I don't know why that graphic violence warning comes on after American Idol. Around my house, that's a little bass-ackwards.
Previously on 24: TerrorDad holed up in a hospital laundry room so he could scream at his son. ImhoTerror told TerrorDad that melting down the nuclear power plants would take another one to two hours. And then Kiefer arrested TerrorDad. And then TerrorTeen killed TerrorDad. It was a pretty rough fifteen minutes for TerrorDad overall. Kiefer said he wanted Soul Patch to head up the interrogation of TerrorMom (and the "Counter Terrorist Unit" freeze frame this week features Soul Patch, which is odd). Kiefer said he could get Soul Patch reinstated, and Driscoll agreed. Curtis and AIIIEEEE!sha walked into an office building, where she got shot and he got knocked upside the melon. Kiefer found a connection between the TerrorHideout and Grayadder, so DoDder decided to go hang out with her husband for a while. Until Kiefer busted into the room with a minimum amount of finesse. The following takes place between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM.
There's now a riot-geared CTU guard posted outside Grayadder's hotel room, presumably to calm any other guests who might come along to investigate the screams that are about to come from this area. Kiefer's just finishing tying a still-unconscious Grayadder to a chair. He walks over to where DoDder is sitting and asks her to leave the room while he "questions" her husband. "I'm staying," she says. Kiefer looks disappointed, but he says, "Fine." Kiefer's not often stupid, but when he is, he's really stupid. He gets to work. He walks over to Grayadder and rips his shirt open, then goes into the bathroom to grab a big ol' sponge, which he dips into the ice bucket (order champagne for my girlfriend, will you?) and wrings out over Grayadder's head and upper body. Despite all this, Grayadder isn't even remotely turned on when he wakes up. In fact, he's got nothing to say at all. He tells Kiefer as much. Kiefer tells Grayadder that since his name is on the lease of the TerrorHideout, Grayadder is a "prime suspect" and he's going to treat him like one. Grayadder sputters that his name is on fifty different leases as the owner of ten different corporations and he has no idea what building Kiefer's talking about. Kiefer doesn't believe him: "You need to start talking to me now." Kiefer's really not doing a very good job of pretending he's not enjoying this. Grayadder repeats that he's got nothing to say. Kiefer half-smirks at him for a second, then crosses the room to yank the electrical cord out of a table lamp. DoDder scampers over to try to reason with Kiefer, but he doesn't "have time to do this any other way." Or the inclination, if my suspicions are correct. I think back to that "threatening" "glare" that Grayadder gave Kiefer a few hours ago and wonder if he wishes he could take it back.
Kiefer returns to Grayadder and asks about the TerrorHideout again. DoDder tries to speak up, but gets a forceful verbal smackdown from Kiefer: "If you have to step outside of this room, do it." She starts to do just that, but turns back when Kiefer strikes a couple of sparks off the live electrical leads he's holding. Grayadder nervously says, "You're bluffing." Which is a stupid thing to say, because now Kiefer has to prove he isn't. Which he does by using Grayadder's damp chest to complete the electrical circuit. Grayadder screams and does a full-body clench. Also, I give DoDder a lot of shit, but I have to say that Kim Raver does "horrified" really, really well. Kiefer asks Grayadder again, but his victim is too grayaddled to do more than give DoDder a pleading look. "Kiefer, please don't," she whispers, so of course Grayadder gets another jolt. Kiefer moves to Grayadder's side to threaten his face with the wires, but he's had enough. He doesn't know the building off the top of his head, but since his business records are stored on his laptop, he can look it up to find out if he really does own the building. "Maybe there's someone else involved that I don't know about," he gibbers. Kiefer continues to threaten Grayadder for a few more long seconds before backing off, much to the relief of everyone else in the room. He unplugs the incredibly dangerous makeshift torture device, using the safe and proper technique of pulling it out by the plug rather than the cord, because God forbid anyone should get hurt. He tells Grayadder, "You want me to believe that you're not involved in this? You better show me who is." That doesn't even make sense. As he starts to untie Grayadder, he notices that DoDder is looking at him in a way that strongly indicates she doesn't like the side of him that she just saw. He looks back at her as if he almost gives a shit. See, this is one of the reasons I think it's a bad idea for our government to get into torturing people. It becomes more and more okay, and eventually you have people doing it basically because they feel like it. Not that Kiefer is ever likely to suffer repercussions from this. His repercussions tend to come between seasons, or during the last five minutes thereof. I wish I could say I was appalled by Kiefer's behavior here, but there's been so much torture on the show already this season -- most of it perpetrated by the "good guys" -- that it's just boring. And that appalls me. And you know what else? That lamp Kiefer ruined is going to go on Grayadder's hotel bill.
Lovely shot of 1100 Wilshire in downtown Los Angeles, which I identified using SkyscraperPage.com. Here's what it says about the building: "Incredibly unsuccessful as an office building, this building has sat near vacant or vacant for almost two decades." Heh. As we'll see, that very vacancy makes it fairly successful as a shooting location. Tonight, it'll be playing the part of the Rocklyn Building, which is just as fictional as any of the human characters.
Inside the building, on what we'll later learn is the 29th floor, ImhoTerror steps briskly out of an elevator at 5:06:14. Using a key card, he lets himself into a vacant office suite, where he's met by a short, bearded guy named Ali who apologizes for calling him in and tells him that the Americans have already stopped the meltdown of over ninety reactors. ImhoTerror isn't too worried, since (a) he already knows this and (b) one reactor has already melted down and he can take care of the other five "from here." I just wonder why he took his time getting there. Ali walks ImhoTerror to a stairwell, explaining that he's "reported a system failure" and if anyone asks, ImhoTerror is from IT. Good of him to dress the part. If I saw an "IT guy" in an expensive black suit and black mock turtleneck, I'm pretty sure I'd think, "Terrorist." Or possibly "Bond villain," which amounts to the same thing. Ali gives ImhoTerror directions to his cubicle, explaining that the MacGuffin is "well disguised inside the desk." ImhoTerror says he'll need forty-five minutes to finish melting down the rest of the reactors, and asks about Curtis. Ali says Curtis is being "questioned" now. Without another word, ImhoTerror trots up one flight of stairs, where he uses Ali's key card to get into another office suite, this one decidedly not vacant. It's your standard office supplies megastore commercial come to life, swarming with busy office drones. The company's logo on the wall identifies it as IDS Systems, which I wouldn't comment on, except that IDS happens to be the name of the tallest building in Minnesota (as you'll recall from Fargo). Guys, I appreciate the shout-out, but you might have to be a little less subtle time. Most viewers probably missed this one. Since ImhoTerror's sleek, all-black ensemble isn't attention-grabbing enough, he walks through the cube farm in full-on Mummy glower mode. At Ali's desk, he shucks his jacket, sits down, and opens a secret panel under the desk to reveal what we can safely assume is the MacGuffin, a cluster of computer-y looking parts and lights. Some more glowering around at everyone before he gets to work. That was very foolish, Mr. Bond, he thinks.
5:08:10. In yet another vacant part of the building which is clearly under some kind of construction, Poor Man's John Malkovich and his two goons are standing around and waiting for Curtis to wake up. Curtis has been stripped of his suit jacket, which I approve of because I never liked the way his suit looked with that shirt anyway. I can't explain why. Hey, remember when Gustave used to recap this show? Good times. Ali comes in, and Poor Man's John Malkovich asks what ImhoTerror wants done with Curtis. "Finish him off. Then get rid of the body," Ali says. Is that really what ImhoTerror means when he doesn't say anything? Seems like he'd be a dangerous guy to know. Someone would tell you, "So, I saw ImhoTerror today." "Really? Did he say anything about me?" "No." "AIIIEEEE!" Also: it's interesting that Poor Man's John Malkovich isn't the guy behind the guy behind the guy that we all suspected he was last week, but instead has turned out to be some mid-level henchgeezer. Rough gig for a guy who looks to be well into his fifties. He leaves his men to it. As they untie Curtis's limp form from the chair it's been sitting in (without shooting him first, which I don't get), they exposit that the bodies of AIIIEEEE!sha and the other two agents are already "in the van." They start dragging the unconscious Curtis towards the door. But what they don't know until too late is that Curtis isn't unconscious. Using his superior size, strength, and some super-secret-agent beatdown moves we haven't previously seen from him, he overpowers both his captors, killing them both with his bare hands and even doing some structural damage to the surrounding walls in the process. Note to self: do not piss off Curtis. He's very sweaty now. He picks up a dropped gun and starts prowling the hallways looking for a way out.
Back at Grayadder's hotel, that gentleman is using his laptop to pull up the records of Galaxy Financial Services, the company he owns that owns the TerrorHideout. Grayadder explains that he was about to break up the company, but then someone named Harris Barnes came in with an offer to buy a controlling share. Kiefer of course wants to know who Harris Barnes is, but Grayadder doesn't know; he's pretty hands-off with his thirty-odd companies, and a lot of deals get put together through his attorneys. Kiefer is skeptical, and loudly and threateningly so, until DoDder nervously interrupts to say that Grayadder might be telling the truth. Kiefer looks pretty pissed at her for messing with his interrogation. The married people share a look of their own. Kiefer turns away to use his cell phone at 5:10:29. He gets through to Special Agent Breck and asks her to run a search on Harris Barnes. She says she'll get back to him. Kiefer hangs up and tells the others, "I'll be right back," and slams the door to the biffy behind him. Finally; it's been at least ten hours since the guy got to take a slash. Maybe he'll be in a better mood when he comes out. "Your boyfriend is just a thug with a badge," Grayadder mutters to DoDder. Rather than pointing out that Kiefer didn't even have a badge until that morning, she angrily demands to know why his name is on the TerrorHideout's lease. "Unbelievable," he says. "An hour ago I was sitting here felling sorry for myself because you didn't want me back. And now I see what an incredible asshole you are." Or at least that's how I'd finish that sentence. Instead, Grayadder says, "And now you think I'm a terrorist." I like my sentence better.
5:19:12. Out on the floor, Special Agent Breck is trying again to get through to Curtis's cell phone. Which is of course at the Rocklyn Building, ringing in the hands of Poor Man's John Malkovich, who asks Ali what they should do. "Nothing," says Ali. "Let them wonder where he is. By the time they realize what's happened, it will be too late." I like how that actor isn't all evil and cackling; he's just doing his job. ["I want this actor to get more work. He's hot, and he was really good on a Without a Trace episode from, I think, the first season of that show." -- Sars] He checks his watch and tells Poor Man's John Malkovich to go see how the henchmen are doing with Curtis's body. Poor Man's John Malkovich leaves so Ali can go back to watching evacuation coverage on a fake cable news network. No, not Fox News this time.
Poor Man's John Malkovich heads back to the vacant office where he last saw Curtis, except now the door is ajar and his two thugs are lying dead on the floor. He calls Ali (who's watching the disaster with a faint smile on his face, probably wishing for popcorn) to break the news. He's got his phone in speaker mode, so he's holding it away from his head like a walkie-talkie. I suppose that's so Curtis can overhear both sides of the conversation in the event he's hiding within earshot. What a considerate henchgeezer. Ali asks if Curtis has escaped, but Poor Man's John Malkovich assures Ali that since the door to the stairs is still locked, Curtis must still be on the 29th floor. "Find him," Ali orders, and hangs up. He then calls ImhoTerror to apprise him of this latest development. ImhoTerror wants to know if Curtis knows that the MacGuffin is just one floor above him. Ali doesn't think so, and furthermore, Curtis can't get to it anyway, since all the exits are covered. ImhoTerror tells Ali to "disconnect the hard lines" so Curtis can't call CTU. Ali agrees, then walks to a cluster of wires on the wall and yanks them out in double handfuls. Since I used to help run a call center and part of my job was connecting fiddly little back-room phone lines to installments just like the one Ali is now destroying, watching this makes me cringe more than Grayadder's torture. And now I'm appalled all over again. Curtis watches from a hiding place, and he takes it much better than I do.
Someone who isn't taking things at all well is, of course, DrisKid, who's being fractious. She's screaming at the nurse and the doctor in the CTU clinic. I'm pretty sure the doctor is a new one, by the way, the doctor having presumably been relieved of duty after nearly killing the boss's daughter. Maybe this one will be more successful. At killing her, I mean. As Driscoll arrives, he explains to her that DrisKid has a sedative in her but "she's fighting it." Driscoll asks for a few minutes alone with her schizophrenic spawn. DrisKid is freaking out in a big way, crawling on her bed and shredding her medical chart while Driscoll tries to calm her down. We've seen this before: DrisKid wants them both to go home, Driscoll can't because she's got stuff to do, et cetera. Finally DrisKid screams at her mom to get out. "You're such an important person. Go take care of your important business." DrisKid calls for the doctor, whom she pulls into a hug before promising to cooperate as soon as they get "that" -- pointing at Driscoll -- "out of here." "I'm going," Driscoll says all quietly wounded-like, as if the kid's never been rude to her before in her entire life. There's not enough whatever in the world.
Do you suppose Kiefer's ever going to give the Secret Service their car back? It's 5:22:33, and he's driving along with Grayadder in the shotgun seat (and also in a new shirt) and DoDder in the back. Kiefer's talking to Special Agent Breck while he drives, and he figures out that Curtis is in trouble upon hearing that the Handsome Black Agent isn't answering his phone. I don't know why everyone doesn't just assume that Curtis is dead. Help me out here: is Curtis ugly and I'm just too straight to see it? ["…No." -- Sars] Kiefer asks where the field teams are, and Special Agent Breck says that Agent Castle and his guys are two minutes away and can set up a staging area near the building. Kiefer asks her the probability that ImhoTerror's in the house, but Special Agent Breck doesn't know yet. They hang up. Grayadder asks if CTU has found ImhoTerror yet, and Kiefer snaps, "No." Grayadder says to DoDder, "You have to know that I would never be involved in anything that could bring you harm." DoDder points out that his connection to ImhoTerror is "a hell of a coincidence." Kiefer says that it might not be a coincidence, and that ImhoTerror might have wanted to use Grayadder to get "one degree of separation" from DaD. Grayadder insists that he had no idea where Team DoD would be this morning, so the terrorists couldn't have gotten their whereabouts from him. Kiefer says they might have wanted Grayadder in place for some potential Plan B. Nice to see them chatting so amiably here, barely a quarter hour after Kiefer gave him a good juicing. No wonder they're so cavalier about torture in the 24-verse; people who live there seem to recover from it rather quickly. "I've been careless," Grayadder says, then turns to DoDder in the back seat to say, "I'm so sorry." She looks at him compassionately, the tips of her fingers just touching his shoulders. Kiefer looks at her in the rearview mirror with the opposite of compassion, the tips of his fingers just touching the inner core of the steering wheel rim. She looks back at him like, "What?" Great non-verbal acting between these two tonight. It's 5:24:07.
5:28:34. Kiefer is still staring a hole through his rearview mirror, DoDder is starting to look a little uncomfortable about it, and TerrorMom is looking bored because she's not as close to the center of the story anymore. In the observation room, Soul Patch is telling Driscoll that every name TerrorMom gave them has "checked out as a mid-level cell member." What, they have an org chart to compare them to? Apparently, because Driscoll observes that ImhoTerror is connected to everyone on TerrorMom's list. Which means that TerrorMom is holding out on them with regard to who ImhoTerror really is. Soul Patch asks Driscoll for "a little rope." Driscoll pretends to think about it before approving, as if she ever says no to requests like that, and Soul Patch heads back in to lean on TerrorMom.
He asks her about ImhoTerror again. She's still pleading ignorance. Soul Patch makes a big production of calling the AV guy into the interrogation room and saying, "I'm gonna need all video and audio monitoring in this room disconnected." The AV guy leaves to make it so. "I'm not a stupid woman," TerrorMom warns Soul Patch. "What are you trying to prove?" Soul Patch explains, very quietly, that he just doesn't want to be recorded. He waits, watching her. She turns and watches the red light on the surveillance camera go out, then turns back to Soul Patch and spits, "I don't believe you." Soul Patch thinks about that for a minute, then drags her to her feet and hauls her into the observation room, kicking everyone out as he does so. "Everyone, Erin," he says to the hanging-back Driscoll. She follows her staff out, leaving Soul Patch and TerrorMom alone in the observation room. He shoves her across the room roughly and presses her against the far wall with his arm across her throat. Jeez, Soul Patch, the lady just got shot today. You've been there. Cut her some slack. He yells at her that unless she starts talking, the deal to protect TerrorTeen is over, since Keeler isn't about to let a little thing like a pardon stand in the way of protecting the country. In case TerrorMom starts thinking that maybe her son might be able to hack incarceration, Soul Patch menaces, "Let me tell you, I know a little something about prison…I give TerrorTeen about three months before he commits suicide. By the way, I'll make it my personal mission to make sure that you never hear word one about what happens to him. Ever." He takes his hands off her and turns to go. She stops him with the confession that ImhoTerror is the boss of her cell. She doesn't know how many other cells report to him, but she knows that ImhoTerror "definitely" has the MacGuffin, since he's the only one capable of using it to stop the American programmers from preventing the meltdowns. Soul Patch asks where ImhoTerror is. "Somewhere downtown," she whispers. "The Rocklyn Building?" he says. She confirms it. Soul Patch goes to the nearest phone and tells Special Agent Breck to get Kiefer on the line for him. And then he leaves the room. I guess he'll talk to Kiefer on a different phone. Notice how he didn't have to brutalize any electrical appliances to get the information he wanted?
Outside the door, at 5:32:55, he tells the redshirt standing guard to put TerrorMom back in holding, and tells Driscoll that she confirmed ImhoTerror's location, as well as that of the MacGuffin. Driscoll announces that to everyone on the floor, along with a light sprinkling of technobabble. Meanwhile, Special Agent Breck has Kiefer on the phone for Soul Patch. Now that they know that ImhoTerror is in the house with the MacGuffin, Kiefer wants Castle and his men to plan a "low-profile assault" so as not to spook ImhoTerror into taking off with his prize. Soul Patch is on it. The other important thing we "learn" from this conversation is that the power plants are going to start melting down in about twenty minutes.
ImhoTerror has just shown up on the 29th floor -- where Curtis is loose -- to yell at Ali about the fact that Curtis is at large on the 29th floor and might catch ImhoTerror, which will wreck everything. Way to go where Curtis can reach you then, dude. That's like jumping into the tiger cage to tell the zookeeper how nervous the tigers are making you. Ali's cell phone rings; it's Poor Man's John Malkovich, saying that it looks like Curtis may have gotten away. How big is this floor, anyway? ImhoTerror says into Ali's phone that they need to catch Curtis and he needs another thirty minutes. "Can you make that happen?" Poor Man's John Malkovich says he can. At 5:34:40, ImhoTerror hangs up and tosses the phone back to Ali, along with the words "thirty minutes." And he's out.
Now that Poor Man's John Malkovich is off the phone, he suddenly finds himself staring down the barrel of Curtis's gun. Having overheard the entire conversation (see?), including ImhoTerror's name, Curtis takes the henchgeezer's weapon and cell phone and asks, "Who's ImhoTerror?" Poor Man's John Malkovich isn't talking, so Curtis grabs his tie and bounces him off a support pillar a couple of times. That puts Poor Man's John Malkovich into a slightly more voluble mood, and Curtis learns that ImhoTerror has the MacGuffin on the 30th floor, to which Poor Man's John Malkovich claims not to have access. What he does have is a concussion as Curtis beats him down with his gun butt and loots him of his key card. He uses Poor Man's John Malkovich's phone to call CTU, where he gives Special Agent Breck a quick update. "Kiefer's on his way to you now," says Special Agent Breck. There's a big dent in the pillar where Poor Man's John Malkovich got hurled against it. I also read on SkyscraperPage.com that 1100 Wilshire was being converted to condos as of late last year, which explains why parts of this floor look like they're in the middle of some construction project. Assuming they're shooting the interior as well as the exterior, of course. You suppose the show got a break on the fee they paid to film in the building in exchange for Curtis coming in to do a little light pre-demolition work, using human beings as wrecking balls? And then the director was like, "That was a decent take, but that pillar still looks pretty solid. Let's do it again. Come on, Poor Man's John Malkovich, get up already."
The sun's getting lower in the sky as the camera swings from it, to 1100 Wilshire (excuse me, "the Rocklyn Building"), to a CTU van disgorging troops a block away, to the roof of a nearby parking ramp. The Kiefmobile screams up and everyone jumps out so Kiefer can tell the waiting Agent Castle to set up a security detail for DoDder and Grayadder. Kiefer tells DoDder he's going in, as if there were any question, and then his cell phone rings. It's Curtis. They exchange information that I won't bother recapping because you already know all of it, and Kiefer's on his way. He tells Castle to tighten the perimeter and have men on the first floor "in case this thing goes hot." Of course, the first fifteen floors of 1100 Wilshire are nothing but parking garages, so that's just asking for trouble on this show. Kiefer loads up his weapons from the back of a truck while DoDder watches, trying to think of something to say. Or deciding what to say. Or thinking, Why couldn't the writers just give me a damn line here, for God's sake? "I'll be right back," Kiefer promises her, and leaps into the back of a waiting CTUmobile. "Go, go!" he tells the driver. The driver goes. It's 5:37:14.
5:41:39. DrisKid really needs to pace herself, ImhoTerror is doing his thing, and those cooling towers are looking less cool all the time. DaD's making his first appearance of the episode, pedeconferencing with Driscoll. "I don't want DoDder anywhere near harm's way," is DaD's only response to the incredible breakthroughs currently taking place in the investigation. Driscoll promises that DoDder will be safe. Which is kind of ironic, if you think about Driscoll's own daughter, which I of course don't feel like doing. They head into the meeting room for a videoconference with Keeler, whom they update on their progress. Keeler, still on board Air Force One, asks what happens once they get the MacGuffin. Driscoll says they'll have to use it to reprogram the reactors manually. Keeler asks if there'll be enough time to pull it off, and Driscoll can only promise her people will be ready. "I don't have to remind you of the consequences if we fail," Keeler says. Yeah, he'll never be able to land. End of call. But Driscoll's got a new call from the doctor at the clinic. DaD says he'll meet Driscoll on the floor and leaves her alone so she can take the call. The doctor says DrisKid's "acting out" again. I don't know why they think Driscoll is going to be able to handle the kid any better than they can. The doctor's saying, "If she doesn't settle down, we're going to have to move her to a private hospital." Gasp! Not a private hospital! Driscoll tells him to keep his pants on; she'll be right there. Because she has nothing but time to deal with this right now.
On the way there, at 5:43:25, Driscoll snags Special Agent Breck for a quick pedeconference, in which they establish the following: they still need the MacGuffin to stop the meltdown, Castle's men are in place around the Rocklyn Building, and Kiefer and Curtis are about to meet inside. Are you keeping up with all this? Because you never know when they might drop something new in. In this case, it's Driscoll's instruction to have everyone "ready and calm" in case Kiefer nabs the MacGuffin. Special Agent Breck returns to the floor to relay the order while Driscoll enters the clinic.
Where the DrisKid is putting on yet another display, forcing a nurse to drag her back into her room. It's more of the same between mother and child, except to an incrementally higher degree, and Driscoll finally loses her temper: "There are other people in this world and they have problems too. Now, are you going to get a grip on yourself or am I going to call Security and have them restrain you?" Call Security! Restrain her! No, wait, I just remembered what happens. Whatever you do, Driscoll, don't call Security. They yell at each other some more, and Driscoll promises for the umpteenth time that she'll take DrisKid home as soon as she's finished there. She goes back to work, and DrisKid goes back to pouting. I never thought I could be more tired of her than I was several episodes ago, and you know what? I was right.
Kiefer rides up the Rocklyn Building's glass-walled exterior elevator with Castle and two other helmeted agents. When the door dings and opens on the 29th floor, they spot a prone figure in the nearby hallway. The team quickly but carefully approaches it, with Kiefer on point, until Curtis swings out from behind the door frame. There's that awkward "good guys pointing guns at each other" moment, and now we know why Kiefer and Curtis already knew each other back in the season premiere. Which I realize is giving the writers too much credit for planning ahead, but they should take it anyway because it's not like I'm going to be giving it out all that freely. Curtis says that based on the conversation he overheard between ImhoTerror and Poor Man's John Malkovich, they have less than thirty minutes. Curtis thinks there are only four bad guys left on this floor. Kiefer wants it to just be him and Curtis going after the MacGuffin so ImhoTerror doesn't see them coming. As they walk to the stairs together, they tag-team figure out/exposit that ImhoTerror "inserted a sleeper" (that would be Ali, for those of you just joining us) into IDS and used the company's hardware to propagate the MacGuffin code. Oookay. Sometimes I think that if I knew more about computers than I do, this show would just be making me clutch my head in horror all the damn time.
They head up the stairs to the floor, guns out. They emerge into a hallway, and Curtis gets all casual and gun-hidey when he sees a couple of office drones pass by some distance away. Kiefer grabs the door into the IDS office as a woman comes out, and Curtis quietly tells her to leave the building. They enter IDS together, and what they see horrifies them: they're at one end of an interminably long cube farm stretching as far as the eye can see, with busy Dilberts scampering about between the veal pens. It's basically an anthill with neckties. Kiefer stares out at the scene, looking like someone just dropped ice down the front of his shorts and he's trying not to react. "Did you get a description of him?" Curtis whispers. Kiefer confesses that he didn't. "It could be anyone," says Curtis. It's 5:47:48. Shouldn't some of these people be going home?
5:52:13. DrisKid goes into her bathroom, Kiefer walks slowly along one side of the cube farm, Curtis walks along the other holding a file folder he's ganked from somewhere, and the armored CTU agents are scouting the floor below. There are scores of people in this office, and they're all walking around, talking to each other, and generally being a hell of a lot more industrious than any group of office workers I've ever seen at ten in the morning, let alone nearly six PM. As Curtis and Kiefer slowly sweep the office, Kiefer notices a swarthy-looking guy sitting at a computer and looking around furtively. Kiefer's internal alarm bells go off, because not only is the guy sneaky-looking; he's practically the only one in the whole office who's actually sitting at a desk. He silently signals Curtis, and the two agents start to move in from their separate directions, readying their respective weapons. Just as they're about to break cover, the "suspect" reaches to grab his phone, and in so doing reveals what's on his monitor: a game of solitaire. Dude, it's 5:53. Go home if you don't have any work. Kiefer shakes his head at Curtis and they abort their move. Kiefer rubs his eyes all, "I almost blew that so badly." They go back to scanning the Dilberts, moving more slowly than any other person in the office and yet drawing the attention of absolutely no one.
One floor down, Ali steps out of his office for some reason and spots the CTU agents at the end of the hall. Castle orders him to freeze, but Ali instead darts back inside and shuts the door. He has just enough time to call ImhoTerror's cell phone and sound the alarm before the CTU agents run him down and shoot him. Of course, Ali's pointing a gun at them by this time, so it's not like they killed him in cold blood. It's like suicide by cop, but with CTU agents. CTUicide, if you will. "Last man down," Castle says into his walkie-talkie.
ImhoTerror is now staring around the office, trying to physically grow antennae out of the top if his head to locate the agents he now knows are closing in on him. He takes his gun from its "hiding place" under a sheet of paper and watches as Kiefer moves into view, then out of ImhoTerror's line of sight. But Kiefer's radar has already pinged, and he backs up to where he can see the man who is only visible as a pair of eyes glowering back at him over the top of a monitor. ImhoTerror stands slowly, like he's about to do something completely awesome, and he and Kiefer lock eyes. Kiefer calls Curtis's name. Now that ImhoTerror knows he's flanked, he opts instead to fire three shots into the ceiling. Anticlimactic. That's going to mess up his mock turtleneck. It's also going to send all of the drones into an instant, fleeing panic, making it impossible for Kiefer to get a clear shot at his vanishing quarry. He and Curtis try to tell people to get down, but two more guys running around with guns in a room where shots have just been fired aren't exactly helping. As they approach ImhoTerror's former position, Curtis spots the MacGuffin "well disguised" under Ali's desk. Kiefer tells Curtis to "secure it" and "call CTU now" before spotting ImhoTerror and haring off in pursuit, leaving Curtis to do what he needs to do with the MacGuffin. Poor Curtis. You think it'll be a bomb under the desk, or a stray bullet, or the ceiling collapsing on him where ImhoTerror shot it?
And now we begin one of those sequences that are such a bitch to recap because everything's happening at once. Curtis calls up Driscoll on the phone to say he has the MacGuffin. Lispy Skip, making his first appearance of the episode, puts Curtis on speakerphone and starts rattling off instructions. Except they aren't working. DaD happens by and decides to stick around in case something interesting is about to happen. A CTU flunky comes to tell Driscoll that "the clinic just called." Oh, for fuck's sake. Driscoll says the clinic will have to wait. The flunky starts to protest, but she repeats, "Tell them!" and the kid turns away. Also, they're out of time on the power plants. Skip figures that ImhoTerror must have modified the MacGuffin to lock them out. The splitscreens are going crazy as Lispy Skip walks Curtis through an absolutely riveting series of directions that involve function keys. Special Agent Breck reports that three plants are about to melt down, and indeed, three splitscreen windows show three pairs of cooling towers with steam pouring out of them. That's kind of neat. What's happened is that Curtis has given Lispy Skip remote control over the MacGuffin, so Skip types furiously while everyone stares intensely at him and steam continues to vent into the atmosphere and the suspense is killing me -- not because I think the plants are going to melt down, but because I'm waiting for somebody to pop up and kill Curtis already. Skip hits "enter" and everyone waits.
Nothing happens for a few seconds, until the icon for the reactor in Minnesota goes from red to yellow. Now that's a shout-out. Thank you. Lispy Skip can probably write his own ticket at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now, because whatever he did, it's working. Everyone is terribly relieved. There's no applause on the floor, which is a nice, non-cheesy touch. DaD congratulates Skip again. Driscoll starts to walk off the floor. DaD steps in front of her and says, "Great work, Erin." She thanks him stiffly and excuses herself. He looks after her, thinking, Women.
She walks on to the clinic, breaking into a run just before getting there at 5:58:12. It's quiet in DrisKid's room, where the medical staff is standing around staring down at her body on the bathroom floor. Nice work, guys. DrisKid has slashed her wrists. She cut them lengthwise, which I'm kind of surprised they showed. As if to make up for it, there's not all that much blood on the floor around her. Driscoll is grief-stricken. After sitting impatiently through this subplot all this time, it has at last elicited an emotional reaction from me. And that reaction is, finally. The whole thing is just ridiculous. She went from "well enough to be left at home alone" to "should have been on suicide watch" in one day? ["And she bled to death in six minutes? Even a school nurse could have held her together long enough to call an ambulance. I can't enjoy the demise of a character I loathed because the execution is such horseshit." -- Sars] We could sit and point fingers at Driscoll, or the CTU medical staff, or DrisKid's absent (if indeed extant) father, other relatives, or friends, but I think we all know who to blame for this, writers.
Time for one last splitscreen party. DaD tells the President, "It's over, sir. We've stopped the meltdown." The camera pans around DrisKid's bathroom to show that she broke a mirror to obtain her suicide weapon. The Prez and his staff congratulate each other on board Air Force One, no doubt looking forward to once again standing on floors that don't move. CTU agents pour into the lobby of the Rocklyn building, accompanied by Grayadder and DoDder. He looks at her while she works hard to look anywhere else. Kiefer continues looking for ImhoTerror. Curtis shuts off the MacGuffin. Did someone tell him to do that? And then he gets killed. No, not really. I don't know why not. I give up.
Kiefer comes across a supine body lying in a doorway. He reports it on a walkie-talkie, and the guy from last week's TerrorHideout advance team answers to say he's on his way up. Kiefer approaches the body, which is stripped to its pants and t-shirt. He tells his walkie talkie that ImhoTerror is now a terrorist in CTU agent's clothing. The other agent gets the call and looks behind him, where, sure enough, ImhoTerror is right there, in uniform. Not much of a disguise, really, since the agent tries immediately to knock him down. But ImhoTerror blocks the blow, holds onto the agent's arm, and puts three bullets into him through the armhole of his bulletproof vest. And ImhoTerror's out. You know, you never realize how Darth Vader-y those CTU helmets are until you see one on somebody evil. It's 6:00:00.