By M. Giant
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After a brief helicopter chase, Kiefer manages to escape on foot from both the Air Force and the NYPD without breaking a sweat. He leans on an old army buddy (Michael Madsen) for support and supplies. At the U.N., Ethan urges Taylor to come clean for the sake of her presidency, and she reluctantly agrees until stupid Logan convinces her to stash Dana in a black site to continue the cover-up instead. Minutes after Chloe gets the transfer order, she also gets a call from Kiefer, demanding her help. Chloe reluctantly agrees to that, but after the extraction squad led by D.B. Sweeney shows up, Chloe instead decides to use a fake address as bait to catch Kiefer. Ethan is so repulsed by Taylor's decisions that he hauls off and quits, then confronts an unrepentant Logan, for all the good either action does him. Kiefer knowingly walks right into the trap, fooling Chloe and CTU right back. That done, Kiefer recruits Cole for his rogue operation. As Dana is dragged into a torture dungeon and the waterboarding begins, Taylor gives her triumphant press conference, stubbornly deaf to what her conscience is clearly telling her.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This week in the previouslies: President Allison Taylor, President Charles Logan, Dana Walsh, and Jack Bauer, whose interrogation-room beating of Dana was pretty shortened here. Logan sure didn't waste any time filling that second-president vacuum, did he? Also, these previouslies are notable in that they're the last time we hear anyone mention Renee Walker.
Kiefer's stolen CTU helicopter swoops in over Manhattan, while he resolutely ignores Chloe's attempts to get him to talk to her from the CTU floor. Arlo says Kiefer can hear her; "Comm's on, he's just not answering." Cole chimes in to say that Air Force helicopters are closing in. And indeed, there they are, a pair of Apache CGIs, zooming in to flank Kiefer like a gunship sandwich. He can hear them on his headset ordering him to turn around. Instead, Kiefer hurls the chopper into a banking dive, his eyes on a convenient helipad that has appeared somewhere below. The Air Force pilots report back that Kiefer just landed on the "Cooper Building," but there's not much they can do beyond watching from above as Kiefer hops out of the chopper (without even turning it off, looks like) and heads for the roof ladder. On the ground, two NYPD squad cars are closing in, sirens and flashers going full blast, when what they really need is a lot more squad cars. All of them should do it. Kiefer clambers all the way to the sidewalk using the fire escape, then evades the approaching cars and helicopters by the highly advanced tactics of blending in with pedestrian traffic and ducking under a tree. He joins the crowds on the sidewalk, the only thing separating him from hundreds of New York pedestrians his purposeful stride and angry expression of resolve. And even those match hundreds of other New York pedestrians. Well, that was easy.
At CTU, Cole comes up to Chloe to ask what's going on. Chloe quickly explains to him about how Dana has proof of the Russians' involvement, and Kiefer's going to come after her to get it. Cole says that's impossible. "He'll either figure it out or he'll die trying," Chloe insists, and dispatches Cole to the field to start an interagency search for Kiefer with the NYPD. And at 10:05:23, she tells Arlo to start searching satellites and traffic cams. Chloe looks sick as she returns to her old desk, with a graphic of Manhattan and three helicopter blips still up on the big screen in the last place we saw them. She's either upset that she has to chase after her best friend, or because it looks like all the screens have frozen up again.