clutching his chest some more. Hightops pretends to surrender. He asks Kiefer if he'll really be safe in CTU custody. Kiefer gives him the velvety WordOfKieferuntil he sees the gun in Hightops's hand and shoots him in the leg instead. Hightops flails around, not quite believing that Kiefer shot him, and finally falls off the tower onto another rooftop twenty feet or so below. Kiefer runs down some stairs to him and attends to his injuries, but Hightops is convulsing. Kiefer strokes his Jew 'fro and begs him to hold on. He'll get medical attention at CTU. "Is there any other part of your body besides your leg that still hurts?" asks Kiefer. "My head feels wet," says Hightops. Uh-oh. Kiefer feels the back of Hightops's head. There's lots of blood back there. Kiefer holds Hightops' hand and waits for the chopper. The time is 06:09:42 AM.

The time is 06:14:07 AM. Klockwise from the top left, EvilChrisElliott has removed those needles from his forehead, Kiefer tries to sweet-talk Hightops into staying alive, and Palmer sits in his cell. Back on the roof of A Beautiful Loft, Kiefer calls Soul Patch, informs him that Hightops is injured, and asks him to send an emergency medical team along with the chopper. Soul Patch tells Kiefer that the chopper on its way doesn't have an EMT on board, but it does have a medical kit. He also warns Kiefer that he might not be reachable in the near future. "Chappelle became a problem so I had to take him out of play," says Soul Patch, explaining further that Division might be onto him, and subsequently they may be talking him out soon. Bitchelle, however, is being sent out into the field, where she'll be helping Kiefer from an offsite station. Soul Patch gives Kiefer her closed cell number.

Back at CTU, Soul Patch hobbles over to Bitchelle and hands her a key card that will get her "into the van," and tells her to give him a call when she's set up. On her way out the door, who does she run into but HallMonitorCarrie? Carrie wants to know where Bitchelle is going. Bitchelle, instead of saying, "None of your business, stalker-bitch," explains that she's getting something from her car and she'll be right back. Carrie also wants to know where Chappelle is. She, like Brad, is freaking out that she hasn't seen him in twenty-eight minutes. Bitchelle promises to tell Chappelle to get in touch with Carrie if she sees him. "And if you don't see him?" says Carrie, blocking Bitchelle's escape route with her arm. "What's that supposed to mean?" asks Bitchelle. Carrie explains that Bitchelle called Chappelle in to see some guy named "Rudin." According to Carrie, Rudin never spoke to Chappelle. "Well, of course he told you that," says Bitchelle. "He wanted to see Chappelle to complain about you." Snap! "Stay out of my business," says Bitchelle. "You'll do a better job."

Back at Palmer's Detention Room, Palmer sits in a leather club chair, waiting to be set free. A man in a suit enters and informs him that the Attorney General sent him to be Palmer's counsel. Palmer asks him if what the cabinet did was legal. "Technically, yes," says SuitWearingGuy. However, they do have the right to appeal their decision, but, according to SuitWearingGuy, it's a lengthy process. "This country's about to go to war based on evidence that I am now convinced is false," says Palmer, urging SuitWearingGuy to speed up the legal process somehow to reinstate Palmer. He tells SuitWearingGuy to find out everything he can about EvilChrisElliott. "PoorMan'sHumeCronyn is tying my hands," says SuitWearingGuy. Palmer tells him to do whatever he has to do to "untie them."

Back at CTU, Bitchelle calls from the van to let Soul Patch know where she is. She also warns him that Carrie might be onto them. "We need her out of the way," says Bitchelle. "Keep her occupied." Soul Patch tells her to get in touch with Kiefer. They hang up just as Brad and literally a dozen of his minions burst through the CTU entrance. "I think there's a problem here," says Brad, greeting Soul Patch. "Where is Chappelle?" Soul Patch answers he hasn't seen him yet. Brad orders his minions to search CTU and locks CTU down. Soul Patch protests that they're in the middle of preparing a domestic response to the upcoming war. "That's not what I heard," says Brad. "I heard you're supporting a rogue agent." "Where'd you hear that?" says Soul Patch. "One of your own people," answers Brad. Soul Patch scans the room and focuses on HallMonitorCarrie, who is totally staring at him in a guilty manner.