Day Four: 5:00 PM -- 6:00 PM

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.

Kiefer's done peeing, and he comes out of the head just in time to take a call from Special Agent Breck, who's been busy. She's already figured out that Harris Barnes is none other than the gentleman you and I know as ImhoTerror. Kiefer says they need to find him, but Special Agent Breck is way ahead of him; ImhoTerror also used his alias to lease some office space in L.A.; specifically, the 29th floor of the Rocklyn Building -- the same building that Curtis and AIIIEEEE!sha left for almost an hour ago. Kiefer tells Special Agent Breck to patch Curtis through to Kiefer as soon as he calls in. "You think ImhoTerror's there?" Special Agent Breck asks. Kiefer pronounces ImhoTerror's death sentence: "Right now he's our only lead." Well, that's because you left TerrorDad's cell phone lying on the floor where he died. I'm sorry to keep harping on that, but how hard would it have been to show that the bullet that killed TerrorDad also destroyed his phone, or that its records were locked off somehow? But anyway, back to ImhoTerror: "If he is, that's where the MacGuffin is." And indeed, ImhoTerror is shown on the 30th floor of the Rocklyn Building, sitting at Ali's desk and MacGuffing it up something fierce. It's 5:12:27.

5:16:52: Curtis continues to die hard, ImhoTerror continues to type hard, and a couple of cooling towers somewhere are already spewing steam into the Springfield atmosphere. Or maybe that's normal. I don't know. At CTU, Soul Patch is heading up the interrogation of TerrorMom, just like Kiefer said. Driscoll and Special Agent Breck are watching from the observation room. Unfortunately, Soul Patch is standing in such a way as to make sure that the only part of him being properly lit right now is his gut. Let the jacket hang over that, dude. That's what it's for. Or at least take a half-step forward into the light. ["The peanut gallery where I was had a simultaneous reaction to that, too -- not we thought it looked especially bad, just that it's unusual that anyone on TV would even have to suck it in." -- Sars] He's trying to get some names from her, but she's pleading ignorance, saying that TerrorDad kept her in the dark about all that stuff. Soul Patch doesn't buy it. He knows the only reason she's helping is because of TerrorTeen, and "It's not too late for us to change our minds about how we treat him." TerrorMom puts on a big show of caving, saying she knows some names but not how to find their owners. Soul Patch relents and gives her a pen and pad to start writing them down. I hope that's a felt-tip, or he's just being careless.

In the observation room, meanwhile, Special Agent Breck is explaining what she's just learned about ImhoTerror to Driscoll, and how Kiefer's on his way to ImhoTerror's office space. Driscoll recalls that Curtis and his team are already at the building, but Special Agent Breck says she hasn't been able to reach them. Driscoll tells Special Agent Breck to keep trying, and to tell Curtis that Kiefer's on his way so they can coordinate and recover the MacGuffin. Special Agent Breck is on her way to obey, eager to earn that pay raise she blackmailed for herself last episode. Driscoll hits the intercom button to the interrogation room and tells Soul Patch to ask TerrorMom about ImhoTerror. TerrorMom doesn't react to hearing the name over the intercom speaker. "Who's ImhoTerror?" Soul Patch asks. TerrorMom looks up from her pad and lies, badly (but not too badly, because Shohreh Aghdashloo can actually act), that she heard TerrorDad "speak of him a few times. He's an engineer. Beyond that, I don't know." Soul Patch starts pacing around her, clearly doubtful. While he's doing that, a call rings through to Driscoll in the observation room; it's someone at the clinic saying there's a problem with DrisKid and the boss should "get down here as soon as you can." Driscoll makes an "oh, God, this stupid fucking subplot" face, along with millions of viewers, and promises to be right there.

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.

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?