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Due to some graphic violence, viewer discretion is advised. Come to think of it, this warning has been used just about every week this season. Also, the font they're using for the warning looks suspiciously like the font they use for the titles in the show itself. I suspect that they have caught on to the fact that all the good episodes of 24 have the violence warning, so they're just attaching it to every episode to generate a buzz. 24. Beep beep beep beep beep beep. Previouslys. The V-I-R-U-S has been released into the ventilation system of the Chandler Hotel, and everyone is going to die. Bitchelle finds out from Alvers that Inn Fection isn't the only place where vials are being planted. Widespread panic ensues despite everyone's best efforts, and Bitchelle is forced to shoot a guest. But he's kind of a sexist, so it's not all that much of a loss. Stephen Sahhhhhn-ders is our season's latest supervillain. He has some sort of konnection to Kiefer that we have yet to learn. He uses the other vials as leverage to get in touch with Palmer to make some demands.
Inn Fection. The lobby. Bitchelle has just shot James Woods, and now the guests have settled into a quivering, resentful stillness. "Look! Outside" says one faceless guest. The crowd gasps as CTU agents wearing Hazmat suits and brandishing semi-automatic weapons can been seen approaching the front door. You just know that whoever designed this hotel has, by now, started totally rethinking the whole glass-front thing. I'm sure at the time they were thinking that a glass-walled lobby would be light-filled and inviting, but right now Ian Schrager's cavernous and windowless designs for The Metropolitan Hotel and The Mondrian are looking like the way to go in this post-9/11 era we're all living in. Come to think of it, mass panic would never happen in an Ian Schrager-designed hotel. First off, the other guests at these places are so cosmopolitan, young, and cool that you would never think of spazzing out and leaving your room without picking out an appropriate outfit and going over it with a lint brush. And even if you were secure with yourself enough to run down the stairs in your bathrobe, a single raised eyebrow from one of those pretty-but-snooty desk clerks would send you right back up to your room to put some gel in your hair. Lastly? All the Ian Schrager lobbies also function as cocktail bars, so if all else fails, just start serving drinks. You'd be amazed at how cooperative an angry mob can be if you have a two-for-one Cosmo happy hour and let them smoke. "There's a deadly virus in the ventilation system and we can't leave unless we're in body bags? Fascinating! Waiter? Another Grey Goose dirty martini, please."
So anyway, at the sight of these armed Hazmaticians entering the building, any crowd control that Bitchelle gained from her killing of James Woods has evaporated and the guests are panicking again. Bitchelle fires two shots into the air and tells everyone to settle down and not to even think of leaving the building. "I need absolute quiet and absolute cooperation," she says forcefully. Meanwhile, the guests -- who need Absolut, or at the very least some dollar Rolling Rocks -- back down and huddle behind tissues pressed to their bloody noses. She gets on a P.A. system and announces to the assembled guests -- and the people still in their rooms -- that an infectious substance has been released into the building and they are under quarantine. "Anyone attempting to leave will be stopped by any means necessary," she says, ordering everyone back to their rooms. Whoa! Go Bitchelle! How often do you get to see Reiko Aylesworth in black leather with a gun in one hand and a mike in the other? Maybe the writers can find excuses to put Reiko in her Gun 'n' Mike leather outfit more often next season -- sorta how they always had Spawn running during Season Two.