By M. Giant
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.While Tony and the Faux-yer are getting their canister ready and Jibraan in place to deliver it, Kiefer tortures Tony's phone number out of the goon Hamid wounded at the end of the last hour. Before boarding the Metro, Jibraan tries to ask a transit cop for help, but he turns out to be on Tony's payroll. They're everywhere! Olivia meets with Martin, who says he gave the hit man the go-ahead to kill Hodges even when the funds weren't transferred, and she needs to get her shit together before she blows everything. She does so long enough to sell Aaron a convincing lie about why she left, but Aaron's not convinced; he wants Ethan to come back and help him access the voice-activated recordings from Olivia's office. In between sniping at each other, Chloe and Janis back at FBI-DC lead Kiefer to Tony, then hack into Tony's Jibraan-tracking software to establish Washington Center as the target, and put Kiefer's voice in Jibraan's earpiece. With Kiefer's help, Jibraan gets the canister to the surface and Kiefer gets it into containment seconds before it goes off. The end!
Except not. Spawn's got a stalker while she waits for her flight, so she makes friends with some fellow travelers. But Spawn being Spawn, her stalker is just an agent Kiefer sent to watch over her, who gets killed by one of Spawn's new friends. Who is working for the Faux-yer, who plans to use Spawn has leverage to force Kiefer to bust Tony out of custody. And it looks like Kiefer's going to do it. Oh, Spawn.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Tonight in the previouslies freeze-frames: Kim Bauer, Olivia Taylor, Tony Almeida, and Jack Bauer. Which is not very many considering how long these previouslies are.
Finally, we're into the show. The Faux-yer is on her cell phone to Alan Wilson, watching the goings-on in the containment chamber she's standing outside and relaying them to Wilson: "The canister's being retrofitted to maximize dispersion. We're on target to release the bioweapon at Washington Central Station within the hour." As for my concerns in last week's recap that setting it off in a subway station is the terror-attack equivalent of a fart in a jar, she claims that the station's ventilation system will circulate it. "Between eight and ten thousand commuters will be exposed." As long as they start their days really early. Wilson asks about Al-Zarian, who the Faux-yer assures him is behaving and largely ignorant of the details of what they're trying to do. After they hang up, the hazmat-suited guy working in the containment chamber squirts a few puffs of vapor out of the canister and reports, "The trigger mechanism's working." But how much pathogen did he just release to test that? Perhaps the estimate should be lowered to six or seven thousand.
Inside that parked van where Tony took Jibraan last hour, he rigs him with an earpiece/homing device. Jibraan again asks what's expected of him, and Tony tells him to just get on the subway and ride the Red Line to Washington Center. Jibraan, no dummy, has figured out by now that he's going to be blamed for something, so Tony reminds him about Hamid. "You do something stupid, and he dies. Badly." He repeats the instructions and helps Jibraan out of the van, then sends him walking to the subway entrance to the "Woodward Metro Station" on the corner. Jibraan gives Tony one last hangdog look and descends. Tony climbs back into the van and fires up a little JPS device (that's my abbreviation for "Jibraan Positioning System"). I never understand why people on this show always wait until the target leaves before making sure the tracking works. One day someone's going to forget to turn something on and end up feeling really stupid.
The Faux-yer throws on a heavy black wig and a pair of nerdy-babe glasses, because in addition to being a bad-ass freelance covert operative, she's also a big Alias fan. She then pops the rigged canister into a nice, sturdy duffel bag. Good thing they spent all that time working on the canister to "maximize dispersion." Now even the hidden interior pocket will be fully exposed.