Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Want You
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.26.2010
10:16:52. At CTU, Arlo's found an eight-minute-old traffic-cam photo of Kiefer's face that's clearer than most professional headshots, taken at 25th and Cleveland. Unfortunately, that intersection would seem to place Kiefer in one of seven other states. No sooner has Chloe given the order to have Cole redirect his search than she gets a call from President Taylor. With Logan supervising, and in a voice that sounds sick with stress and guilt, Taylor tells Chloe she wants Dana transferred off-site. Chloe resists the idea, but Taylor insists, and informs her, "Agents from a private security firm are coming there to pick her up." Chloe likes this even less, and Taylor argues, "You know as well as I do that Jack has contacts throughout the government, some of whom might be sympathetic to his situation." Chloe: "Awkward pause." "I'm not suggesting that you're one of those people," Taylor fumbles. Can anyone else here think of a better candidate? In any case, Taylor's clearly lost her personal charm as well as her ethical compass. All Chloe can say is, "Yes, ma'am." Taylor tells her that a guy named Mark Bledsoe and his team are already on their way. After Taylor hangs up, Logan tells her she made the right call. That must be reassuring, coming from him. She insists that his men use "every method of non-coercive interrogation." Logan says a little too quickly that that's already covered. "No one wants this to get ugly," he says. "Oh, it's already ugly, Charles," she huffs. Well, at least she realizes that much. I think my favorite part is how she takes Logan's recommendation at face value without even vetting the company. For all she knows he owns it and has been planning this for months.
Kiefer is just finishing up a transaction at a storefront cell phone shop, having just bought a half dozen or more unboxed phones, which he stuffs into his man-purse. "I don't need the chargers," he says. He certainly never has before. Even so, is it prudent of him to be the guy who came and bought a bunch of phones he didn't want chargers for? Might as well walk in and tell the cashier, "Hello, I am up to no good." At 10:18:52, he makes his first call on his first phone as he leaves the store. It's to Chloe's cell, and while he walks and talks, she tells him to come back in. Kiefer ignores that and says he needs to get to Dana. "The president said she's lying," Chloe points out. Kiefer says Taylor's the liar. Chloe reminds Kiefer that it's the president's call, not Kiefer's. Kiefer snaps, "She's covering up evidence of a terrorist attack against this country. She no longer has the call." Harsh. Looks like the Jack Bauer Impeachment Committee is back in session, complete with its one member. Kiefer actually says to Chloe, "You don't want to go against me on this." Harsher! Chloe asks if he's threatening her, and he says he's just asking for help. Chloe argues, "You're being hunted by every law enforcement agency in the city. You're not thinking clearly." "Right now I'm the only one who is," he says. Chloe begs him to come in and they'll figure something out, and he snots that he'll come up with a plan B on his own. Rather than letting him hang up angry, Chloe asks what he's going to do with the evidence. "All I need to do is expose them," he says. That's good enough for Chloe, who I guess apparently thought Kiefer was going to put the evidence into a gun and shoot the president with it or something. So she finally cracks and tells Kiefer about Taylor's plan to transfer Dana using a private security firm, although she doesn't know where yet. "Find out. I'll call you back," he says. He hangs up and throws the phone into a handy trash can, which I guess explains why he bought so many. Clearly he's committed to this course at all costs; getting the truth out is worth not only becoming a fugitive, but putting more lithium into landfills.
In some creepy, technology-lined survivalist sanctum, Mr. Blonde himself, Michael Madsen, is wearing a Bluetooth and bent over some electronic device he's working on. Although his clothes are aggressively casual, he's also wearing military dog tags and has a nasty old burn scar up one side of his neck. A call comes in, lighting up half of his computer monitors without actually telling him who it is, and when he answers it he hears Kiefer saying into his ear, "Jim, it's Jack Bauer." Jim's already heard about Kiefer's fugitive status, probably from all the tech crap he's surrounded by, and he wonders, "What'd you do this time, Jack?" Declining to answer, Kiefer says he needs weapons and equipment. "Can you make that happen?" Jim says he can make almost anything happen. "You know that. The problem is that you're a walking bulls-eye. The last thing I need is you on my doorstep." "You wouldn't have a doorstep if it wasn't for me," Kiefer says. "I'm calling in a favor. I'm gonna tell you what I want and I want it ready when I get there, you understand me?" Wow, Kiefer's getting a little shirty with this dude. That must be an awfully nice doorstep. If it were me, though, I think I'd rather make do with a chair or even a makeshift plywood ramp than have to deal with this crap. Jim sardonically agrees with me, telling Kiefer, "Well, I see you haven't lost your personal touch." Getting into a cab, Kiefer starts rattling off his shopping list: "A comm unit, two MP5s, an assortment of assault rifles, and body armor." He pauses to give the cabbie directions, and adds a "full surveillance package" to the list before the editing abruptly cuts him off. And before, presumably, the cabbie who's overheard Kiefer's terrifying end of the call either kicks him out of the cab or calls Homeland Security.
Repairs are already underway to the CTU security tunnel at 10:21:45 as a van pulls up. Out of the shotgun seat climbs D.B. Sweeney as Mark Bledsoe, rocking a cop 'stache that complements his droopy features. Like Juergen Prochnow, D.B. Sweeney's another one of those actors who I'm surprised has never been on the show before. He's calling Logan's assistant Jason, who's loitering in Logan's borrowed U.N. office with him. Bledsoe wants to know what he's supposed to do with Dana after they have the evidence. Jason just tells him to give her back to CTU. "Without the evidence, she has no teeth. She can't hurt us." Bledsoe isn't so sure, and he has a solution. "We can make it look like the prisoner was killed while she was trying to escape. Wouldn't be difficult." Wow, that's direct. So basically, he's trying to upsell a basic Grab & Grill job into a Grab, Grill & Kill Executive Package. Jason uncertainly says, "I'm not sure we're willing to go down that path." Bledsoe shrugs that it's his "professional opinion," and tells Jason to get back to him after talking it over with "the client." Which of course means Logan. Could this get any creepier? No, don't answer that.
By now, Chloe is coming to meet them, and Bledsoe and his team have been outfitted with CTU visitors' badges that I don't remember seeing before during this season, even on Prady (whose cooling corpse has still not been discovered, as far as we know). The printer must have spit them out during the EMP or something. Chloe introduces herself and starts leading them through the facility, asking where Dana's being taken. Bledsoe says he can't share that: "The whole point of this exercise is to keep Walsh off the grid." Chloe argues that she's responsible for the prisoner, and asks to see the presidential order for the transfer. When he impatiently says they should have gotten it by now, she pleads EMP (even though everything is clearly working again) and insists that she can't let him take Dana without seeing the order. "We could wait," she offers/threatens. "Might take an hour, maybe more." Bledsoe sighs, pulls it up on his phone, and hands it to Chloe. As they start walking through the building, Chloe babbles her apologies to distract from the fact that she has just pulled a flash drive from her pocket and is dumping Bledsoe's phone as they speak. She needn't have bothered with the diversion; Bledsoe's not even looking at her while she's got his phone in his hand