Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | 1 USERS: C- YOU GRADE IT Women's Work
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 13 | Aired on 03.22.2010
ds ten more minutes. "Get her out of here now," Haynam snaps. Hastings finally remembers that he's in charge, and tells Haynam, "Now just shut up and let me handle it." Hastings goes to Chloe and asks what she was thinking, which is the first sign that this is going to work out. Otherwise Chloe would already be getting marched off to holding. Chloe insists she can get satellite and comm back up if she can finish getting into the trunk line. "I told Mr. Haynam but he wouldn't listen. So I pulled a gun on him. I didn't want to. I don't even like guns." That's okay; nobody likes Haynam. Hastings turns to Dana, who's been lurking outside the doorway, and Dana agrees with Haynam. Chloe reminds her that Cole's out there, too, and might also be in trouble. Dana says that's why she disagrees with Chloe's plan. "It's reckless. I'm sorry, Chloe." "You've never been my biggest fan, why start now?" Chloe bitches at her. She turns back to her boss and says she's taken precautions, and even offers to let him arrest her if she can't do it within ten minutes. I'm sure Morris would be thrilled to see her once again putting her future and her family on the line for Kiefer. Finally, Hastings relents. She gets right to work, declining his offer of any help. "All right, let's give the lady some space," Hastings says expansively, herding everyone out. How far he's come in the last eleven hours.In the hall, he dismisses the guards and tells a disgusted Haynam that he's willing to take the chance that Chloe's right. Dana lingers a few yards down the hall so she can hear what follows, which is this: As Haynam stomps off, an office guy comes up and tells Hastings that a Bill Prady wants to speak with him, but didn't say what it was about. No explanation as to why Prady wasn't evacuated with all of the rest of the non-essential personnel. I guess "non-essential" doesn't include nosy, pushy, or obnoxious personnel. Dana stares wide-eyed at Hastings' back as he says to tell Prady he'll be there in fifteen minutes, then goes all innocent-faced as Hastings turns to her to tell her to stick around in case Chloe needs anything. It's 4:46:02. Poor, tapped, helpless, stupid Dana.
At 4:50:22, the longest shootout in 24 history is still going on. Chloe finishes her wiring, and calls Hastings with her new cell phone to report that her technobabble is all ready to go. Hastings asks what happens next. "Well," she says, "if I don't electrocute myself, some of our primary systems should start booting up." "All right, whenever you're ready," Hasting says calmly, very sanguine about the prospect of Chloe getting herself fatally juiced. She sits down at a terminal and hits the power. Text starts scrolling on the screen. Behind her, sparks pop out of the wall as a circuit shorts out. For a moment, I wonder if the show might actually be about to kill off Chloe, it likely being the last season and all. But out on the floor, Arlo watches a screen fill with text, quickly replaced by a desktop with icons, and a window displaying a satellite link. My laptop doesn't boot up that quickly, even when it hasn't been exposed to an EMP all day. Hastings tells Arlo to start looking for Kiefer. At Hastings' side, Haynam is looking pissed, and Hastings tells Chloe it's working. He remembers to ask if she's all right, and she says she'll be there in a few minutes. She adds that he needs to contact Walker if they find Kiefer, since she went looking for him earlier. Hastings agrees to do that, and tells Haynam, "Why don't you go see if Ms. O'Brian needs a hand? And be civil this time." Better make sure he doesn't have a gun. And let me just say that I don't buy this for a minute; Chloe can fuck around with servers and trunk lines all she wants, but that doesn't mean I have to believe that allows her to remotely and magically fix any terminals that are out on the floor, still just as fried as they were fifty-two minutes ago.
At 4:52:06, Kiefer is still trying to keep Owen alive, but his efforts finally fail. Poor kid; he went from green rookie to proven hero to seasoned veteran to cooling corpse in a matter of hours. Worst day at work ever. After a respectful pause, Cole says he lost track of two of the snipers, so they don't have much time. Kiefer says, "We need to give them something to shoot at." What about rigging up the bodies of Owen and King like giant marionettes that they can use to fool the bad guys into thinking they're immortal so they'll run away in panic? Oh, Kiefer's got a "better" idea. He says he'll head north to draw their fire, and Cole will run to the call box. "That's a suicide play, Jack, you'll never make it," Cole protests. "You will," Kiefer says. Cole resists, but Kiefer pulls nonexistent rank on him, so Cole reluctantly nods. Kiefer asks a last favor of Cole: "Make sure that Hastings keeps his promise. That he doesn't bring Renee back in." Cole gives his word, and they make their move. They dart out at about the same time, Kiefer shooting while Cole runs. Kiefer's keeping the shooters pretty busy, at least until he takes a bullet that brings him down, far from cover. But now that he's lying down, apparently his aim improves, and he takes out a couple of the bad guys from the ground. His assault rifle empty, he switches to his sidearm and exchanges shots with Ali before taking a few to the vest and flopping limply onto his back. Cole is bogged down in a shootout with the other surviving bad guy. Ali zooms in with his infrared rifle scope on Kiefer's unconscious face, ready to make the kill shot.
And of course that's when he gets two in the back, from none other than Walker and her handgun. I'd wonder how she found Kiefer so quickly, but I guess it's not that hard to home in on a sustained gunfight that goes from 4:08 to 4:53 AM, even in New York. With Ali taken care of, she again follows the sound of gunshots to the guy Cole's fighting, and casually takes him down as well, this time with three shots due to the increased range. "Clear!" Cole bellows, as though he did anything. While he runs to the phone to make the call, Walker runs to Kiefer. He comes to, blinking in panic, and tells her, "They've got the fuel rods in a boat heading across the river into the city. I can't breathe." Sure, bury the lede. Walker tells him the vest held, but adds, "Relax, you may have a collapsed lung. Try not to move." Cole arrives at Kiefer's side to tell him that CTU's back up and NYPD is sending helicopters, so all is not lost. Well, except Kiefer's breath.
At CTU, Arlo tells Hastings about the call he just got from Cole. We'll leave aside the fact that Cole probably should have known better than to try CTU first, and get on to the more urgent news that the rods are in a Zodiac heading northwest across the river into Manhattan. Or at least they were 45 minutes ago. Let's hope the East River suddenly got a lot wider. Hastings orders the already-airborne NYPD choppers redirected to the shoreline so they can put up a cordon. Chloe's on it. Hastings starts to tell her "Chloe...thanks. Y-you were --" "I'm not good with praise," she cuts him off. Hastings rolls his eyes. Hey, he could still yell at her for doing her IT repairs with a gun.
An NYPD chopper alights at the dock area where the battle's been going on all hour, and is barely on the ground for a second before Cole jumps in and tells the pilot to take off again. It's not like it would be a safe place to land a helicopter anyway, with the spent shell casings probably inches deep on the ground. Walker is holding Kiefer while he sits up, trying to reinflate his lungs, and squad cars come screaming into the area.
At CTU, Dana walks slowly down a hallway at 4:56:23. Clearly, making the lighting look less sinister was not one of Chloe's priorities. It's the hallway to where Prady is waiting in a holding room. She bursts into the holding room where Prady has been waiting and stands over him, demanding, "What do you think you're doing, going to my boss?" "My job," Prady says. He drops the act and openly accuses her of involvement in the robbery. "I think you know exactly where Kevin is. I th