In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close. Some of Cheng's men get away from CTU with Josh, but then Kiefer leads a hostage revolt that takes out the rest of the bad guys with an assist from the returning-just-in-time Doyle. That frees them up to go after Cheng. Before they catch up, Josh talks on Cheng's phone to his grandfather, who tells him he plans to take him to China for a fresh start. But then Kiefer and the cavalry arrive, and the chasing and shooting are on. Forced to choose between stopping Cheng and saving Josh, Kiefer saves the kid and lets Cheng get away. Nadia no sooner regains control of CTU than she has to submit to an investigation of the security breach by some pukes from Division, but Morris gives her a nice pep talk. Better move faster, Doyle. Kiefer's dad is pissed when Cheng tells him that Josh is back in CTU custody, and calls off the deal to fix the circuit board. That's no help to the folks from the White House, though. Not only does Lisa foul up her espionage mission to plant information with her Russian spy boyfriend, but then, when Tom convinces the Boyfriend to pass on the bad intel anyway, it still doesn't fool President Suvarov. The Russian prez gives the Veep a suspiciously convenient two-hour deadline to get the component back. As the Veep says, "We're about to go to war over a piece of circuitry." But then potential deliverance arrives in an unlikely form: Kiefer's dad offers to hand over the circuit board to the U.S. government in exchange for immunity -- and, of course, Josh. In less time than it takes for the Veep to decide to give in, Doyle snakes Josh right out from under Kiefer and spirits him away in a CTU helicopter. We've got two hours, like the man said, and they're both happening week. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Things are relatively calm on the CTU floor, where Zhao still has the hostages gathered. Milo is still dead. Morris suddenly gets the idea to cover Milo's face with a jacket. He looks a bit embarrassed that the writer of the episode never thought to have him do that. In response to some invisible, unheard, and unknown cue, Zhou reports to Cheng over his earpiece that he's sending Josh through to him now. Marilyn, predictably, freaks the fuck out. She's screaming, Josh is being dragged away, and Kiefer is yelling Marilyn's name to try to chill her out. All that happens is that he gets rifle-clubbed to the ground for his trouble. Nadia steps up in defense of Marilyn, and gets decked herself. Marilyn's about to take a rifle butt to the face herself, until Kiefer offers to help calm Marilyn down. Zhou points his gun at Kiefer and tells him to do it, for which Kiefer thanks him. He's a lot more polite when other people have all the guns. Zhou then announces to the group that they're all going to be moved to another room, after which he and his men leave. He promises that nobody will be hurt if they obey. These guys sure got a lot more non-violent after they killed Milo just for supposedly being in charge.
Meanwhile, some of Zhao's men are hustling Josh back through the CTU building to their entry point from the sewer. Moments later, he's being led through the sewers to Cheng's hideout. I notice that although Josh had his CTU visitor's badge hanging from a string around his neck during the whole last hour, he now has it clipped to the front of his sweater instead. So whatever else happens, at least he'll have his credentials.
Zhou sends the first of two groups of CTU hostages down the hallway to the holding rooms. Nobody we know is in this group. While still holding on to Marilyn, Kiefer tells her to make sure she's at the front of their group. At first I think this is so he can be as far away from her as possible, but it will soon turn out that he's got her safety in mind. When Zhou orders the second group to their feet, Kiefer orders Marilyn on ahead. Then he has a whispered conversation with Nadia to the effect that if they let the commandos lock them up, they'll never get the component. Is she, as they say, "in"? He warns her that they might not all survive what he's got planned, and she says she understands. The group starts moving, with Kiefer and Nadia near the back. As they approach the hallway, Kiefer tells her to take out the first guy on the left as soon as Kiefer makes his move. This is convenient, because Nadia is walking at Kiefer's left, and having to lunge in front of him might have proved awkward at a critical moment. Even now, Chloe's nosiness is irrepressible, as she catches up to them and whispers, "What are you guys talking about?" Kiefer tells her to keep going. This is no girls allowed, except of course for the acting boss. Just to drive that home, he adds, "Morris, stay alert," which is the first thing he's said to Chloe's ex since the whole "I armed the nukes" debacle and Kiefer's pissy reaction thereto. Maybe they should talk things out first?
But no. There's no time. As the tail end of the group enters the hallway leading to Holding, Kiefer head-butts a Chinese guard posted at the entrance, and it's on. Another commando further up the hall turns his back and sees that Kiefer and Nadia, two of the smallest hostages, are beating up his heavily armed compatriots. He levels his weapon. But we don't get to find out whether he was going to shoot the fractious hostages or his own guys for being such wusses. That's because Morris, who has already passed him, dashes back and grabs him from behind to prevent him from firing. Another commando returns and fires at Kiefer, but the bullets go into Kiefer's opponent instead, whose gun Kiefer reverses uses to kill the shooter. Suddenly, it's three-on-three, with Kiefer somehow faced off against Zhao, while Nadia and Morris are basically doing their best to Greco-Roman-wrestle their much larger and heavily armed opponents into submission. They're not getting much help from Kiefer, because he's got his hands full with Zhao. While he takes his time strangling and then snapping the neck of the commandos' leader, Nadia's slowly losing an arm-wrestling match with her opponent as she tries to prevent him from bringing his gun around to point at her head. By the time Kiefer's finished with Zhao, Nadia's just about out of time. Fortunately, one of those glass walls shatters, and Nadia's assailant goes down. Kiefer looks up from his duck-and-cover position on the floor (big hero) to see the newly arrived shooter, Doyle, entering with his tactical teams in tow. Doyle holsters his weapon and runs up to make sure everyone's all right. I don't know what happened to the guy Morris was fighting. Morris must have subdued him with his trademark sarcasm. You know, I don't give enough credit to the editing and directing on this show for making it clear what's going on even when several things are happening at once, in a format where slo-mo and flashbacks are strictly forbidden. But any such credit would be misplaced in the case of this scene.
At 3:06:42, Kiefer tells Doyle that Cheng's men took Josh. "It has to do something with the component [sic]," he pants, "otherwise why would they take the risk?" Whatever the case may be, he says he's ready to go after them. Nadia reminds Kiefer that he's still under arrest, but quickly changes her mind when Kiefer says that he knows the schematics of the building better than anyone. Really? Even better than the people who, you know, work there? "But Doyle's in command," she caveats, like that's going to hold up. Kiefer dashes off to get kitted out for the pursuit as Doyle asks Nadia how many people they lost. "One," says Nadia. "Milo Pressman." How many Milos work there, anyway? Oh, and she forgot all those dead security guards, but since they don't have names, they don't count. Doyle asks if she's okay. "No," Nadia duhs. Doyle looks concerned, but by now Kiefer's gotten himself a bulletproof vest and a gun and is ready to go. Nadia tells them to use cell phones until comm. is back up. "You did great," Kiefer remembers to say, and Nadia's giant sad puppy-dog eyes nod in acknowledgement as the boys rush off after the bad guys. Chloe appears to Nadia and observes, "That was really brave." Aw, shoot. Three unarmed hostages, two of whom have zero hand-to-hand combat training, and one of whom still has a fresh drill-hole in his shoulder? Taking on five highly trained, heavily armed commandos? No sweat. Kiefer shouldn't have been such a naysayer. Nadia and Chloe start talking about how they're going to get everything back up and running. Well, except for Milo, who's still dead on the floor. He's going to need quite a bit more than a warm boot.
Josh is forced further along the sewer tunnel, as Kiefer and Doyle find the entry point and drop in, with armored agents behind them. I don't know why the two guys who never wear helmets are always in the front. It never prevents any of the extras from getting killed anyway. It's 3:08:44.
3:13:04. As the CTU contingent wades up the sewer tunnel, soaked to the knees, the bad guys help Josh up out of the far end of the tunnel and into Cheng's hideout. "Hello, Josh," Cheng greets him. Josh asks who Cheng is and what he wants, but all Cheng will say is that it's time to go. He gives orders to his men to pack up, and dials Kiefer's dad on his cell phone. Dad wants to talk to Josh. Which I'm sure only makes this more surreal for the kid. He gets abducted by commandos, spirited away through a sewer tunnel, and is now expected to talk to his grandfather on the phone? When I was his age, nobody ever told me to talk to my grandparents on the phone except for my parents. All the rest of that stuff totally happened to me, though. Dad starts out the conversation by telling Josh that he's sorry for everything the kid's been through. Josh isn't so ready to let bygones be bygones, and still remembers his grandfather putting a gun to his head and threatening to kill him. I'd be pissed too, but of course my grandfathers are all dead, so if they did that to me, I would have plenty of other things to worry about. Dad claims that he never would have hurt Josh; he just had to make it sound convincing to Kiefer so that he could get away. And now that that's over, he says he wants to protect Josh from "[his] father's mistakes." For a moment I'm like, "Which mistakes of Kiefer's would those be?" But of course Dad is referring to Graem's misdeeds that resulted in the deaths of thousands, which will hang over Josh's head for as long as he stays in the U.S. So Dad says that he's going to take Josh to China. He predicts that China will surpass the U.S. in "every possible way," and that they can be part of it. Whee? Josh has no idea what his grandfather is on about, and of course I'm also sure that he's reluctant to have to learn how to watch the news in another language. Dad just asks him to "keep an open mind" for now, and hangs up. Cheng reclaims his phone, and everyone heads for the two parked vehicles waiting to drive out of the warehouse. As Kiefer and his team reach the rope the Chinese left hanging down into the sewer tunnel, Josh says that he's afraid of his grandfather. But Cheng calls Dad a "visionary." Speaking of vision, shouldn't Cheng have noticed by now that he's short about five commandos, including their leader? "You should be grateful for the opportunity," says Cheng as he joins Josh in the back seat of a limo. Kiefer starts climbing the rope out of the sewer. I wonder if it will ever occur to Cheng how much grief and heartache he could have saved himself if only he'd pulled that rope up.
The limo heads out behind an Escalade that's serving as an escort. Kiefer pops his head up above floor level just as the two vehicles drive past. Seeing Josh and Cheng in the back of the second car, Kiefer draws and opens fire on the Escalade, while still hanging onto the rope with his other hand. Kiefer's aim is true, because the SUV crashes and blocks the limo's exit. As he finishes emerging from the hole with Doyle and every available armored CTU agent behind him, the Chinese pile out of their cars and a proper shootout begins. Good thing there are plenty of crates and toolboxes for everyone to hide behind. The Chinese are getting the worst of it, so Cheng decides to makes his escape on foot, with two guards and using Josh as a shield. Kiefer orders Doyle's men to hold their fire. It doesn't work, but Cheng's little party still gets away. Kiefer tells Doyle to cover him as he hares off in pursuit, alone. On his way out, he slides across the floor, his ass making a hilarious squeaking noise as he casually takes out a Chinese gunman from behind. It's awesome. Run run run SQUEEEE! BANG! Run run run. He's gone before his last target even hits the floor.
At 3:16:52, four running figures dash into another area of the warehouse. One of them is Josh, whom nobody is even bothering to hold on to. Kiefer runs after them, recklessly shooting at Cheng's men as he goes. Clearly Kiefer has learned a valuable lesson from last hour, which is not to use guns that run out of ammo. He certainly isn't having that problem now, despite not stopping to reload. By the time Cheng reaches a stairway leading up, he's down to Josh and one guard. The three of them rush up it, Kiefer still running to catch up and shooting the whole way. When he reaches the staircase himself, his quarry is only a few flights above. Oh, and the comm. system must be back up, because he earpieces to Doyle that he's chasing bad guys up to the roof. Doyle copies that, and doesn't respond that he's pinned down in a pitched battle with Chinese mercenaries, so I assume that must be going pretty well for CTU by now.
Up on the roof, Cheng pushes Josh ahead up onto a catwalk. Before he can follow, Josh kicks Cheng in the face and runs off across the roof, to where I have no idea. Ah, I see -- looks like another catwalk. Yep, he's a Bauer kid, all right. Cheng leaves his surviving henchman to guard the top of the stairs and runs after the kid, his weapon out. When Cheng hears his last guard getting shot out from behind him by Kiefer, he turns and looks, and by the time he turns back, Josh has disappeared from the catwalk in front of him. Cheng turns back to Kiefer and futilely empties his automatic at Kiefer as his former prisoner dives for cover. Cheng turns his empty gun over in his hands, like he's going to find another round in it if he can just look at it from the correct angle. "Cheng, it's over!" Kiefer bellows as he covers Cheng. He approaches his nemesis, who is now standing in the center of the catwalk, and makes him put his gun down. As Cheng does so, the camera follows the gun, and we clearly see through the open grid of the catwalk that Josh is "hiding" beneath it, hanging from some pipes high over the factory floor. Either that, or he toppled over the waist-high railing somehow and managed to catch himself. As Kiefer offers to not kill Cheng in exchange for telling him where Josh is, Josh loses his grip on the thick pipe he's been hanging from and starts to fall. He catches himself by grabbing hold of a flimsy chain and hollers for help. Kiefer looks down, and when he looks back up, Cheng is, of course, gone. This catwalk is like some kind of dimensional portal. While the chain creaks ominously, Kiefer climbs partway down to him, reaches out one arm, and hauls Josh up to relative safety. Kiefer earpieces that he's got Josh but lost Cheng. Doyle, apparently having won his own shootout with Cheng's men, calls back that they're on their way up. Oh, and they're also setting up a perimeter, which means that Cheng's escape is all but assured. I finally get it: when CTU says "perimeter," they really mean "taxi stand."
At 3:19:37, Kiefer gets Josh off the catwalk and asks what Cheng wanted. Josh says, "He made me talk on the phone with Grandpa." Confused, Kiefer asks what his Dad said to Josh. "He said he loved me," says Josh. "He wanted to take me to China, and I was his legacy. I think he's out of his mind." "That's a pretty sad legacy, all right," Kiefer doesn't say. He asks if Josh was able to glean any aural clues to Dad's location from the call. He's all stress-monkey about it, too, until he realizes that Josh really didn't hear anything helpful. He hugs him and says it's all right, and that they'll get him back to his mom.
Doyle arrives up on the roof to report that more CTU guys are on their way to secure things. Where is he getting them all? Do they just spawn in certain places like videogame characters? Kiefer tells Doyle to let CTU know that his father's still involved. Doyle, who didn't come along until Kiefer's dad was already gone, asks why the elder Bauer is involved with the Chinese. Leading Josh down the stairs into the building, Kiefer says, "I don't know. I'll ask him when I find him." It's 3:20:52.
3:25:14. Karen enters the Oval Office to interrupt the Veep in the middle of some highly important standing around that he's been doing. She reports that the Russians are moving more divisions into Centralasia, at the highest alert level. You suppose it has occurred to either of them to warn their men in Centralasia that they're about to have company? Well, actually, at the moment Karen is too preoccupied with wondering where Tom is. The Veep explains that Tom is running a "classified operation." So classified, in fact, that he tells her everything about it. Namely, that the source of the White House leak was his own Lisa Miller, that she didn't know that a man she's "romantically involved with" has been passing information to the Russians, and that now she's been sent back to her boyfriend with false information that the all-important FB sub-circuit board has been destroyed in hopes that President Suvarov will call off the attack he's planning. We, of course, know all this from watching the last two episodes, but it's pretty complicated, and the previouslies can only go on for so long, after all. Karen's like, "Well, you're the boss," and she's about to leave. But the Veep calls her back for a little sit-down to assure her that his decision to keep her out of this particular loop wasn't about her, but about himself. He confesses to his own relationship with Lisa, drama-queening, "Needless to say, I am ashamed." Karen advises the Veep to cut himself a little slack, being a recently single (read: horny) man and all and unaware of what Lisa was doing behind his back. But the Veep doesn't want to let himself off the hook. He calls it a "question of judgment," and says that his mistake may end up leading them to war. And if we know anything about this Veep, it's that when he does something stupid that could easily lead to a devastating global conflict, he wants it to be on purpose.
Poor, poor, Tom, sitting in a surveillance van with a bunch of Secret service guys, looking bored while listening to Lisa and her boyfriend's heavy breathing. Which they've been at for a half hour or so. Hilariously, it's not until they stop that Tom starts paying attention.
Inside the apartment, Boyfriend is still wondering what's up with Lisa. "It felt like you were somewhere else," he comments. Uh, maybe he got the wrong hole? Lisa claims just to be tired, and gets up to go to the bathroom, throwing on her boyfriend's terry-cloth robe this time instead of her own slinky, silky one that she wore earlier. Yeah, the honeymoon is definitely over.
Back in the van, one of the Secret Service guys wonders if Boyfriend is really concerned, or actively suspicious. Tom doesn't care, because now that Lisa's in the biffy, Boyfriend can get to Lisa's PDA. As they watch on the video camera, Boyfriend gets up, pulls on some clothes, goes to the living room, and starts to do just that. Now that the dirty nasty icky sexy is over, Tom is leaning forward all excitedly, waiting for the money shot as Boyfriend fishes out his PDA-hacking device and digs Lisa's PDA out of her purse. And then Boyfriend pauses, seeming to look right into the camera. And then he leaves the PDA unhacked, much to the disappointment of Tom and his fellow watchers. Boyfriend hides his hacking device as well, and calls into the bathroom that he's going to have a glass of wine, offering Lisa one as well. "Sure, I'll have what you're having," Lisa calls back, as convincingly as she's done anything since she got back here. Which is to say that she looks like she's already choking on it. When she emerges into the living room and back into the surveillance camera's frame, he hands her a glass, smiles, and says he can tell that something's wrong. "Okay, we have a problem here," Tom declares in the van. You don't become White House Chief of Staff without being a keen observer. Lisa tries to keep up the pretense, but it's not working; Boyfriend grabs her by the arms and angrily orders her to stop lying and tell him what's going on. Lisa agrees to tell him, and Tom hopes she's about to come up with a cover story. It's not like an accomplished liar like Lisa Miller, who has been pulling the metaphorical wool over the Veep's piggy little eyes for a year, is going to be fazed by some punk lobbyist, right?
So Lisa smashes the wine bottle over Boyfriend's head. Way to think fast. Tom orders the van into motion, and it screeches down the street to the building's entrance. Seems a little tardy to me, but then I'm not the White House Chief of Staff. Lisa keeps smacking her boyfriend with her hands, ranting accusations at him the whole time. Eventually, he gets tired of this and backhands her one, sending her to the floor. But instead of staying down, she goes after him with a lamp. Her advantage is short-lived, as he rolls on top of her and demands to know who else is aware of his relationship with the Russians. Even if Lisa wanted to answer, she couldn't, because Boyfriend's got his hands around her neck and is making it hard for her to breathe, let alone inform him that nobody who doesn't have access to the Oval Office is in this particular loop, so it's really not so bad. Finally, three Secret Service guys bust in with their weapons leveled and Tom right behind them. If Tom's weapon is also leveled, I can't tell because he's wearing a long coat.
Boyfriend is quickly pulled off of Lisa, who is by now unconscious but alive. Tom orders one of the agents to call for an ambulance, and to have Boyfriend cuffed and moved into the bedroom. As the agents comply and set Boyfriend down in front of a bedroom window through which morning light is now streaming -- even though it still looked pretty dark when the van was heading up the street just a few seconds ago -- Tom introduces himself to Boyfriend, remarking that Boyfriend probably already knows everyone there. As well as what they had for breakfast, if anyone in the 24-verse ever ate. Tom calmly lays it out for him: they've got Boyfriend dead to rights, with audio of him talking to his Russian contact, as well as the PDA-hacking device currently in Tom's hand. So now Boyfriend can either cooperate and send along the fake data Lisa was trying to plant all along, or he can pretty much count on the death penalty. Surprisingly, Boyfriend seems to need a moment to think about this. If he's currently considering an Option #3 where ex-KGB agents shoot their way in, rescue him, and whisk him off to spend the rest of his days in a luxurious penthouse suite overlooking the Kremlin, he's likely to be disappointed.
At 3:34:23, Cheng is calmly descending an outdoor staircase to street level as he calls Kiefer's dad to report that Josh has been taken away from him by CTU. Dad's pissed, and when Cheng protests that he lost "many men" (which is actually an understatement, since he lost all of them except for himself), Dad is unsympathetic to Cheng's "operational inadequacies." Hey, no need to get personal. He calls off the deal: since he's not getting Josh, the Chinese aren't getting the FB sub-circuit board back, repaired or otherwise. Cheng threatens Dad with "serious consequences," but Dad threatens right back that if Cheng threatens him again, he's going to be the one with the consequences. This could go back and forth all night, but they hang up instead. Here's where Cheng should be running into CTU's perimeter, but instead he hops into the shotgun seat of a waiting SUV -- complete with an Asian driver waiting inside -- and gets driven off into a commercial break at 3:35:17. Chalk up one more outstanding collar to those law enforcement superstars at CTU.
3:39:43. In order to get their systems back online, Chloe and Nadia are storming around the CTU floor spouting technobabble at each other. Nadia has fully embraced her new secret-agent-babe persona by changing out of her bloody suit and blouse and into a black turtleneck. Very Alias. While she and Chloe are trying to supervise the reconstruction, the latest contingent of suited Division guys comes in. I'm expecting this to be Nadia's replacement, finally arriving to take command three hours after Buchanan's departure, but I guess it would be silly to expect them to have such a person lined up so quickly in the middle of the night. No, instead, it's the guys Division has sent over to investigate the security breach that resulted in the commandos' invasion. Guys like that are on call 24/7, naturally. Their leader, a smarm-ball named Ben Graham, tells Nadia why he's here, and when Nadia protests that, um, it's the middle of the night and they're kind of busy trying to get things up and running, Graham tells her that he doesn't really care what she thinks. He's already trying to pin the breach on Nadia. He says that mistakes were made, including the decision to accept Buchanan's recommendation to put Nadia in charge. Hey, that one you can't blame Nadia for. She even disagreed with it at the time. But instead of arguing with Graham, Nadia is already entering a guilt spiral over the thought that she's responsible for Milo's death. She agrees to cooperate with the investigation. "Super," Graham smarms at 3:41:02, and starts listing off all the stuff he needs. Nadia invites him to take over a conference room, and he smiles and leads his people off in that direction. Nadia gets on her cell phone and calls "Operations" to tell them to give the Division people whatever they need. While she's standing there all sad, Morris ambles over to the rescue. "Don't let those buggers from Division get to you," he says. "You're not responsible for what happened." Nadia says she is, actually; it happened on her watch. Not to blindly defend Nadia, but I'd say that ultimate responsibility lies with the guys who blew a hole in the floor and came inside to shoot up the place. Morris agrees with me that Nadia couldn't have done anything to prevent it. "People are dead," she says. "Milo is dead because of me." Morris says that's not her fault either, but she reminds him that she hesitated and Milo jumped in. Morris can't argue with that, but he says he has some experience with being afraid and doing regrettable things as a result. He tells Nadia that Milo was a brave man, and "never would have sacrificed himself to that others could lay his death at your feet. Stay strong. Stay in charge," he says, and leaves her to it. Hey, you know, not for nothing, but both of these kids are on the market now.
Karen and the Veep are alone together in the Oval Office when the call comes in from Tom saying that the fake data regarding the component's supposed destruction has been transmitted. That's the good news. As the Secret Service leads Boyfriend out of the apartment, Tom admits to the Veep that Lisa "was injured during the operation." She's still unconscious, and they won't know how bad the damage is until she wakes up. What a suck-up, imitating the president like that. But then I suppose that since she's in poor odor with the Veep at the moment, she's got to do something pretty extreme to get back in favor with the administration. The Veep is rather pissed that Tom let this happen, but Tom insists that he and the agents moved in as quickly as they could. Well, I won't argue with "quickly," but I would submit that "sooner" would have been a good idea. "It just happened too fast," he lies. Seeing that the Veep is upset, Karen thanks Tom and ends the call. She goes to the Veep and sympathizes that he still must have feelings for Lisa, "despite her betrayal." But, you know, maybe they should call the Russian president and let him know that the component has been eighty-sixed before, you know, a war starts. The Veep dismisses Karen to the TelePresence Suite to make it happen.
Back at Cheng's former hideout, Kiefer parks Josh on a crate at 3:45:06 and says that they'll get him back to Marilyn soon. No rush, after all. It's not like anything could go wrong before they return to CTU. Kiefer spends a moment helping Doyle wander around the crime scene, and talking about how the circuit board isn't there and it looks like Cheng escaped. They don't even bother pretending to be surprised or annoyed at this last bit. Kiefer then calls Marilyn on his cell phone to tell her that Josh is safe (which she had already heard) and that Cheng tried to nab him to hand him over to his grandfather, who planned to bring him to China. Marilyn's like, "Okay, wow, that's all very interesting, can I talk to my kid now please?" Kiefer goes back over to Josh and hands him the phone. Marilyn smiles real big to find herself on the line with Josh, which is kind of startling. Nobody ever smiles on this show to begin with, let alone flashes an impressive set of choppers like Rena Sofer's. Josh's first priority is to tell her, "Uncle Jack saved my life." Yeah, Marilyn knew that too. They look forward to their in-person reunion, which I'm sure will be taking place any moment now. With Josh still out at the crime scene with Kiefer, there's certainly no way that anything unforeseen could happen. Esepecially with only fifteen minutes left in the episode.
Back at the White House, the Veep and Karen wait in the TelePresence Suite to make the call to President Suvarov. "Let's do this," the Veep rumbles nervously, like he's about to try to tell Congress that the dog ate his daily intelligence briefing. Wayne's assistant dials the phone, and then Suvarov appears opposite them on the middle of the three giant video screens. It's like he's right there, only he's made of pixels instead of vodka. This time he's alone at his end of the call, but he doesn't seem too intimidated for that fact. The Veep goes right into the story that his agents have succeeded in stopping Cheng. "Are you saying you have the component back in your possession?" Suvarov asks. The Veep hems and haws that it was actually destroyed during the operation. Suvarov asks if the Veep has proof. The Veep babbles that yes, he certainly does. Suvarov is like, "Do you mean the same documentation you planted with one of my agents?" Oops, busted. The TelePresence suite is so amazing, people can even use it to feed you enough rope to hang yourself, right through the screen. The Veep flinches, and Karen tries to become invisible. Suvarov, pissed, explains that he's been keeping Boyfriend under surveillance, since he knew that he'd been exposed. And how did he know that? Time to start looking for a new leak. Suvarov repeats his threat from earlier that he would hold the U.S. government responsible for this breach of Russian defenses. The Veep reacts to being threatened the way he always does, which is to bristle angrily. He would probably even stand up from the conference table if he had a leg on which to do so. Suvarov says the Veep has had plenty of time to get the component back, and that if he doesn't provide proof of the chip's recovery or destruction in the two hours, "[Suvarov] will have no choice but to extend [his] country's forward perimeter to compensate for [their] defensive vulnerabilities." And, as the Veep and the rest of us know, this means attacking a U.S. base in Centralasia, which the Veep warns is a very bad idea. Gesturing like a demented orchestra conductor trying to the lead the string section through a musical interpretation of a boxing match, Suvarov calls his move "a matter of survival" for Russia, and reiterates the two-hour deadline before disappearing from the screen. I'm glad he's not giving the Veep three hours, because I sure would hate to have to wait until season to find out what happens. The Veep bitches to Karen that the last three episodes of B-plot were all for nothing, a complete waste of time. And he's not the only one. "We're about to go to war over a piece of circuitry," he complains. It's 3:50:12.
Another Cisco TelePresence commercial. This one's a bit more heartwarming than the one we just saw.
3:54:35. One of the act-in splitscreen windows shows that the Veep is entertaining an Oval Office-full of advisors. And then Tom is back inside the White House, pedeconferencing with Wayne's assistant as she hands him a folder containing the briefing that's currently in progress. Whatever other flaws the Veep may have, he's certainly quick at getting paper distributed. The assistant peels off, leaving Tom to answer his ringing cell phone. Tom slows and answers in that way that tells us he's intrigued to hear who's calling him. Whoever could it be?
In the Oval Office, the Veep is bringing his people up to speed on the Russians' intention to retaliate for the loss of the sub-circuit board, which means that they have to prepare to defend themselves and be ready for an escalation. There's really not as much consternation at this news as you might expect, probably because the Veep's advisors aren't getting paid to have any lines. It's still pretty dark outside the Oval Office, by the way, now that it's nearly 7 in the morning. Boyfriend's apartment must be a lot further east than the White House. Tom enters the room, still on the phone, and asks for a moment alone with the Veep. The Veep dismisses all of the non-speaking roles in the room, leaving him alone with Tom and Karen. Tom says that he's got Phillip Bauer on a scrambled line. They all seem to know who Kiefer's dad is -- even Tom, who spent most of Dad's brief reign of terror taped to a conduit in the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue. Tom doesn't yet know what Dad wants: "But he's in league with the Chinese." He suggests hearing him out. The Veep tells Tom to put the call on speaker, and takes the cell phone.
Calling from his darkened office, Dad thanks the Veep for taking his call, and quickly gets to the point: "I want my grandson. And I want clear passage to the country of my choice." Which, since there are only about ten countries in the 24-verse, narrows it down a lot. In exchange, Dad offers the Veep the FB sub-circuit board. The Veep says he thought Dad was working with the Chinese. "I was," Dad admits. "They had their chance. They blew it." Proving that he has the circuit board by reading off the serial number (which matches that shown in the schematic of the suitcase nukes that Tom just happens to have loaded in his PDA), Dad says he's offering the Veep the chance to avoid "a conflict this country does not want. A war this country cannot afford." Hey, some people still think there's no such thing. He says he's sending instructions over an encrypted data stream, and then hangs up. Is he going to tell them how to decrypt that data stream, or is he just showing off?
Karen tells the Veep, "Sir, you are not seriously considering this." When she sees that he is, she reminds him of what Dad's been up to. The Veep says that they might not be able to afford to ignore this. "We're talking about the life of an innocent young boy," says Karen, and the Veep reminds her of all the other lives that will be lost in a war with Russia. Karen doesn't even think Kiefer's father is trustworthy. "The man is a sociopath," she insists. And so is his dad. The Veep turns to Tom, who agrees that Dad is indeed as Karen describes him, but under the circumstances they have to take the risk. It's not surprising that Tom and Karen disagree again. What surprises me is that they've essentially swapped sides on the debate about immunity for terrorists since Wayne decided to make his offer to Hamri Al-Assad this morning. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that now they're talking about a white guy. And now, with the course of the nation and the future of the world in the balance, the Veep suddenly goes off on a pointless tangent about how this kind of threat is totally out of character for Suvarov. Certainly, the hard-ass Russian they're dealing with now is a far cry from the much friendlier version of Season 5, let alone the one who invited the U.S. to attack his Consulate in L.A. that very afternoon. Tom guesses that Suvarov is under pressure from his military leadership. After all, Gredenko couldn't have been the only anti-American general in the Russian army. Whatever the case, they have to get the circuit board back. Satisfied that this boring discussion has effectively burned off one of the last three critical minutes of the episode, the Veep orders, "Get me CTU." Karen glares at Tom, like she's so disappointed in how short-lived their alliance turned out to be. She has kind of a low tolerance for betrayal for somebody who fired her husband.
The Oval Office goes into splitscreen as Tom gets on the phone. In other windows, the Veep takes the phone, Cheng rides to nowhere in his chauffeured SUV, Dad continues overseeing the repairs on the circuit board that should have been completed an hour ago, and Marilyn paces at CTU.
Kiefer and Josh are just now exiting the building at 3:58:53 as Kiefer tells Josh that once they get him back to CTU, he and his mom will be transported to somewhere safe. Safer than CTU? Could he narrow that down a bit? Is he talking about the center lane of the 101, or the lip of an active volcano, or the surface of Mercury? Josh asks how long they'll have to stay there. "Till we find your grandfather," says Kiefer. So two hours and one minute, max. Not even enough time to get comfortable. Josh asks what Kiefer's going to do when he finds his grandfather. Kiefer evasives, "I don't want you worrying about this. But I promise you, he will never threaten you or your mother again." Translation: have your mom buy you a dark suit.
Just then, another agent calls Kiefer over to take an urgent phone call. As he heads over to take it, Kiefer tells Josh to get in the car and promises to be right back. But before Josh can get in, Doyle comes up and grabs him by the arm, ordering Josh to come with him. Doyle briskly leads a confused Josh to an idling CTU helicopter. Kiefer sees this as Josh calls out, "Uncle Jack!" Kiefer hollers, "Agent Doyle!" and dashes after them. "Go back to CTU!" Doyle yells, pointing devil-horn fingers at Kiefer. Kiefer is protesting that Josh needs to stay with him. But about four other agents converge on Kiefer, preventing him from following. Can you believe how quickly the Veep's order traveled down the chain of command, let alone how quickly this plan was devised and put into motion? Sure, it's a stretch, but it was necessary to flex the timeline a bit in order to make room for that fascinating discussion on Suvarov's political situation. Doyle bundles Josh on board the chopper, and we can still see the kid hollering "Uncle Jack!" through the window. Josh, you have Kiefer's attention. That's not the issue. Kiefer watches helplessly as the helicopter lifts off and takes Josh away. On the bright side, the kid will still be safer than he was at CTU. It's 4:00:00.