Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Do You Have the Stomach For It?
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.10.2010
Arlo turns back to his screen at 12:06:22, and Chloe comes over to complain at him about how this is going. "Pillar's ignoring the key questions and the questions that he is answering, no one's asking." She thinks Kiefer is right and Jason's in on the conspiracy, and that Kiefer now has the evidence. Arlo correctly says that's all wild guessing. "Until I know otherwise, I got my orders." Sounds like Chloe's got a new project: making Arlo know otherwise.
Jim lets Kiefer into his techno-sanctum, complete with the giant duffel that Kiefer retrieved somewhere along the line. He certainly didn't have it with him at the bank or the construction site. They must have driven it over to the bank in the back of the CTUmobile and he picked it up from there after killing Dana, but then why take a cab over to Jim's place? Jim says that Kiefer's up to the real-life version of, like, seven "wanted" stars in Grand Theft Auto, and asks if the woman the scanners say he killed is the same woman from the video. "Yeah, did you ID the man?" Kiefer asks, like keep up, would you? But Jim digs his heels in, refusing to cooperate further until Kiefer tells him what's happening. Kiefer says that Dana was in on the assassination and the dirty bomb threat. Jim doesn't care about any of that. "I want to know why you're out there on your own." Kiefer explains about the cover-up, and Jim wonders why he didn't disappear. "Because I cant!" Kiefer snaps. At least not for another three hours and forty-five minutes. Jim demands the truth, and Kiefer sits down to softly explain, "The Russians took something from me. Her name was Renee Walker. They killed her inside my apartment. I need to make them pay." So is Jim going to join Kiefer on his mad, doomed crusade against the governments of two nuclear powers, now that he knows it's driven by a simple quest for revenge? Yup. In fact, he already identified Pavel Tokarev from the video, whom he says is a "primary operative, Russian intelligence." So maybe he's not really just Novakovich's "attaché" after all. Kiefer asks where Tokarev is now, but all Jim can tell him right now is that he's somewhere in the U.S. "To keep everything quiet they'd have to be a small unit, right?" Kiefer asks in what now seems like a non sequitur but will come clear later. He's already got an idea, and to put it in motion, he needs Jim to get him a secure phone line. What Jim ought to get Kiefer is a phone line to secure Kiefer to the nearest drainpipe.
Hey, Meredith Reed is back! I didn't think there'd be any more need for her after Hassan first dumped her and then got himself killed, but here she is. At the offices of the generic newspaper or magazine or whatever publication she works at, she's walking among the cubicles in a fresh suit and talking to her kindly old editor, who manages to say nice things about her article on Hassan without asking whether she was shtupping him. Someone tells her she's got a call, and she steps into an office to take it. It's Kiefer on the phone, of course, and he quickly tells her about the proof he has of the Russians being in on the assassination of Hassan. Disappointingly, she doesn't turn to the door and bellow, "Stop the presses!" She asks if he's contacted the authorities, and he says, "I can't. I'm being set up, just like you were yesterday." They have so much in common, don't they? He wants to bring her the evidence, and asks her to meet him at the coffee stand on the third floor of "Turner's Department Store" in twenty minutes. Hearing her hesitate, he reminds her, "Yesterday I helped clear your name. Right now I need you to help clear mine." But wasn't that mostly Chloe who did that? In any case, she agrees to help. Because, as she says, "I want to know the truth as much as you do." And a book deal wouldn't hurt either.
At 12:10:35, a small army of uniformed guards frog-marches Cole, still handcuffed, into CTU and straight into an interrogation capsule where Jason is waiting. Jason tells him to take a seat and asks where Kiefer is. Cole truthfully says, "I don't know." Jason starts right in on him, talking about the trouble Cole's in that Jason can make go away. He adds that President Taylor asked him to help with the manhunt for Kiefer. "So you're part of the cover-up," Cole says flatly. Jason recovers quickly, trying to bond over the military experience they both have. "We're both soldiers. So you understand, when the commander-in-chief deems a course of action necessary for the national good, it's not our place to question." He says they both want what's best for the country, unlike Kiefer. "He didn't give a damn about what happened to you, just as long as it served his needs. He used you. So let's start over." That's actually a pretty good line of reasoning. He asks again where Kiefer is, and Cole says, "Probably somewhere with the evidence you guys keep saying doesn't exist." I'm kind of surprised that didn't work, actually. Jason looks about to get pissed, but just then he gets a call on his Bluetooth. It's his personal assistant/porn star Eden, reporting that a vital phone conversation was just intercepted. Jason tells Cole this is his last chance, but Cole stays mum. That'll wrap up this interview, and on his way out, Jason orders Cole taken to holding. Let's hope it's not the same holding room where Dana stashed Prady's body last night, because that one's probably getting stinky.
Outside the capsule, Eden meets up with Jason to tell him that Arlo picked up a call that NSA's Echelon program intercepted. Of course it's Kiefer's call to Meredith Reed that she's talking about. Nice "secure line," Jim. The system flagged the words "Hassan," "Russian government," and "Jack Bauer." All that was missing was "Come and get me, Jason Pillar." Arlo hasn't actually heard the call yet, because he's still formatting the necessary preliminary technobabble, but he's working on it. And while they're not yet sure it was really Kiefer calling, the phone on the receiving end was registered to Meredith Reed. Which is especially mysterious given that Kiefer seemed to have called the publication's main switchboard. Eden tells Jason (and reminds new and/or forgetful viewers) who Reed is, adding, "Rumor has it she was also [Hassan's] mistress." By now they've reached Arlo's desk, and Jason abruptly tells him to immediately shut down what he's doing and send it to Eden's screen. Then he heads back up to Hastings' former office, while Arlo and Chloe exchange significant glances. It's 12:13:43, and you'd think Arlo would be a little happier to have some time freed up to ogle sunbathers with his surveillance drones.
12:18:05. Inside an office at the U.N., Logan and Russian Foreign Minister Novakovich are listening to a full recording of Kiefer's conversation with Meredith Reed, clear as day. Jason and Eden are playing it back for them over the phone from CTU. They talk about how Kiefer's obviously going to the media with the proof, but Jason is upbeat: "This is a major opportunity to make everything go away, sir. Bauer and the evidence." He's already sent the Russian team to the location Kiefer set up as the meeting place. Logan gives Jason major props, and after hanging up with Jason, tells the Russian, "I want to stay on top of this personally, Mikhail. So will you let me have Pavel's number?" Uh, didn't Logan give Tokarev a phone an hour ago? Novakovich looks annoyed at this latest instance of Logan's grasping, high-handed behavior, but he's totally going to give him the number. Which I have a feeling Logan will live to regret, for reasons that will become abundantly apparent at the bottom of the hour.
Meanwhile, Back at CTU, Jason looks around and sees Chloe peering in at him over her laptop from a distant conference room. "Can you make this room less public?" Jason asks Eden nervously. She hits a button and the glass walls suddenly go all frosty. That doesn't look suspicious at all, especially when you're alone in a room with a porn star.
Chloe is still reacting to this with disgust when Arlo enters the room she's in. She wants to talk to him about t