Day Four: 10:00 AM -- 11:00 AM

Previously on M. Giant's One-Man Death March: Secretary of Defense DaD was kidnapped by terrorists, who announced that they planned to try him and execute him on the internet. DaD told his DoDder to try to escape if she got the chance. TerrorTeen asked TerrorMom for help with the fact that TerrorDad wanted to question his idiot girlfriend about following him to the TerrorDome, and TerrorMom invited the girlfriend over her own sneaky self. Curtis distrusted Aisha. Driscoll ordered Kiefer to bring the Velveteen-Voiced Hostile in, but Kiefer insisted on trying to follow him to DaD. Even though Kiefer wasn't cooperating with CTU, Potato Face cooperated with Kiefer by secretly trying to set up a surveillance satellite to track VVH. But it took longer than she expected, so Kiefer decided to stall VVH by pretending to hold up the gas station where VVH was filling his tank. The following takes place between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

MaskedKiefer has apparently been concentrating all his attention during the two minutes of previouslies trying to get VVH to raise his hands and back away into a corner of the store with the cashier and the rest of the customers, but he doesn't appear to succeed until we rejoin the action. VVH, clearly suspicious about the veracity of this "robbery," finally decides he has little choice but to obey. The gun looks real enough, after all. Kiefer grabs a can of shaving cream off a shelf and squirts a dollop onto the lens of a security camera, then tosses it to the cashier and orders him to do the same with the camera behind the counter. After ascertaining that nobody is working in the back, Kiefer takes off his mask. Because it's hot in California, and because you can't have the lead actor masked for an entire hour of television, and because Kiefer probably figures that even with several witnesses, his face defies description anyway.

At CTU, Curtis enters the DrisCube, where the boss has just learned that Witless has been brought to the ER in critical condition, and that the bodies of the two thugs Kiefer shot were found where the ambulance picked Witless up. Curtis figures out what must have gone down. When Driscoll says Kiefer and VVH are "still at large," Curtis suggests that in light of DaD's execution being less than three hours away (an hour less, to be exact), maybe they shouldn't concentrate so much on Kiefer and start following other leads instead. But Driscoll points out that their only other lead is getting what's left of his mind melted in an interrogation room. Of course, that's because she doesn't know about the train-crash passenger with a bullet in his chest and half a pair of handcuffs on his wrist, or the fact that TerrorTurk knows about the Briefcase and TerrorDad. But I'm sure someone will be on top of those things eventually. Driscoll wants everyone to concentrate on looking for Kiefer and VVH.

Kiefer is still busy herding VVH and the rest of the customers into a back corner of the store, where he orders them to lie down on the floor and then hand over their wallets and cell phones. Items slide across the floor toward Kiefer. VVH claims not to have a cell phone, but Kiefer's not having it. Which he can get away with, because in California, even people who have to buy a tank of gas with a bucket of change have cell phones. He kicks VVH in the chest, and while VVH is doubled over Kiefer grabs VVH's phone and "finds" his gun. Kiefer continues to play his part, asking if VVH is a cop or something. VVH claims he carries the piece for "protection." Surprisingly, Kiefer doesn't give up the charade and let the terrorist go. So suspicious, that guy. VVH's gun goes in Kiefer's messenger bag with the rest of the loot. Kiefer gets the store keys from the cashier, an unironically trucker-hatted fellow named "Doug." ["Who I believe was in Sling Blade, so he gets a pass on the hat. This time." -- Sars] He shuts down the power and locks the doors, taking only a second to pleasantly turn away a would-be customer and flip the "Closed" sign in the window. He checks to make sure none of the customers is, as hold-up artists say, "getting any funny ideas" across the store from him, and pulls out his cell for a frantically whispered talk with Potato Face. Kiefer says he's holding up a "Mercury Mart." Nice of the writers to show a little imagination, naming the store after the appropriate mythological character, but at the same time, they'll never get work naming actual shops as long as places like "Pump N Munch" and "Kum & Go" exist (and no, I'm not making those up). Anyway, Potato Face is going to need another ten minutes to get the satellite ready. "Son of a bitch," Kiefer hisses. He miserably begs Potato Face to hurry.

As Potato Face hangs up, Curtis calls her in to a briefing. She promises to be there in a minute. "Potato Face," Curtis says, "now." Potato Face gets up, barely remembering to go back and close the windows displaying her illegal satellite activity. On the way to the briefing room, Curtis is waylaid by Aisha, who excitedly asks if she should be in on the briefing he's going to. Lady, you're a temp. If anything needs to be briefed, it's the scenes you're in, if you get my drift. When Potato Face catches up, Aisha snags her too, introducing herself and being all, "And you are?" Curtis extracts them and they're on their way. "It's nice to meet you," Aisha says to Potato Face as they peel off. I'm thinking she's just as socially warped as Potato Face, just in the opposite direction.

Curtis and Potato Face enter the briefing room as Driscoll is recapping what we know from the last hour. Potato Face in particular knows it, better than anyone in fact, and she makes a huge show of looking bored and annoyed while Driscoll explains that Potato Face's good friend was kidnapped, about to be killed somewhere to the northeast, apparently saved by Kiefer, and brought to the hospital. If this show ever puts Potato Face out in the field as a secret agent in any capacity whatsoever, I'm officially calling bullshit unless she blows it as badly as she's blowing this. And if she ever turns out to be a mole I'm totally out. Curtis assigns Lispy Skip to satellite surveillance, and Special Agent Breck is supposed to "coordinate with the NSA." Whatever that means. I don't especially like Special Agent Breck, at least not yet, but I do feel kind of bad that she never gets to finish anything before somebody throws some random task at her. And that's the end of the briefing. No wonder Curtis didn't want to wait for Potato Face; these briefings are brief indeed. I've been at meetings where we've waited for latecomers for longer than that entire meeting lasted. Every meeting I've ever been to, in fact. As the meeting breaks up, Driscoll pulls Potato Face aside and expresses her sympathy about Witless. Potato Face manages a suspicious "thanks" and pouts back to her desk. It's 10:07:13.

Driscoll heads right to Special Agent Breck and tells her to monitor Potato Face's system. Yes, even Driscoll picked up on Potato Face's lack of reaction to the news about Witless, which told her that Potato Face has been in touch with Kiefer. Potato Face is the worst spy ever.

Meanwhile, the best spy ever is busy learning the following about the store he's "robbing": that the money in the safe would barely pay for the can of shaving cream he helped himself to earlier, and that the armored car arrives at 12:30 for its pickup. Kiefer looks genuinely dismayed. I guess it's not like CTU is going to be covering his expenses for the day. "Is he going to keep us here for over two hours?" says one of the hostages. "We have to do something to stop him," whispers VVH.

It's 10:08:05 as Poor Man's Robert Davi strides through the TerrorDome, unable to reach VVH on his cell phone. He tells his two henchmen to check with "our people" in the "area" to find out if "anything" has "happened." He meets up with another pair of henchmen outside DaD's cell and tells them to start "booting up the routers without" VVH. DaD takes the opportunity to tell PMRD to let DoDder go. "She has already been useful," PMRD smirks. DaD says he'll do anything they want. "That's why we are keeping her." This pisses DaD off, and he shakes the wires of the cage, shouting, "This is what your religion teaches you?" as PMRD departs without another word. DoDder, her hair in considerable disarray, tells DaD to calm down. Which reminds her: where's his nitroglycerin? I imagine a scene in which Keeler, in honor of the heart medicine bottle that essentially secured his presidency, held a Cabinet meeting in which he passed out a pill to each Secretary, thereby implicating them in his act of blackmail and securing the kind of loyalty that George W. Bush only dreams of. Then I remember that Brother Palmer got the bottle back. And anyway, apparently DaD has a heart condition of his own, and he left his nitroglycerin in the car. DoDder relays this to the guard. The guard isn't impressed. DaD and DoDder exchange a look. It's 10:10:06.

Commercials. Okay, that scene in Swingers I referenced a couple of recaps ago? It's now a MasterCard commercial. They didn't even change the names. I don't know how much they paid Jon Favreau to use that scene. But not having to come up with a new idea on your own? Priceless.

10:14:20. Kiefer's career as an armed robber continues, Potato Face tries to get him out of there, and DaD has entirely failed to have a heart attack in the past four minutes. Driscoll tells Special Agent Breck to keep spying on Potato Face, which she does, complete with peeks over her shoulder. Potato Face notices this and decides it's time to call Lispy Skip. She asks him to meet her in Archives. He's confused, but he agrees. I'm-a peel that Potato, he thinks.

They take separate routes to Archives, which isn't even a separate room. It's just another area of the panopticon that is CTU, but it just happens to be behind a staircase. Once they meet, Lispy Skip wants to know what's up. Besides Little Skip, of course. Potato Face has figured out that Special Agent Breck is "piped into [her] system" and that Driscoll must have ordered it. I'd like to pipe into that system, thinks Lispy Skip. No, actually he says that if Driscoll's spying on Potato Face, it must be for a good reason and that he's not getting involved. Potato Face: "I've been in contact with Kiefer. Now you're involved. You're either going to help me or you're turning me in." You think she picked up that finesse from Kiefer? "I'm turning you in," Lispy Skip says before she's even finished talking. Potato Face argues Kiefer's case, but Lispy Skip says these kinds of decisions are not up to them. Potato Face appeals to Lispy Skip's sense of obligation, reminding him of all the help she gave him when he first started. He's still afraid of getting fired. Potato Face says he'll be fine, because she outranks him and she'll take the heat for giving him the order. Lispy Skip buys it, because aside from the wide-ranging computer genius that every CTU office employee requires just to get through five minutes on the job, he's just not that bright. Potato Face tells him to send the satellite repositioning controls to a terminal there in Archives. Lispy Skip heads off to comply. But of course, Archives really isn't all that private, and both conspirators were clearly visible from a walkway above where they were standing. And thus the whole exchange was seen, if not heard, by Aisha. I'm confused about her. I thought she was called in to help with computer stuff, but instead she's spending all her time wandering around and spying on people. Why did they bring someone like her in as a temporary consultant anyway? Obviously she's got what it takes to be a regular full-time employee. ["Or a Camden." -- Sars]

10:16:52. DaD and DoDder exchange another look. Even without it, the fact that DoDder has fixed her hair is an indication that they're up to something. DaD deliberately gets up, goes to the gate, and puts on a little show for the single guard. He's demanding to talk to Poor Man's Robert Davi, and working himself up into quite a lather. DoDder tries to calm him down, which only pisses him off more: "We have to do something! We have to take aaaaaagh!" Would that be the Castle Aaaaaagh from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Because I don't think either of you is in a position to be storming any medieval fortresses right now. Oh, wait -- by "aaaaaagh," he means, "I'm having a heart attack!" I was confused by the lack of subtitles. He collapses onto the floor. DoDder tries to help him. The most gullible guard in the world, instead of calling for help, comes into the cell by himself, pistol at the ready. As the guard tells DoDder to move away, he turns his back on DaD, whose heart attack comes to a highly convenient end just in time for him to grab the guard from behind. The guard's gun goes flying. "Get out of here!" DaD tells DoDder. Instead of leaving, she grabs a big honking wrench, which she uses to knock the guard unconscious witha blow to the stomach. I don't know. Now that DaD has the guard's gun, he and DoDder run out of the cell and down the hall, with DaD in the lead. Another guard appears with an assault rifle. DaD takes him down with the pistol, which affords him the opportunity to make a videogame-style weapons upgrade. He tosses the pistol aside rather than giving it to DoDder, which, whatever. I guess we know where this particular SecDef stands on women in combat. DaD cocks the assault rifle. "Still with me?" he asks DoDder quietly. She doesn't say, "Actually, I'm really tired. I'm going to head back to our cell for a nap. You go ahead. I'll catch up." They keep moving. DaD takes down another guard, but then they're suddenly surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. Poor Man's Robert Davi tells Dad to put down the weapon. DaD does. "If another one of my men dies," warns Poor Man's Robert Davi, "your DoDder will be killed." That gets scarier every time he says it. The prisoners are led back to their cell.

I really don't know why Poor Man's Robert Davi didn't order DoDder killed right then and there, aside from the fact that it's too early in the season for her to die. But I appreciate the fact that the writers gave Team DoD something interesting to do besides sit in their cell and wait for the end, so I'll let it slide. Would have been more interesting to have DoDder do some of the shooting, though. I'm sure that PMRD will order the living crap beaten out of both of them, at least.

Back at the Snak-n-Save, Kiefer's quizzing Doug about the procedure for the armored car pickup. Meanwhile, Velveteen-Voiced Hostile decides to be the "hero" of this particular robbery, if one can use that term about a guy who just wants to get out of there so he can go blow up the West Coast or something. He spots some cans of bug spray within arm's reach and palms one just as Kiefer orders everyone to stand up and start moving to the back of the store. As everyone's walking past Kiefer, VVH tries to exterminate Kiefer's eyes, but one of Kiefer's super-secret-agent moves has VVH flat on his back and looking up the barrel of Kiefer's gun before you can say "RAAAAIID!" "You try that again and I will kill you," says Kiefer. Everyone starts moving again.

This is a great time for, say, a police car to pull into the station parking lot, so naturally one does. Kiefer herds everyone except Doug into the walk-in cooler, with dire warnings about what will happen if anyone makes a sound. The sheriff's deputy ambles up to the front door and taps on it when he finds the place closed. "Make him go away," Kiefer tells Doug. Kiefer lurks in a corner while Doug opens the door and fails spectacularly to calm the deputy's suspicions. "I'm not getting held up," Doug might as well say. Finally Kiefer gives up and shows himself (and his weapon), saying, "Don't even think about it" when the cop goes for his own gun. And it's not like Kiefer can identify himself to the cop as a federal agent who's just pretending to rob the Gas & Gorge, because, oops, no CTU ID. Kiefer orders the cop into the store. VVH can see what's happening by peering between the beer bottles in the refrigerator case, so he watches from inside the cooler, beginning to be impressed with Kiefer despite himself. Kiefer makes Doug disarm, de-radio, and handcuff the cop, then leads them both back to the cooler. Everyone looks at the helpless cop. He looks at everyone else, deeply embarrassed. Heh. Kiefer locks everyone inside the cooler, then goes back out to the store to wait. VVH has this "no fucking way" look on his face the entire time. Kiefer turns to glare at his hostages between the beer bottles. It's 10:22:16.

10:26:32. Kiefer continues to not wear his mask while holding several people and a police officer hostage, DaD and DoDder are back in their cell and not even a little bit beaten up, and VVH chills in the cooler. At the TerrorHome, TerrorTeen and his idiot girlfriend Debbie sit in the living room and watch a news report about DaD's kidnapping. "You'll never guess where he is," TerrorTeen doesn't say to Debbie. TerrorMom arrives with iceless iced tea, nearly a half hour after starting to make it. Did she start with hot tea and then ice it? Pick the leaves herself? Brew it using only her mind? Whatever. TerrorMom tells Debbie she realizes that she and TerrorDad have been unfair: "We've treated you as badly as we have been treated ourselves by certain ignorant people." People who don't know anything about Muslims aside from the terrorists they see on TV, perhaps? TerrorMom gets up and shuts off the TV showing the face of the man currently in the clutches of her associates. She apologizes for their treatment of Debbie, and Debbie goes for "touched" but lands closer to "finally." Now TerrorMom gets down to business as Debbie takes a sip of tea: specifically, Debbie's following TerrorTeen to the TerrorDome. Debbie at least has the grace to look embarrassed when she confesses to being jealous and suspicious of TerrorTeen. But she doesn't have enough class to admit that what she did was borderline creepy. Have some more tea, Debbie. TerrorMom glosses over that, but explains that TerrorDad recently "moved his inventory" to the TerrorDome because he's been "robbed a few times" and wants to keep the location "secret." Debbie promises not to tell anyone where it is, and assures them both that she hasn't talked to anyone but TerrorTeen. Who, by the way, hasn't said more than three words since this conversation started. "Then that's settled," TerrorMom says happily. And as if TerrorMom hasn't embarrassed TerrorTeen enough by interrogating his girlfriend, she now has to pour salt in the wound by hauling out the baby pictures. She leaves them in the living room with the photo album, and picks up the kitchen phone at 10:28:53.

Apparently that "meeting" TerrorDad had was with a double half-caf latte at the coffee shop. He thanks his Middle Eastern waitress, who gestures at the TV screen showing DaD and asks TerrorDad if he's heard about it. "Yes. It's horrible," says TerrorDad. "It makes it so difficult for the rest of us when people from home do these unspeakable things," the waitress comments. I hope she's not the token "good Muslim" for the season, especially since TerrorDad's unemotional "I agree" only reinforces a possible, even if unintentional, message that all the millions of non-terrorist Muslims living in this country are just faking. Grrr. Anyway, TerrorMom calls to assure TerrorDad that their secret is safe. Or it will be once it's "taken care of," which TerrorMom says will be "soon." TerrorDad says, "Have TerrorTeen do it. He created this problem. He should be responsible for solving it himself." TerrorMom "agrees," and promises to "call" when it's "done." I understand why some in the Arab-American community are offended by this portrayal of Middle Easterners as terrorists. If I were Middle Eastern, I'd also be offended at they way they're portrayed as being so fucking oblique all the damn time.

Kiefer's still standing in the Food -n- Fill, and he's still got the deputy's radio, which puts him on kind of an awkward position when it starts squawking about a bank robbery in progress. So now Kiefer's not only guilty of armed robbery, assault, and kidnapping, he's also indirectly aiding and abetting another robbery somewhere across town. Dandy. Kiefer runs back to the cooler and holds the radio up to the cuffed cop's face, telling him to answer it and threatening to kill him for "one wrong word." The cop starts to, but Doug yells, "Help! We're being robbed!" Kiefer backhands Doug across the face. Good thing he didn't threaten to kill Doug, because right now that would be a little awkward. VVH tells Kiefer, "Now's your chance to let us go before the cops get here." Kiefer tells VVH to shut up. He turns to the cop. "These people are your responsibility. You'd better start talking to them." He leaves them all in the cooler again. I have no idea what he meant by that. It's 10:30:41.

Driscoll meets Special Agent Breck in the hallway at CTU, and learns that Potato Face has yet to betray herself. Driscoll wonders if Potato Face has drafted someone else inside CTU to help her. Special Agent Breck wonders how much of her attention she's supposed give to this project. "I expect you to walk and chew gum at the same time," Driscoll says. And also construct a working scale model of the Sydney Opera House out of empty yogurt cups while mentally calculating Lispy Skip's specific gravity and reciting Paradise Lost in Urdu, apparently. Maybe it would be easier on everyone if some of these other CTU extras were given something to do. Or, you know, a line occasionally.