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Kiefer and his dad quickly escape from Graem's henchmen, after which Kiefer concludes that maybe his brother has more to share after all. Minutes later he, half of CTU and Burke the torture guy are at Graem's house, working on him while his wife and kid get schlepped back to CTU. McCarthy finds a man who can activate Fayed's remaining nukes, and CTU races to find out who it is -- a process that runs into a hitch when Morris learns that his brother's in the hospital with radiation poisoning. Kiefer tortures his own brother into telling him everything.-- nothing that can help him today, but Graem gives up all the goods on his dastardly deeds from Season 5. Kiefer loses his damn mind and is about to kill Graem, but one Cromwellian glare from Dad backs him away from the brink. With Hayes out of the picture in D.C., it looks like Tom's going to get his way on his police-state proposals, but after Wayne hears about what happened to Walid, he changes his mind (much to the irritation of Vice-President Powers Boothe). CTU learns that the engineer McCarthy found for Fayed is none other than Morris himself, but they're too late to prevent Morris from being nabbed by McCarthy. And in a private moment, Graem and Dad turn out to be in on everything together. So Dad discreetly kills Graem before CTU can question him further. Worst. Dad. Ever. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
So here we are in the season's second quarter already, and I can't help noticing that of all the subplots that began the season, most of them appear to be pretty much wrapped up except the main one. Perhaps it's possible to move things alongtoo fast.
On with the show. This is about as close to the bomb site as we're ever going to get this season, I'm guessing. A TV reporter is reporting live from the edge of the "safe zone" in Valencia (population: 796,,549). No real news here per se, but Wayne's riveted to the TV anyway as he hangs out in the White House Bunker. Tom enters, crying crocodile tears over Karen's resignation. To his credit, Wayne's not buying Tom's act, but Tom uses that as a segue to once again bring up the executive order draft he suggested this morning. In case you haven't been keeping up with the debate over Tom's proposal, this would be the one where everyone in America goes to jail, forever. Tom offers Wayne a slim binder, but Wayne's still not on board with what Tom's suggesting, saying, "Those actions would constitute a brazen abuse of executive power." Tom says that the actions will also "degrade Fayed's network." Ah, trickle-down counterterrorism. Wayne remains reluctant to force the people who elected him to "give up the rights and freedoms that define the essence of this country." Tom says that another nuke will redefine things real good too. He sets the folder on Wayne's desk, and with one more look at the video screen showing the mushroom cloud blowing north, Wayne tells Tom to distribute the order to the Cabinet and convene in thirty minutes. Tom barely contains his exultation as he scampers out to make it so.
Out in the hallway, Tom flags down Chad Lowe to tell him to convene the Cabinet. He doesn't think Wayne would be doing this if he weren't signing off on Tom's measures. "Good work, Reed," Tom tells him. Keep thanking him, Tom. I don't think he's caught up yet. Tom recaps that getting rid of Karen "was distinctly unpleasant, but she left us no choice." Whatever, he had a great time doing that.
Karen, meanwhile, is still in the Bunker, packing up her briefcase. I think that simple task has taken her almost as much time as she spent down there before getting forced out. Her cell phone rings, and it's Buchanan, who still doesn't know he's become the primary breadwinner in the family. Karen breaks the news that she's resigned, although she won't tell him why. She does say that she's on her way to CTU to be an "on-site liaison," whatever that is. Buchanan's confused and suspicious that Tom was involved, but Karen says that she can't talk about it, and hangs up. Buchanan calls her right back, but when she's out in the hallway, she checks the caller ID and shuts it off without answering. She happens to glance down the hallway and spot a couple of Joint Chiefs looking purposeful, but there's not much she can do about it now. She boards the elevator to the surface, where she can look forward to the media reporting the implementation of everything she's been fighting to prevent all day. She'll just have to hope she's through airport security before it all takes effect.
Back at CTU, Chloe enters Buchanan's office to tell him that she can't reach Kiefer or his support teams. Those would, of course, be the teams Graem had killed about ten minutes ago, and we know where Kiefer is. Buchanan's worried. He tells Chloe to keep trying. It's just that exciting.
Graem's already back home from McCarthy's office, and he's on the phone with the two henchmen who are transporting Kiefer and his dad. Graem tells his thugs to meet him at the house when they've finished their Bauer-killing, because he'll be there dumping hard drives for another hour. "Just make sure it goes exactly according to plan," Graem insists, and hangs up. In the back of the blue van, Dad's decided to have a little heart-to-heart with his son, saying that everything he built and worked for was for Kiefer. Great. It's not like Kiefer's going to be able to enjoy it now. Dad says that he tried to convince himself that Graem could run the company after Kiefer left, but wasn't wiling to admit the truth to himself: "After you left, Graem was all I had." I wonder what happened to Mom Bauer? Maybe she was killed by a double agent with whom Dad had had an affair or something. Nah, that would never happen.
At 12:07:52, the van arrives at a remote construction site and comes to a stop. The Bauers are offloaded at gunpoint, still cuffed, and led to stand in front of a hole in the ground. There's a cement mixer parked right there, its chute pointed down into the hole. This doesn't look good. The Bauers exchange a look, during which they telepathically communicate an entire plan to each other. As they reach the hole, one of the henchmen orders them down on their knees. Phillip refuses, saying, "At least have the guts to look me in the eye" as he turns and advances on the man. Kiefer takes advantage of the distraction to go for his own henchman's gun, and Dad does the same, even though both are still handcuffed. While grappling for the weapon, Kiefer manages to get it to go off twice, right into the guy Dad's fighting with. Good shooting, Tex. The other henchman drops to the ground, leaving Dad holding the dead man's gun. Kiefer wrestles his guy to the ground, but as he's recovering the second gun, Dad puts a bullet in the second man's chest. Too late, Kiefer shields the corpse with his body. "I needed to question him!" he yells. Dad defensives that the henchmen were going to kill them. Besides, he doesn't say, the last thing he needs is Kiefer questioning his employees. Wait, is that a spoiler? Forget I said anything. Kiefer tells Dad to loot the first corpse for the handcuff keys, and succeeds in retrieving his cell phone from his guy's pocket while Dad gets to work uncuffing himself.
Kiefer gets right through to Buchanan, who asks whether Kiefer's found McCarthy yet. Sure, rub it in. Kiefer says that he hasn't, but that he thinks he can find McCarthy through Graem. Buchanan says he thought Graem wasn't that deep into it, but Kiefer says that things have changed: "He didn't tell us everything. He just tried to have me and my father killed." That doesn't make sense; aren't evil masterminds supposed to tell you everything first? Kiefer tells Buchanan to have a perimeter set up around Graem's house, and to have recon confirm that he's at home before moving in. Not that they won't wait for Kiefer, of course, because he has to have his hands in everything, even when one of them is all yellow and crust. "And I want Burke [the Torture Guy] standing by with an interrogation kit," he adds. Aw, poor Kiefer. He's been a little out of touch. The last time he was at CTU, Burke managed to fry a vital suspect's brain, then get overpowered by a blown-up clinic victim, then turn out to be catastrophically wrong about his suspect's medical status, then wrongly torture a high-ranking Defense Department employee. And Kiefer thinks Burke still has a job after all that? The sad thing is that he's right. He's about to hang up, but Buchanan keeps him on the line to tell him something he already knows: McCarthy is their only lead to Fayed, and they need to find Fayed before he arms the nukes. You know, the unbelievable thing about this show isn't just that so many things happen in a single day. It's also that they happen despite the fact that everyone spends the first ten minutes of every hour talking like they just got dropped into the current situation. Kiefer hangs up the phone, and his dad tosses him the handcuff keys at 12:10:13 so that they can get out of there.
McCarthy and his girlfriend (on whom he now bestows the name Rita) are chilling in their hotel suite. Actually, McCarthy is working, having moved his laptop from the desk to the bed for some mysterious reason, and Rita's about to hit the vending machine in the lobby. McCarthy says that they'll be leaving soon. "You said that an hour ago," Rita says, even though they haven't been here for fifteen minutes. After she pouts off into another room of the suite, McCarthy pulls out his cell phone to notify Fayed that he's found a guy who can reprogram the remaining nuke triggers. "Who?" Fayed asks. Declining to supply a name over the phone -- which is kind of a giveaway that we're going to know the individual in question -- McCarthy says that he's just sent the man's entire CV to Fayed's computer. Glancing at his screen, Fayed seems satisfied with the candidate, even when McCarthy warns him, "He'll need to be coerced." McCarthy promises to deliver the guy within the hour, and then the coercion may presumably commence. It's 12:11:12.
12:15:35. In a highly convenient development, Nadia notifies Buchanan that, during the commercials, the NSA just intercepted a data stream that includes an audio recording of a phone conversation, one of the participants in which is Fayed. I don't know why Tom needs all his police-state nonsense when technology like this exists. Nadia leads Buchanan over to Milo, who plays back the conversation we just heard right before the break. After we've heard the entire exchange a second time, Milo identifies the second voice as belonging to McCarthy. Buchanan -- always on top of everything -- realizes that this means Fayed is looking for a replacement for Numair, who of course vaporized himself with the nuke earlier this morning. Milo has more good news, which is that the data stream also included an image file. Now, I'm no tech whiz, but I'm pretty sure that an email and a phone call aren't going to be part of the same "data stream," even if they're occurring simultaneously. But this is a major plot point this hour, so we have no choice but to go with it. At 12:16:33, Milo explains that NSA thinks the image file is a photo of the engineer McCarthy found for Fayed. They head over to Morris's desk, where he's working on decoding a screen full of corrupted pixels. Looks tedious. Let's watch it all hour. "Recovering this image may be our only way of stopping those nukes," Buchanan intones. So, Morris should keep working on it, then? Morris says that it could be anywhere from ten minutes to an hour before he's finished. He doesn't add that the closer it gets to the end of the hour, the more likely it is to result in a shocking revelation.
Kiefer drives the blue van back to a CTU staging area near Graem's house. Apparently, the place is on the edge of a new development, because a small platoon of armored CTU field guys have set up on a home construction site around the corner. And they're looking pretty healthy, considering that they were all supposed to have gotten nuked three hours ago. Buchanan must have had them shipped in from CTU-Santa Barbara or something. Dad puts his gun down on the van's dashboard before getting out with Kiefer, who introduces himself to the agent in charge. He's a Poor Man's Jamie Kennedy, named Agent Turner, who explains to Kiefer that they've sealed off a one-block radius around the house, and have confirmed that Graem, his wife Marilyn, and "his" son Josh are inside too. Kiefer orders non-lethal force, instructing, "We need to take my brother alive." Plus he doesn't want his illegitimate son getting killed in the crossfire. Dad wants to go in with Kiefer, but Kiefer says he's going in alone. Well, except for the dozen or so CTU agents who will have his back, of course. Dad asks what Kiefer's going to do to Graem. "Whatever it takes to find out what he knows," Kiefer threatens. Dad looks worried, but doesn't say anything. I'm pretty sure my dad would offer some remark if I said something like that about one of my sisters.
Inside the house, Graem's trying to pretend that everything's under control, while Marilyn angrily tries to tell him what's going on. Josh comes in, yelling at them to stop fighting. I find that a backdrop of four nuclear bombs in the hands of a terrorist only serves to make these scenes of domestic strife even more riveting, don't you? In a splitscreen window, we see the agents moving into position outside Graem's house. Graem's own windows, meanwhile, don't seem to be working any better than they did earlier today. Marilyn apologizes to Josh, and suggests that they leave Graem alone to work. Well, that worked out for Graem, didn't it? Except not so much, because right then explosions blow the front and back doors wide open. Graem snatches a gun out of his briefcase, and he's already got it leveled when Kiefer comes in with his own gun and about thirty armored agents, all of whom are beaded on Graem. Kiefer screams at his brother to drop the gun, and after a brief standoff, Graem yields. Good thing, too; I'll bet Kiefer would have hated to have to shoot Marilyn. Kiefer puts his knee on the back of Graem's neck and tells the nearest agent to have Burke get ready. He also wants every hard drive and memory stick in the house uploaded to CTU. I wait for Josh to blush fiercely and stammer some objections, but it doesn't happen. Graem's secured and dragged off to the room. Josh asks what's going on. Um, Kiefer's not here to sell Girl Scout cookies, kid. Instead of answering him, Kiefer says that he needs to talk to Marilyn in private for a minute, and leads her into the kitchen.
Marilyn looks at Kiefer like she wishes she'd brought over some death-ray vision or something from her gig on Heroes. Kiefer tells her, "Stop looking at me as if this has something to do with us, because it doesn't." Hmm, a clue? If it is, it's the only one we'll get on that front this hour. He tells Marilyn that Graem just tried to have Kiefer and Dad killed. Marilyn angrily asks why, and Kiefer explains by telling her where this morning's nuke came from: "Gray's been trying to cover it up." He says that he knows it must be hard for her to believe, but of course it's not, because she actually hates her husband and only married him in the first place to get back at Kiefer (I'm guessing). Kiefer asks if Marilyn knows anything about Graem's dealings that can help him to find the four remaining nukes, but she's a dry well: "He hasn't confided in me in years. He probably never did." She says that Josh doesn't know anything either. If Josh really is Kiefer's kid, that's almost certainly the case. She wants to keep it that way. Kiefer says that he'll try to protect Josh, but Marilyn snaps, "No! I've seen what happens when you try and protect people!" Ouch. Also, good one. She yells that she just wants to get herself and Josh out of the house. And go...where? Hang out at a Starbucks for the afternoon? She storms back into the living room. Kiefer tries to follow, but Turner cuts him off at the door, saying that they've found two computers in the house. Graem was trying to erase files, but they're already sending what's left to CTU. Watching Marilyn hug Josh, Kiefer tells Turner to have "my sister-in-law and my nephew" brought back to CTU, like they've ever been there in the first place, for debriefing. Turner moves to comply, and Marilyn and Josh follow him out of the house.
Out on the front walk, Josh and Marilyn see Dad waiting outside. Josh hugs his grandfather, who asks if he's okay. "Not really," says Josh. Drama queen. Marilyn sends Josh ahead to wait in the car, and then asks Dad whether what Kiefer told him about Graem is true. "It's complicated," says Dad, but denies nothing. "You make sure he keeps Josh out of this," says Marilyn, and follows her son to the CTUmobile. She's going to be so pissed if CTU gets blown up or gassed again while they're there.
Inside the house, Burke the Torture Guy has arrived, and he's been a busy little beaver. Graem's been strapped to a chair and positioned in front of a bright light and an infrared camera. Burke takes a seat behind a portable monitor showing him Graem's heat signature. While this is going on, the brothers just stare at each other coldly. Finally, Graem is the one to break the silence, admitting, "I panicked, Jack. That's all there is to it." Kiefer's not buying it, pointing out, "You tried to kill me and our father." Graem says that he was backed into a corner and trying to cover his own ass. Which would explain the parked cement mixer already in position at the planned execution site, of course. Not at all premeditated. Kiefer seems to think it's also relevant that Graem's responsible for the deaths of thousands, as well. He thinks Graem knows more than he's telling about McCarthy, but Graem insists that he doesn't. And when he says, "I've told you everything I know, Jack," Burke's monitor beeps, "Liar!" "Especially his last reply," Burke clarifies. Kiefer tells Burke, "Set up the interrogation package." Graem's like, "Here we go." Kiefer tells Graem not to make him do this. "We grew up together, Jack," says Graem. "In all those years, I could never make you do anything you didn't want to do." Good one, and Kiefer knows it. This is the disadvantage of investigating people you're close to; they know how to press your buttons, too. Related to that, is there anyone Buchanan won't let Kiefer interrogate? One of these days Kiefer's going to want to question himself, and Buchanan's going to be like, "Knock yourself out, kiddo. But not right away."
Out in the driveway, Burke retrieves a silver briefcase from the back of a CTUmobile. Dad watches him carry it into the house, wondering if it's a Fendi briefcase. It's 12:23:28.
12:27:54. At CTU, Milo pulls Chloe aside for a discreet conversation. It seems that he's just received word that Morris's brother, Timothy, is on his way to the hospital with severe radiation exposure and is in critical condition. You suppose Morris's brother is also British? I'm only half kidding here. Chloe starts to head over to notify Morris, but Milo wants to hold off for now, because what Morris is working on is too important to distract him. Chloe takes the opposite position she did in a similar situation three seasons ago, saying that they can't keep Morris in the dark: "I know Morris. He can handle it." "I hope so," Milo mutters to Chloe's retreating back.
Chloe heads right over to Morris's desk at 12:28:56 with the printout of the report. She breaks the news as gently as she ever broke anything, telling him she's sorry and quietly standing at his side as he slowly begins to freak. He picks up his desk phone to try to reach the hospital where Timothy's supposedly been taken, but this is the one call all season that can't go through because the circuits are too busy. "What was he doing in Valencia?" Morris wonders. "Bloke lives in bleeding London." I may have added that second part. He slams down the phone, thinks a second, and announces, "I have to go out there." He gets up from his chair, but Milo's right there to ask him to get back to work. "You can't expect me to just sit there while my little brother is dying in a hospital," says Morris, and pushes past Milo. Chloe catches up to him, saying that twelve thousand people are dead, and that it'll be a lot more if Fayed finds an engineer. Morris is nearly in tears. He hits on the idea of having Chloe finish the project, which she agrees she can do, but it'll take her a half hour to get up to speed on what he's already done. She begs him to stay and do his job. His chin quivering, he lets out a shaky breath and agrees. And nobody even had to tell him it's what his brother would want.
From Graem's house, Kiefer's on the phone with Buchanan, who reports that the search of Graem's hard drives came up empty. However, they still have that NSA data stream saying that Fayed's expecting a new engineer within the hour. Kiefer realizes that gives him a forty-five-minute timeline before there's another operational rogue nuke in town, and hangs up.
Kiefer goes into the room where Burke's getting ready to "interrogate" Graem, and tells his brother what he's just learned. "Then you're wasting time talking to me, Jack," Graem tries. Kiefer says that the machine knows Graem's holding something back. At this moment, Dad is just allowed to wander into the house's foyer, where another agent is monitoring the interrogation on live video and not appearing to notice or care that a freakishly tall sexagenarian is looming behind him. Kiefer removes Graem's glasses, unlike last time when he just socked his brother right in the frames. Setting the specs carefully on a coffee table, Kiefer tells Graem that Burke's preparing a solution of hyocene pentothal. ("Concentrated owie-juice" to you and me.) Kiefer asks one more time about McCarthy, and Graem once more pleads ignorance. "Two cc's," Kiefer tells Burke. Burke injects some of the drug into the IV tube leading into Graem's arm. Kiefer turns away to hide how much this is bothering him. Apparently a nice, sterile syringe is much more troublesome than a poke in the snoot and a plastic bag over the head. But then it gets noisier, because a moment later, Graem is bellowing in agony. Dad watches the live video from the foyer, almost horrified enough to say something. Kiefer goes to his brother and wraps his arms around his head, trying to comfort him through it, even as he's still threatening him with more suffering. It's so fucking twisted. Kiefer says that seven cc's of owie-juice will induce "pain [he] can't even describe," and that eight cc's may cause a heart attack. "Make no mistake about it," he warns, "I will go there if I have to." He begs Graem to talk, saying that he doesn't want to hurt him. "You sure about that, Jack?" Graem grunts. Kiefer repeats his question, and when no response is forthcoming, Kiefer orders another two cc's. He holds Graem's head through the wave of pain, encouraging him to breathe and still demanding to know how to find McCarthy at the same time. Graem's still not talking, so Kiefer lets him go and orders another four cc's. Burke says that it's too dangerous, but Kiefer insists. They're going to have trouble laughing about this for quite a few Thanksgivings, I suspect.
When the four cc's hit Graem's system, he finally cracks, sobbing, "It has nothing to do with McCarthy. It has to do with Palmer." Kiefer asks if he means David Palmer. "I gave the order for his assassination," Graem pants. "And Agent Tony Almeida and Agent Michelle Dessler. Your coworkers: they're all dead because of me. I arranged it. I set the timetable. I paid off the killers, I even lured you out of hiding to take the fall." We knew all this, of course, but it's weird hearing Graem say it out loud. I'd half convinced myself that Season 5 Graham and Season 6 Graem were two different characters. Kiefer's about to cry himself. His face is twisted in horror and misery, and he drops into a chair, barely checking to make sure there's one behind him to catch his ass. "Today wasn't the first time I tried to have you killed, Jack," says Graem. Kiefer asks why -- not angry, just confused and sorrowful -- and here's where Graem loses him: "Because I love my country! And in the real world, sometimes you have to do things, terrible things, even unforgivable things for the sake of your country. But you know all about that, don't you, brother? We're the same!" Kiefer jumps out of his chair in a rage and pushes his brother's chair onto its back, roaring, "We are not the same!" He draws his weapon and sticks it in Graem's face. He tells Burke to deliver four more cc's. Burke refuses, and Kiefer points the gun at Burke, and then returns to his brother. Burke calls for help on his walkie talkie, but the first agent in the door has to face Kiefer's gun and his insane screaming. The agent drops the gun, and Kiefer tells Graem, "You're gonna die!" But before he pulls the trigger, Dad casually saunters into view in the doorway and fixes Kiefer with a paternal glower. Kiefer pulls his shit together and tells Burke to shut down the IV. Burke complies, and Dad wanders away from the doorway, his work done. Kiefer follows him out of the room, leaving his coworkers to pick up his brother's chair. Upright again, Graem looks shaky, and not a little pissed. That was one intense scene. It's 12:36:06.
12:40:33. Walid's in a hospital bed, bandaged and dressed in scrubs, Sandra at his side. "I'm ashamed," he says. Because he went down like a bitch? No, he means he's ashamed for spying on innocent people. He says he thought he was doing the right thing, but that he was wrong. Sandra says that he did the only thing he could: "You're the bravest, most principled man I've ever known." But before she can continue in that vein, her cell phone rings. Can't let it go to voicemail when your boyfriend's in a hospital bed you helped put him in, after all, so she tells Walid to get some rest and goes out into the hallway to take the call.
It's Wayne, calling from the White House Bunker to express his sympathies over Walid. He heard Walid was working undercover, and Sandra tells him that there was no plot and no conspiracy. She lectures her brother, "Wayne, you are detaining without due process the people whose help you need the most." Funny she should mention that. Wayne picks up the folder Tom left on his desk. Sandra says that Wayne can't expect people to help if they don't have any legal protection. "I'm scared," she adds, apropos of nothing. Wayne promises her that everything's going to be all right.
At CTU, Milo checks on Morris, who just finished running his salvage program, but the image is still pretty scrambled. Maybe it's like one of those old "Magic Eye" pictures. I never could get those things. Morris starts to download some unlicensed software onto his system to boost the process. When Milo worries that it might corrupt the file (if not the entire CTU network), Morris assures him, "I know these guys. They write really good code when they're not serving time." I never get tired of these references to the shady past of a highly-clearanced operative in a historically mole-prone government facility.
Across the floor, Buchanan is on the phone with Kiefer, who's telling him everything he learned from Graem. "Unbelievable...incredible," Buchanan says, echoing the last three weeks of forum posts ever since we learned Kiefer and Graem were brothers in the first place. You know who looks a lot more like Graem's brother than Kiefer does? Ron Howard. Wouldn't that be a different show? Kiefer's looking totally wrung out as he sits on a low wall on Graem's front porch, telling Buchanan that as much of a bombshell as Graem's revelations were, they don't really help with finding the nukes. Speaking of which, Kiefer asks how they're doing on that NSA data stream clue, and Buchanan says that Morris is still working on resolving the image. Kiefer says that he wants Graem taken to CTU when he's ready to move, and Buchanan says that he's sending a chopper to pick up Kiefer at a nearby middle school. I assume that the chopper will bring Kiefer back to CTU, but maybe Buchanan figures Kiefer's finally earned a little vacation and is having him flown to Catalina for the afternoon. We'll have to wait and see, I supposed.
Kiefer hangs up and sits there looking sad some more. Finally, at 12:43:53, he gets up and reenters the house. From the entryway, he can see one room where Graem's still restrained in his chair with his back to him, and the living room, where Dad is sulking on the couch, a hand to his forehead. Kiefer goes to the latter and quietly says that Dad's not responsible for Graem's choices. Dad tells Kiefer, "You deserved a better family. Jack. Not this. Not us. I can just imagine what you must be feeling. All that time lost. What I wouldn't give to have some of it back." Kiefer feels that. For now, at least. Burke comes in to say that Graem's been stabilized and will be ready to move in ten minutes. Kiefer asks his dad to go to CTU. "I need a few minutes," his dad replies. The camera zooms in on Kiefer's suspicious look, but he swallows it and quickly agrees. As for him, he's got to go meet his helicopter. He gets up and leaves his dad sitting there thinking. It's 12:46:05.
When we return at 12:50:32, Morris has his illegal software utility plug-in patch hack whatever thingy working. He promises Milo that his computer will have the photo resolved in two minutes. Given that this has been put off until the final act, I'm sure Fayed's engineer will turn out to be somebody we've never heard of before. As for Morris, he's out of there. Perhaps he should leave somebody his screensaver password, just in case. On his way out, Morris asks Chloe to watch his station. She tells him to call when he learns anything, and they quickly kiss goodbye. It would be kind of cute if either of them was.
Tom's on the phone with the Vice President, who's congratulating the Chief of Staff on his insane new plan. The Veep flips through the binder, which...I'm not sure how he got a hold of a completely finished and bound copy, given that he's currently at 37,000 feet on Air Force Two. But whatever. Vice Presidents have many mysterious powers. "To be honest, I didn't think this president had the stomach for the cure," says the Veep. The "cure" apparently involves, in addition to all of the stuff we've already heard, a lot of evil sneering, since the Veep is being played by Powers Boothe. He's very scary and scowly and abusive-daddish. Finally, this show gets a handle on what the country looks for in a Vice President. Tom puts the Veep on speakerphone as Wayne enters the Battle Bridge along with the Joint Chiefs. Wayne gets right to business, saying that they're here to meet on "Executive Order 1066." Or as someone even nerdier than I might call it, "The Battle of Hastings order." Good thing I'm not that nerdy. For some reason, Wayne takes forever getting to the point, making everyone sit through the whole story of how Tom proposed it earlier today, Wayne rejected it, and then Fayed set off his nuke, and Wayne decided to reconsider. And now, Wayne stands and boldly announces that he...hasn't changed his mind. And then he launches into a whole preachy lecture about how the Constitution was intended by the founders to be valid in war as well as peace. Tom interrupts as politely as he can to point out that "George Washington's enemies wore bright red coats and marched in straight lines." Wayne says that Tom's plan won't help them to fight their current enemy, and will in fact alienate and radicalize the American Muslim community, the people whose help they need most. Wayne concludes with a bit about the rule of law trumping the politics of fear. As Wayne retakes his seat, the Veep chimes in on the phone to suggest that Wayne listen to some input from others. The corollary "or else I'll jump out of this plane, through the crust of the earth, and land right behind you to break off my foot in your black ass, cocksucker" is left unvoiced, although his tone makes it clear. But Wayne firmly announces, "The discussion on this matter is over." The Veep looks like his head's about to explode.
At CTU, Milo and Chloe are standing around and watching pixels dance around on Morris's monitor at 12:53:54. Buchanan gives instructions to Nadia to set up interrogation rooms and a full clearance package for Kiefer when he arrives at CTU. Buchanan joins Chloe and Milo just as small areas of the photo start looking like photos instead of a scrambled mosaic. And seconds later, there's a man's face looking out at them from the screen, eyes and bald head twinkling over a tiny smile on the bewhiskered mouth. Yep, you guessed it. "Oh my God, it's Morris!" Chloe narrates. Wow, good thing Morris just left, or else it would be kind of confusing having two of him here. Chloe tells Buchanan that Morris isn't in the building anymore. Buchanan grabs the nearest desk phone to dial Security, who tells him that Morris just left CTU's parking lot. Buchanan hangs up instead of giving orders to go after Morris. I know it's probably not protocol for security CTU personnel to leave their posts, but it's not like they ever manage to keep the place...you know, secure. Buchanan tells Milo to issue an APB on Morris's car and Chloe to call Morris's cell phone. Buchanan's call is to Kiefer. Because apparently Kiefer is his boss now or something.
Kiefer's riding shotgun in a CTUmobile as Buchanan relays the news of this latest development. Upon hearing that Morris is not only the engineer, but has just left the building, Kiefer wants to be patched in on the conference call to Morris's cell phone as soon as Chloe raises him. He has to do everything around here. It takes both Buchanan and Kiefer to explain the situation to Morris, but after a few seconds, he realizes that he's been set up and that his brother is fine. He's about to turn his jaunty convertible around and come back to CTU, but before he can do so, McCarthy's car screeches up to him and cuts him off. McCarthy jumps out with a gun drawn, and introduces himself by putting a few slugs in Morris's passenger-side headrest. Both Kiefer and everyone at CTU hears the shots, but there's nothing they can do as McCarthy forces Morris out of his own car and into McCarthy's at gunpoint. Kiefer realizes that Morris is being moved to another vehicle, so Buchanan tells Chloe to pull up satellite feeds of a five-mile radius around CTU. Good luck with that. Set up a perimeter while you're at it, why don't you? With Rita behind the wheel, Morris is spirited off in the McCarthyMobile.
McCarthy calls Fayed to tell him they're on their way, and should arrive in fifteen minutes. That is so not "within the hour." McCarthy reminds Fayed that he's only delivering Morris, and that it'll be up to Fayed to make him cooperate. Ain't no thing, says Fayed, and hangs up. Morris sits thoughtfully, handcuffed to the door handle in the back seat. In other splitscreen windows, Kiefer meets and boards his helicopter, Chloe does her satellite-fu, the Veep glowers hard enough to almost make the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, and the Joint Chiefs and Tom sit around in the Battle Bridge and pout at Wayne. I guess just because the discussion was over didn't mean they don't have to keep sitting there.
Back at Graem's house, Burke's finishes packing up his stuff at 12:56:47. On his way out, he's stopped by Dad, who wants to talk in private with Graem before they go. Burke agrees to give them five minutes alone, as the latest iteration of his ongoing experiment to learn what exactly it's going to take to get himself fired around here. Dad enters the room and closes the door.
Graem's still tied to the chair, because apparently they're going to bring him back to CTU Hannibal Lecter-style. After making sure the two of them are alone in the room, Graem asks his dad, "How'm I doing?" Dad says that Graem's doing great. The soundtrack says, "Sneaky bastards." Graem quietly congratulates himself on being as tough as his brother, bragging, "It's nice to know that I can take anything he can dish out." Dad's not so effusive in his praise, however, pointing out, "You told him about Palmer." Graem says that he threw Kiefer a bone to make him think he'd cracked, and reminds Dad that he kept Dad out of it. Dad warns Graem that things are going to get worse for Graem when he gets back to CTU, and that Dad has to be sure of Graem's silence. Beginning to see where this is going, Graem insists that he's up to it: "I'll hold my mud, Dad. Everything's going exactly according to plan. Jack bought the ruse." This makes Graem the only human being in history who has ever used the terms "hold my mud" and "ruse" in the same speech. They agree that Kiefer still thinks Dad was supposed to be killed at the top of the hour, too. Wait, so the plan all along was to not kill Kiefer and let the henchmen die instead? What kind of bonus do you suppose he offered those henchmen to sign up for that? Graem says that things are still under control; he'll do some time, and Dad will get him out when he can. Uh, Graem? The stuff you just confessed to is going to land you in prison until you look like your father and your son looks like Kiefer. Dad might not have that much time. "Meanwhile," Graem concludes, "the company lives on." Okay, besides giving nukes and nerve gas to terrorists, just what the fuck does this company do that's so goddamn great in the first place? Graem advises Dad to stick to the plan, like he's always said. "Sometimes you have to make adjustments," Dad replies, wandering over to fiddle with the IV tube that's still attached to Graem's arm. He says that Graem's "been a good boy," doing everything he asked: "Except this time I asked too much. Sorry." And with that, Dad uses an empty syringe to force about 10 cc's of air into his son's bloodstream. Graem starts to make one last appeal, but in seconds he's choking, while his father holds his hand over Graem's mouth to muffle any noise he might make. Graem struggles helplessly for a few seconds, then is still. And that's what an air embolism looks like, folks.
Dad lets Graem's head drop, and then kisses his dead son on the top of the head. That'll do, pig. Dad sets the syringe back down on the table where he found it, not bothering to wipe it down or anything. Nice job leaving it there in the first place, Burke. "My son's had a seizure!" he yells at the closed door, and Burke and some other agents flood back in, swarming over Graem's corpse. Burke calls for medical assistance. Dad threatens, "If you people killed my son, I swear...you're gonna regret it for the rest of your life." Good thing they didn't, then. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't get away with this, even if he wasn't on a show where nobody ever gets away with anything. Dad gives a theatrical little face-palm for the benefit of everyone in the room. It's 1:00:00.
Two hours week. Don't forget to tell your TiVo.