Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Now That's Hospitality
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 9 | Aired on 02.19.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Now that the search for the nerve gas has hit a dead end, President Logan reams out McGill so widely that the poor Hobbit ends up involuntarily shitting on everyone he encounters. First, McGill orders Kiefer taken into custody for defying the order to release the gas at the mall. But Kiefer escapes after he gets a call from The Man, offering to secretly help Kiefer find the canisters. And because Audrey was the one who transferred The Man's call, McGill starts leaning on her, almost literally. Which forces her to drag Chloe and Buchanan into her little conspiracy to help Kiefer under the radar, which in turn sends McGill closer to the edge and Buchanan to a holding cell.
Meanwhile, Erwich gets fired/killed by his boss, who hasn't given up on striking at Russia; he's just going to do it in the U.S. Specifically, he plans to ambush the Russian President's motorcade to the airport, using intel that he requests from President Logan. When given a choice between sacrificing the co-signatory on his fresh new treaty and potentially thousands of American lives, Logan goes with the former. The First Lady disagrees with her husband's decision, but what can she do about it? Not much, really. Except to hop into the Russians' limo just as it leaves Not Camp David. As if Logan needs people making his decisions even harder for him. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Wow, here's Erwich and his guys, who, just in the time it takes to run the previouslies, have covered the distance between their temporary garage hideout and what looks like a much more permanent hideout. We're only seeing it from the inside, but it looks like some kind of bunker with concrete walls. Erwich and his men make their way down a wide corridor to an even wider room, where a guy in a suit is standing with his back to them, watching Fox News: The Terrorist News Network. Obviously word of the gas attack at the mall hasn't reached the media yet, because Fox News is still going on about the treaty signing that occurred that morning. Wait, did I just equate "the media" and "Fox News"? Sorry, won't happen again. Erwich addresses the suited man (who, now that we can see him from the front, turns out to be British actor Julian Sands), making the critical mistake of opening with the good news. "The Sentox gas is genuine," he tells Julian Sands's back. "The test was successful." Sands disagrees: "I spent a year securing a weapon that would bring Moscow to its knees and you waste it killing a handful of American civilians." Erwich tells Sands -- whom he addresses as "Bierko" -- that someone had to pay for the betrayal. Bierko agrees and fires Erwich, with severance. And when I say "fires," I mean "sinks a switchblade into Erwich's gut," and when I say "with severance," I mean "he severs Erwich's intestines." And you thought Trump was harsh. While Erwich is flailing helplessly on the point of Bierko's blade, Bierko explains that the failure of their plans is all Erwich's fault for trusting the Americans. Which, we know all this already, but while we always have to play catch-up for the first few minutes of every episode anyway, I have yet to see a cooler way to do it. So Bierko can stay. But he's not done expositing; to those left standing, he boasts, "Since I anticipated this, I have secured additional men and resources at great personal expense." Boy, has he got my number. He announces that Nathanson -- formerly known as The Man -- will be gotten rid of, "And then we can return to our original task: striking at the heart of Russia." From Los Angeles. Where Bierko has based himself...why? I guess he's failed to anticipate the fact that because he's here in town, it simply means that some time in the next sixteen hours, Kiefer is going to find him and beat him into an urbane paste.
At Nathanson's video sanctum, Nathanson has already made himself scarce. All that's left behind are a shitload of monitors and one unlucky underling who's got a gun muzzle pinning his head to his desk. And the guy holding the gun, of course. The underling insists to the gunman that he doesn't know Nathanson's whereabouts, and gets shot dead. Wow, Nathanson's a shitty boss, leaving his guy behind to get killed by the terrorists he screwed over. At least Bierko does his own killing. Speaking of Bierko, that gentleman gets a call from the blond gunman, who reports that Nathanson has already scrammed. "Find him!" Bierko hisses at the phone.
I'm a little surprised to see that Nathanson is just now leaving the building, considering that he "went dark" two hours ago. In 24 travel time, he could have been in San Francisco by now, but I guess having a small army of pissed-off terrorists after you is no reason to skip a few hands of solitaire before calling it a day. Now that he's finally on the road, he gets on his cell phone headset and calls another individual who answers, "Alpha Seven." Nathanson tells Mr. Seven, "I think Bierko's hitting us back. Destroy all your databases." But before Alpha can even respond, let alone destroy anything, he takes a bullet in the chest from somebody who's just entered the room. Nathanson quickly disconnects the call, because the shooter might pick up A7's phone and that's so not a conversation he wants to have. Awkward.