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Open on a view of C.J., seen the wrong way through the peephole of a door. She looks incredibly tiny, of course, but you can see that she is quickly throwing a shirt on over her bra. I imagine the people who have a Wonder Woman fantasy are already circulating that screencap on the internet. C.J. approaches the peephole, and soon her eye fills the screen. She opens the door and is greeted by Staff Sergeant Kelty (who is there with another sergeant). We establish that it's 5:30 in the morning as they invade her apartment. As Kelty speaks to C.J., she keeps reaching to close the door, only to have someone else come walking through. The door is finally closed just as Kelty holds up a White House floor plan and tells C.J. that while she has been exiting at one particular door, she should probably start using the west gate, which will be closer to her new parking spot. He tells her that in the event of a situation, she'll need to use the designated exit and proceed directly to Marine One so that she (along with the President and the National Security Adviser) can be flown to their secure location. C.J.: "What kind of situation?" Kelty: "A nuclear attack." C.J.: "Are we expecting one?" Kelty: "Well, any kind of attack. But nuclear's gonna top the list." I'm glad to know that someone has these things ranked. Was there some kind of American Idol-like voting system to establish those rankings? (Note to self: pitch Apocalypse Idol to the head of Fox.) While this conversation is going on, people are scurrying around C.J.'s apartment doing mysterious things. The only thing I can clearly make out is that one person seems to dismantle and carry away her computer. I hope they bring her a new one. A new computer always cheers me up. I'm typing this on my new iMac, and I'm as happy as a clam. Kelty tells C.J. that if there is a situation while she is at home she should proceed with all due haste to a field that is about a mile away from her house. C.J.: "A field?" Kelty: "A pasture, more like." C.J.: "I'll be standing with cows?" Kelty: "A couple of horses is all, and they'll scoot out the way as soon as the 'copter shows up." It was at this point that I suspected that this would be a pretty good episode. Kelty's utter humorlessness had me laughing out loud, and his dialogue was pitch perfect tidewater dialect ("more like" and "out the way"). Deborah Cahn also wrote "The Supremes"; I really hope she can be persuaded to write more episodes. (Of course, good episodes are much harder to recap, so maybe I should hope she stays away.)
There's a knock on C.J.'s door. She opens the door and immediately says "no!" It's the Secret Service -- C.J. is being given a detail of two agents (DeCastro and Shay). Their boss is with them, and C.J. tells him that she doesn't want the detail, but he steamrolls right over her. One of the few flaws with this episode was that there was no acknowledgment of the fact that C.J.'s resistance to having Secret Service protection is not just stubbornness on her part. Instead, it probably springs from the fact that the last time she had an agent protecting her, she fell in love with him, and then he was murdered. As C.J. tries to close the door, a hand hits it and one more person walks through. She sticks her head out into the hall to see if anyone else is coming before she closes it again. I do wonder where C.J. is supposed to be living. I'm still trying to think of a place near D.C. that would have a fancy apartment building and still be within a mile of a pasture.