Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Down with the Sickness
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 17 | Aired on 04.06.2009
12:40:22. Tony's kitted out in his fresh new Starkwood gear, and has just finished handcuffing the unconscious guard to a pipe. No cuffs for the dead one, who will presumably take care of himself. Thus disguised, and armed with a Starkwood-issue assault rifle, he progresses into an elevator. The doors take the obligatory eternity to close, and just when it looks like Tony's going to have the car to himself, a set of fingers catches the door and pulls it back open. So Tony's now sharing the ride with Tom, the lead technician. Does Hodges know he's away from the bioweapons? They stand shoulder-to-shoulder as the tech flips through some scary-ass microscope photos, then turns to Tony and says he hasn't seen him around. Tony claims that he and more guards have been sent over as a precaution. "Can't be paranoid enough," Tom agrees, demonstrating the quality that probably helped him get such a high position at Jonas Hodges's company. They get off the elevator and once Tony's alone, he reports over his earpiece that he's in the main building. Kiefer says it looks like he's forty feet underground, which Tony confirms. This is the first FBI had heard about anything underground in this building. Okay, screw the bioweapons, now they can simply bust Hodges for constructing this underground lair without the proper building permits. Wandering through the corridor, Tony comes into view of the main lab area at 12:42:02, and spots the bioweapon rack that Kiefer drove off the container lot a couple of hours ago. He secretively pulls out his product-placed phone and sends FBI a photo. Kiefer takes a good, long look at it, and says, yep, that's what they're looking for. It's a pretty unmistakable item, so I guess he burned those extra seconds making sure he wasn't looking at a set of monkey bars or something. Walker's off to call Admiral Smith, because apparently she's got the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on speed dial now. Watching Tom the tech slide one metal cylinder into another -- and again, there's not a single gas mask in sight -- Tony says it looks like they're loading it into a delivery system. "It's on the move," he adds as another tech starts carting a rack of cylinders away. "Copy that, it doesn't matter," Kiefer says. "Renee's phoning in the coordinates. Everything's going to be dust in the next ten minutes. Get out of there now." So they'd better hope Starkwood doesn't use those ten minutes to move them into another building or something.
Doug's got a weird office for the Chairman of the Board. It seems to open out on an atrium, which doesn't really say "Top Executive" as much as it says "Receptionist." Oh, and there are the armed mercenaries standing guard over him, although I assume those aren't usually there. Hodges enters and dismisses the guards. Doug decides to make the first move, demanding that Hodges explain himself. "I'm arrested by our own security force. Held captive, in my own office, like a prisoner. They won't allow me a phone call, even to you, to find out what the hell is going on!" "Well, that's a lot of complaints, Doug," Hodges chuckles. "You done?" In turn, Hodges asks what Doug was snooping around after. Doug says he saw the FBI raid about the bioweapon. "Which they did not find," Hodges points out, without denying that he has one. Doug wants to know if it's true. Going to Doug's sideboard and pouring himself a drink, Hodges starts talking about how they built this place from nothing 20 years ago. "The largest private army in the hemisphere. Maybe the world. And we pulled America's ass out of the fire, again and again and again." Doug snaps at him to answer the question. "I am," Hodges says. He's just doing it in his typical, long-winded, self-serving, declamatory way. "Every day we've done things that the government itself could not or would not do," he continues. "Get this done, that's what they said. Here's your mission. Nobody asked how anything was going to be done. Nobody wanted to know. All anyone wanted was results, and we delivered." Huh. Sounds like someone else we know. Doug says that's not in question. "You're not insane, are you?" Hodges retorts. He goes on about "every chattering nonentity in Washington" being after them. "I kept this country strong. I kept it safe. And I will not be persecuted for that." Wow, Hodges, entitled much? It must suck to be able to operate for decades with no oversight or accountability and then suddenly have to deal with both. Doug offers Hodges a much shorter and more sensible speech: "You cannot start a war against the people you are supposed to protect." Hodges insists that they started it. Okay, crazy man. Go ahead and become a terrorist because your company's in trouble. And now he as much as admits it to Doug: "And as for particular weapons? As for your question? Let me rephrase it. Are we prepared to defend ourselves? We are." Doug insists that Hodges can't take on the federal government, and Hodges says, "You never were one for thinking big. Twenty years. I treated you like a son. Twenty years. A little loyalty, wasn't that the least I deserved?" And then he starts clubbing the shit out of Doug's head with the heavy glass decanter in his hand. Six times he does this, driving Doug all the way to the railing on the other side of the office, which Hodges heaves him over. Doug drops maybe twenty feet and ends up lying limp on the world map below. Hodges looks down at him, then at his white shirt, now spattered with blood. He goes to Doug's ice bucket and uses his hanky to blot at the spots. He's also got three or four hairs out of place, and given how uptight Hodges is, the effect is that he's been dragged through a hedge backwards. So now I find myself needing to say something about Jon Voight. When I saw him in "Redemption" and heard he was going to be on this season, I assumed we'd be getting the same Jon Voight we've been getting since Enemy of the State, if not before. You know, the Poor Man's Donald Sutherland who shows up, casts imperious glares around and pushes ominous proclamations out through that immobile face of his. But he's surprising me in this role. Dude's earning his paycheck. I've been making fun of Hodges's histrionic tendencies for a while now, yes, but Voight's bringing his A-game. Maybe, for the last decade and a half, he's just been an actor who needs more than a couple of hours to get warmed up.