Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Spawn to the Rescue!
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.18.2009
s?), but she's too smitten to do anything but warn him that that's not going to work. "He's careful to a fault, Tony. And he's very protective of his anonymity." Tony still thinks she can convince him, like he's seen her do before. "This is different," she says. Tony agrees. "This time it's for me." Wait, wasn't the last time also for him?And back in the other room, a giant syringe is sunk into Kiefer's back for a spinal tap. He can't move, but he can sure scream like a girl. It's 6:40:17.
At 6:44:42, Olivia's on the phone to Martin, being paranoid about everything. He talks her down, saying that Ethan doesn't have any proof. Olivia's not convinced. "You're forgetting I ended this man's career, Martin. He won't let me off the hook. Ever." Uh-huh. Big talk about the career-ending, but Ethan was out of the office for less time than I am most nights, and I work at home. Martin assures her that nobody is coming after the president's daughter without hard evidence. Before either of them hits on the idea of having Ethan killed next, she has to hang up when Tim comes up to her, asking where she's been and saying Taylor needs her in the Oval Office for a briefing. She's about to head off that way, but Tim grabs her arm first, which is a pretty bold move with a White House Chief of Staff. Good thing he was promoted to Cabinet secretary last week. "Everything all right?" he asks suspiciously. She blows him off. He's not convinced, but all he can do is peer after her. Careful, Tim; if you lose Olivia, you're going to be the shortest person in the building.
Walker enters the terminal at the head of a column of FBI, rather too late going by the look of things. She goes over to a wounded guard and asks which way Bob went, but he's too busy bleeding in someone's lap to be of much help. Walker calls back to HQ and says that Bob and Spawn are both gone. "Either she went after him or she's a hostage." I know which option I'd be leaning toward, if I didn't know better.
Spawn is indeed still pursuing Bob through the bowels of the airport, trying to stay out of sight as he makes his way through a baggage-handling area. Eventually she sees him climbing a staircase to P2. Because the parking ramp adjoins the baggage-handling area. Well, that certainly seems secure. She follows at a distance, although surely not far enough behind for him to fail to hear her shoes clacking along. At any moment I expect her to come around a corner and have him jump out at her, but rather than pressing her luck she exits the staircase at P1. She finds a pair of real airport cops at that level of the ramp and approaches them. "Officer, my name is Kim Bauer. I followed the man that shot up the terminal. You need to contact Special Agent Walker with the FBI." The scene ends before the cop can pat her on the head and say, "Aw, aren't you cute?"
One level up, Bob's just getting into his parked car at 6:47:27. Up here in the top level of the ramp, we get a commanding view of the airport, and the pitch-black sky that reaches all the way down to the horizon. Late sunrise, no?
Down in the terminal, a medic hands Walker a walkie-talkie with Kim on the other end. She tells him where Bob is, and that she's at the ramp exit with two cops. "Hurry!" she says. Just then, Bob's car comes screaming down the ramp, with him shooting at the cops all the way down while Spawn dives for cover. One of them does manage to hit Bob through his windshield, and the car rolls as it crashes through the exit barrier. "Hang on, help is on the way," Spawn tells the wounded officer. Then she looks up and sees that Bob's car is on fire. Well, that's inconvenient. She gets up and runs to it, seeing the laptop resting in its open bag on the car's ceiling. She crouches down, reaches inside, and snags the laptop, but he grabs her wrist and won't let go until both their arms are on fire. Spawn extracts herself, waving her burning jacket sleeve around while the car flares up like Bob is made of bacon grease (which I'm not entirely ruling out, mind you). Walker and her squad of FBI agents find her throwing her jacket on the ground and hugging the laptop to herself when they come running. Walker wants to look at her burned arm, but Kim gives her the laptop, which another agent is quickly opening up. "That laptop has the camera that they were using to track me," Spawn says. "With a D-11 inverse router, we may be able to backtrace the signal to the people who have my father." When Walker gives Spawn a look, she explains, "I worked at CTU, systems analyst." Don't worry, Walker, nobody believed it then, either. Spawn asks if anyone at her office can help, and Walker name-drops Chloe. "Get her on the phone," Kim says, grimacing at the pain in her scorched arm. Or possibly at the thought of having to deal with Chloe again. It's 6:49:34.
6:54:02. Apparently the White House Chief of Staff drives a Hyundai. Before getting into his parked car, Ethan puts his briefcase in the trunk next to a duffel bag and a backpack, just so we can get a gander at the impressive amount of cargo space that comes standard with this model. Then he gets into the driver's seat, starts the engine with the press of a button, and plugs something into a USB port on the console. The LCD screen on the dash becomes a file window (the directory is called ".Trashes," for some reason,) and after a moment of rewinding, he's playing back the recording of Martin trying to talk Olivia out of having Hodges killed.
"What I can't live with is that monster getting away with this," we hear Olivia saying again. "He has to pay for what he did." Yeah, good thing they were too careful to talk about this on the phone. Ethan looks sadly out into the night. The dark, dark, dark night.Tony enters the curtained-off area where the doc is working on Kiefer, and is told that there's plenty of the virus in Kiefer's spinal fluid. "Not enough to reconstitute the pathogen, of course. We'll still need his organs for that." Oh, they're going to be so pissed when they crack him open and see how small his heart is. Tony lifts one of Kiefer's eyelids and asks how long he has. "Couple of hours, give or take," is the answer. But he assures Tony that the pathogen can survive two hours or more after Kiefer's death. "In fact, the only sure way to destroy it is by exposure to extreme temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius." Tony says to put that in the report and get ready to move. It's 6:55:55.
Elsewhere in the building, the Faux-yer is on the line to Wilson, telling him what's going on. He's pleased that they're going to be able to pull this off (even though everyone knows their MO now, and will know it's them whenever they make another run at this, but that's just me saying that), and she says they couldn't have done this without Tony. "He wants to play a larger role," she says. Wilson is suspicious, but she makes a convincing case, and he agrees to meet them there in the next half hour. Even she is taken aback by that. Yeah, things move fast in the season finales, missy. Or at least the first hour of the season finale. "But Kara," he warns, "I'll look Almeida in the eye. And if for any reason I don't like what I see, you understand I can't let him walk out of that meeting alive." She's startled, but she gets it. After hanging up, she goes over to Tony and says the meeting is on. He clasps her hand gratefully, and she whispers, "It's up to you now." By which she means, "Don't get anything in your eye."