Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Day 8: 6:00 AM — 7:00 AM
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 15 | Aired on 04.05.2010
The two men emerge into an alley at 6:06:42. Luckily, the commando is healing in 24 time, meaning he's able to walk unaided now, though with a pronounced limp. The commando finds an SUV with a spare key hidden under the back bumper (whether that's the same SUV his team came in or he just got lucky isn't clear), and while he's doing that, Hassan is staring open-mouthed at all the civilians on the streets, obliviously going about their early morning business. Are these poor suckers up this early every day? he seems to be wondering to himself. As if reading his mind, the commando tells him, "These people owe you their lives, sir. You're doing the right thing." He ushers Hassan into he shotgun seat and dials his phone.
He reaches General Brucker, who's at a spot at McGuire AFB that's suspiciously similar to a location we saw at the U.N. earlier in the season. "You got the package?" Brucker asks. "No, but I got President Omar Hassan," the commando doesn't say. "What package?" Limping around to get behind the wheel of the vehicle, the commando explains about the "complications," namely Kiefer. "He's no longer a problem," he exaggerates. The commando adds that Hassan is cooperating. "He would have given himself up?" Brucker asks incredulously. The commando confirms as much, then gets in the car and starts it up, driving off. They have to get going, because it's not like Hassan is going to hand himself over. Well, he would, but he doesn't know where to go.
Brucker enters Ethan's office to find Rob leaning worriedly over him. "Bishop's on the line, he's got Hassan. Get ready to make the call." Rob opens up some kind of briefcase-laptop-phone thingy, and with less than two minutes, punches in Samir's number. I'm wondering how he got his hands on that without anybody getting suspicious.
Samir answers his sat-phone to hear Rob introducing himself and saying they're ready to make the exchange. "Prove it," Samir says. Listening in, Brucker tells Bishop to "put him on," and Bishop hands the phone to his passenger. It's nice to see them futzing around with four-way conference calls in the final minutes before Manhattan gets terminally X-rayed. "This is President Hassan," Hassan says. "I'm prepared to give myself up if you stop the bomb." Samir gloats about Taylor changing her mind, but Hassan says it was his idea. But when he starts to ask for assurances, Samir shuts that right down. Brucker protests that they did what he wanted, but Samir hangs up. Well, aren't they going to feel stupid in about two minutes?
Tarin has pulled his delivery van into an alley off West Backlot, and watches a siren-blasting police car -- and then countless early-rising civilians -- go by with an open-mouthed expression similar to Hassan's. He looks at his watch, which is counting down the first few seconds of the last minute in the countdown. At 6:09:46, things are tense at CTU. Nobody's moving; not Hastings, not Chloe, not Arlo, not Dana. Looks like they're out of ideas. Manhattan thanks you, last line of defense. Rob and Brucker stand helplessly in Ethan's office, waiting. Taylor goes to the window, like she's going to be able to see it from there. Tarin seems to realize that nobody's coming, so he slowly walks along the side of the van to get back behind the wheel. It's kind of a departure for this show to have such a long, quiet moment at such a critical time, but it really works to ramp up the suspense. The timer LED on the bomb in back reads 22 seconds. A moment after Tarin closes the door, his cell phone rings, and a splitscreen shows the timer, now at 13 seconds. "Yes?" he answers quickly. "Tarin?" Samir says, very slowly, with ten seconds left on the clock. "Stop the bomb." Tarin hits the button with seven seconds to spare, and goes bug-eyed with relief. "Hassan will be arriving there shortly," Samir says. "You know what to do." "Yes, all right," Tarin says breathlessly, and hangs up. It's 6:10:57, and I can think of at least one character who's going to be making use of the commercial break to change his pants.
At 6:15:14, Kiefer's busy smashing through the wire-reinforced glass of the door's window. No hurry or anything. At CTU, Chloe reports that the deadline passed four minutes ago, but no explosions have been reported. Arlo's also got nothing. Hastings points out that the bomb is still out there. "We may have caught a break here. Let's use it." Uh, okay. Just then Chloe's phone rings. Apparently Kiefer hasn't been able to call her until now, and she still can't hear him properly until he gets further up the exit stairs that Hassan and Bishop took earlier. He tells her, "President Hassan is trying to hand himself over to the terrorists. That's why the bomb didn't go off." This is news to Chloe, and Kiefer tells her to keep it quiet until he talks to Taylor. He tells her to set up the call, just as Dana is coming to her desk all nosy-like. Chloe quickly hangs up, and lies to Dana that it was about the search grid. Dana asks if Chloe needs help with that. "I'll ask if I do," Chloe says, not as bitchily as usual, and even favoring Dana with a tiny smile. This doesn't seem to escape Dana as she walks away. I know that if Chloe suddenly started being nice to me, I'd react like the hazmat alarm was going off again.
Kiefer emerges into that same alley at 6:16:25, followed by Walker and the Hassan women. He runs to the nearest corner, which is 7th Avenue. The traffic is flowing from left to right on the screen, which, since 7th is a one-way going south, tells us we're looking at it from the west. I normally wouldn't comment on this, except that we've just learned that the tunnels underneath the U.N. apparently go halfway across the island. And of course there's no sign of Hassan or Bishop; they've been gone so long a flock of pigeons has taken up residence. Kiefer tells Walker to get Dalia and Kayla back to Taylor while he looks for Hassan. Walker not-so-discreetly points out that Hassan made his choice, but as Kiefer says, it's not his call. "President Taylor asked me to protect him, that's what I'm gonna try and do." Well, good luck with that now. He puts the three women in a taxi just as Chloe calls him back with the secure line all ready to go. Spotting a security camera between 53rd and 54th, Kiefer asks her to pull up the feed to see if she can track Hassan from there. Good thing she knows how to multitask. And has figured out how everything at CTU works in the last twelve hours.
Taylor enters the Situation Room, asking Brucker why the bomb didn't go off. He pretends not to know why, and agrees with her guess that they got lucky, like he said. As for her question as to when Hassan is expected, Brucker can't help her with that. At his side, Rob offers to look into that, but Taylor still wants him to find Ethan instead. Dude was missing all night and now she suddenly can't get along without him for ten minutes?
Just then an aide gives Taylor a phone, saying it's an urgent call from Homeland Security. She picks it up as Rob and Brucker step away, and hears Kiefer say, "Madam President, this is Jack Bauer. Please don't say my name or react openly to what I'm about to tell you." She obeys as Kiefer quickly tells her the situation with Hassan. "As we speak, they are preparing to hand him over to the terrorists. I'm assuming that is still something that is unacceptable to you." Taylor confirms it, and Kiefer says he needs to find out where the exchange is supposed to happen, which means Taylor needs to confront Brucker. After she gets off the phone, Taylor quietly tells a Secret Service agent, "Come with me, please." I think he'd have to obey even if she didn't say the magic word.
After Taylor hangs up with Kiefer, Chloe's still on the line with him, and she's found security footage of Hassan getting into the black SUV with Bishop at 6:08-ish. She tracked them west on 53rd street, then lost them turning north on 10th Ave. The amazing thing is that both of those directions are geographically possible. Kiefer tells her to redirect satellites to the Upper West Side, which I'd think would be tricky to do without anyone else at CTU noticing, but then nobody else at CTU ever seems to do anything. Kiefer tells her he's on his way. Fortunately for him, a guy has just gotten out of a shiny black Hyundai Genesis, which the camera lingers on lovingly for a moment before Kiefer hops in and takes off, to the owner's noisy chagrin. Kiefer pulls an illegal U-ey on the one-way street, because I guess in this version of Manhattan, you can't drive through the fourth wall. How do I keep ending up recapping these Hyundai commercials in the middle of TV shows? In any case, I do appreciate the clear message in this scene, which is, Hyundai: super-easy to steal.
At 6:20:22, Bishop drives Hassan onto West Backlot Avenue, apparently having received instructions to proceed there. Tarin watches from the window of a diner, and while I was joking earlier, he actually did change his clothes during the break; he's out of his delivery uniform and back in his suit, with his Bluetooth on. The SUV stops across the street from where he's standing. "What now?" Hassan wonders. Bishop doesn't know. A cell phone in Hassan's pocket rings (it's either his own or he just forgot to give Bishop's back to him earlier) and Hassan answers. Tarin tells Hassan to give the phone to Bishop. Hassan recognizes his ex-security chief's voice, and Tarin repeats the order. This time Hassan obeys. Once Bishop's o