Wednesday, April 07, 2004
5am - 6am
"You are the bravest man..." (may not be exact quote - will fix after watching ep again)
Anyway, the quote above refers to the final goodbye scene between Michelle and Gael. It moved me to tears and I'm almost considering *not* rewatching this episode because it was so gutting. Ahhh who am I kidding.
Just after Michelle shoots the panicked guest who made a break for it, SWAT enters the lobby inducing even more panic. For a brief instant we can see Michelle still reeling from having to shoot that guy, but then she switches back into kickass mode and fires her gun into the air one more time to startle everyone into calming down. She gets on the hotel intercom and explains the deadly situation to them, asking them to remain in their rooms if that's where they are, or to return to their rooms if they have left them. She tells them a team from NHS is on their way to begin testing procedures. As she finishes, the terrified wife of the dead man discovers her husband lying in his own blood on the floor. She quickly works out who was responsible for his death and lays the guilt onto Michelle, "You were supposed to protect us..." As if Michelle needs reminding of that. As someone pointed out on one of the boards though, hubby didn't seem too concerned about his wife as he made a break for it.
We turn to Jack for a little bit as he speaks to Palmer about the call from the terrorist. Palmer wants to know why he used to Jack to get through to him. Jack is uncertain. All Jack knows is that this guy knows him and seems to harbour some ill-will towards him. After hanging up with Palmer, Jack begins working through the two leads that they have - one of them being the fact that Alvers was with this man recently. He and Chase ask CTU to get a description of this man from Alvers.
After Palmer hangs up with Jack he tells Wayne that he doesn't believe he has any choice but to comply with the terrorist's demands - for now.
Meanwhile, Head Hotel Security guy (Phillips, his name is Phillips. I keep forgetting :) ) asks Michelle if they're all going to die. Logical question I think and you really have to admire this guy's calm exterior. Kudos to Phillips for being stoic and professional while facing almost certain death. Michelle tells Phillips that there is a minute possibility that some people will be immune to the virus. But that most will die. He takes the news with reserved dignity. Soon after this exchange, Dr. Nicole Duncan arrives with the hazmat team in full biogear which is kind of creepy.
As the hazmat team sets up for testing, Michelle speaks to Tony. She tells him that she had to kill someone attempting to escape and you could really feel her sense of remorse and regret over it (I knew it!). But Tony tells her that she had no choice, that it was necessary and now she has to focus on the situation. Tony also tells her to question Alvers regarding his boss' description.
When she arrives in the basement she finds Alvers wiping the blood away from his nose. He begins ranting that they had a deal to kill him when he began showing symptoms. But Michelle tells him in a no-nonsense voice that she doesn't think he's told her everything yet while she sets up a Thinkpad thingie and connects with CTU and Jack. She begins grilling him about the description which Alvers gives up pretty quickly. Mid-30s, no facial hair, British accent etc. Chloe begins cross-matching the description against everyone in Jack's service files and flashes images up on Michelle's screen. None of them are a match. Suddenly, Jack gets an idea (you could almost see the light bulb above his head too). He tells Chloe to widen the search to include 'presumed dead'. She does and bam! The image sent to Jack's screen that Alvers identified is one Stephen Saunders.
A visibly shaken Jack explains just who this guy is (and this is really pretty nifty the way the writers have worked this...) Apparently Saunders is one of the men Jack thought was killed during Operation Nightfall. Cast your mind waaaaaaay back to a conversation Jack had with then-Senator David Palmer. Palmer mistakenly believed Jack wanted revenge for the death of his men in Kosovo when he went in to take out Victor Drazen. Remember that? Well, Saunders was one of those men thought to be killed. He was on loan to CTU from the British agency, MI-6 for that mission. "I left him behind." Jack mumbles to himself, placing even more blame on himself. Ahhh Jack. You need a big hug.
Back at District (as I have finally discovered that that is where Palmer lives while in L.A.), David and Wayne are discussing possible scenarios with the chief of Homeland Security, including not calling the virus by its proper name (it's unfamiliar and that's likely to cause more fear); instead they'll call it Legionnaire's Disease. Homeland Security wants to go to threat level red which the president ok's. They also discuss grounding all flights throughout the country. David tell HS guy to put the FAA on alert and warn them of a possible shutdown soon.
The phone rings... it's Saunders with further instructions for David. Because his call could be (and is) traced, Saunders keeps it brief. He tells David to send a Secret Service agent out to a mailbox located across the street from District where they will find a package wrapped in black. They are to bring it to David within ten minutes. David has no choice but hey! At least we get to see Aaron! I love Palmer's doorman - err secret service guy. Aaron brings the package in after scanning for bombs and we learn it's a phone. A non-traceable phone of course. And it's ringing....
Meanwhile in the batmobile, I mean Jack and Chase's SUV, Jack is pondering the chain of events that could have turned Saunders from a dedicated agent to someone willing to wipe out a huge portion of the population. He speculates that
Saunders must have been imprisoned after the mission and tortured. It's the only thing he can think of to explain how Saunders could have turned. Jack gets a friend of his at the L.A. office of MI-6 on the phone and asks if he's been briefed on the situation. Tomlinson has indeed and has a list of Saunders' contacts onscreen already. The only one they can find that hasn't been confirmed dead is a lady named Diana White. She used to run a high-end escort service for powerfully wealthy men. She also used to live with Saunders. Funnily enough, she happens to live in Los Angeles. Jack and Chase head over to her home.
Now at the Chandler Hotel, the beleaguered guests seem to be in a state of numb shock. They line up for testing as directed and Michelle goes first. Dr. Duncan explains that nasal swabs give quicker results and are just as accurate as blood tests, but the results will take a couple of hours. You can tell Michelle is scared but she's really shouldering it well and carrying on with her responsibility. I'm so proud of her :)
At District, Palmer reluctantly answers the demanding telephone Saunders has sent and is ordered, rather snidely, by Saunders to give a press conference. What he decides to say at the PC is entirely up to Palmer, but somewhere in it he must use the phrase, 'The sky is falling.' It seems obvious that it's a signal of some kind and Wayne is hesitant about going through with it. But again, David does his own thang and calls a conference.
While all of that is going on, Tony's trying to get answers out of NHS about any possible hope for an antidote to this virus. He's beginning to get more desperate about Michelle. Great work here from Carlos because you can definitely feel the guilt and tension he's portraying. It must be so difficult to remember events from episodes filmed weeks or even months ago and still carry that emotion through each time because it has to be seamless.... I digress though. NHS tells Tony that there is a 100% mortality rate for this virus and his gruff exterior is beginning to crumble I think as he worries about Michelle. Kim happened to be in the office as he got off the phone and Tony tells her he feels bad about the way he treated Michelle after she went to Chappelle about his abilities.
Now, I would have liked to have seen Kim sort of apologise for that just then because frankly, that was her fault. She took her concerns to Michelle and they ended up being unfounded. I know I defended Kim saying she is, in effect, still a newbie at CTU and only thought she was doing her duty - that said I still think she should have taken that moment to say a quick 'I'm sorry for that' to Tony. Instead she just offered her support. The Chappelle barged in and brutally told Tony to either leave and go hold a vigil outside the hotel for his wife, or stay and do his job. He was really rough about it too and I'm not sure if that's just Chappelle being Chappelle (ie. a bit of a prick) or if he was trying to jar Tony enough to shake him out of his descent into misery. He told Tony that he had to begin operating as if Michelle was dead and make the rest of this mission about revenge.
Whatever the reason for Chappelle's harshness, it worked.
Jack and Chase arrive at Diana White's house and break in. After a clever little shootout, Jack tells Diana he is taking her in for questioning. She demands a lawyer, as you do, and Jack cheerfully replies that she is not under arrest, but that she is being taken to MI-6, a foreign agency and her constitutional rights no longer apply. I had to grin at the way jack said that to her. He even followed her into her bedroom as she changed clothes, not taking any chances on her escaping, and she brazenly whipped off her robe, flashed Jack and got dressed. Jack didn't even blink. (Kiefer may have asked for a retake or two though :) ) Off they go to the MI-6 offices.
Now we come to the part of the hour that had me in tears. Michelle went in to be with Gael after Duncan tells her he doesn't have much time left. Gael is covered in boils and lesions. He's bleeding freely and obviously in excruciating pain. Yet they still have him sitting on overturned crates in a lonely basement. Gael expresses remorse because he hesitated before trying to reach the vial. "I hesitated because I was scared. I only needed a few more seconds to reach it and if I hadn't hesitated I could have prevented all of this." Michelle tells him that he was the bravest man she ever met and that it's not his fault. He did everything he could to stop this. She offers Gael her gun should he wish to end the pain but he bravely sticks by his religious principles and suffers to the end. Michelle leaves Gael alone. Soon after, Gael is dead.
Back to Palmer. It's press conference time and Palmer chose to announce the threat - well, he announced that the threat level is now red. He also says that all airports will be grounded, but that he doesn't make this announcement because 'the sky is falling' (clever, very clever!), but he wants to err on the side of caution. He fields a couple of questions from the press and heads back to his office.
Just then Jack, Chase and Diana have arrived at MI-6 and are informed that Diana is the owner of the Chinatown address where Saunders was last seen. Interesting. (And for anyone a little confused about the official FOX site's research guide for this hour, that address was a 'Go' parlour where people sit around playing the ancient Chinese game of Go. I know I was confused about that. I thought they were all playing Mahjongg or something.)
But we don't learn much more because a helicopter appears at the window and opens fire, spraying bullets and glass everywhere. Diana is killed and Tomlinson is also hit. I don't think he makes it, but he does manage to tell Jack that Saunders' files are stored on a particular server in the IS room. Jack and Chase dodge bullets and race to get to it killing a couple of Saunders' henchman inside the building along the way. Jack breaks out his knife, (a Microtech Halo perhaps?), finds the correct server and begins attempting to unscrew it from the mainframe with the knife. That's when we hear an ominous, eerily familiar beeping, whiny noise. Apparently henchmen were busy while Jack and Chase dodged bullets because they managed to attach a bomb to another mainframe and Jack only had seconds to get the server he needed out (unscrew it faster Jack!).
They *barely* made it before the bomb exploded.
And now Michelle, having witnessed the horrible way in which Gael died and knowing the suffering many people in the hotel are about to go through (including children), Michelle asks Tony for a supply of cyanide capsules used for captured agents. She rationalizes that the guests should be given that option - that it should be their choice. She feels it's humane rather than let them suffer the agonizing effects of this virus. Tony says he'll see what he can do. Chappelle happens to catch Tony pulling the capsules out of storage and after Tony informs him of Michelle's request, Chappelle shocks the hell out of me by saying, 'Do it.' Maybe the man does have a heart.
Focusing on Saunders in these final minutes, one of his thugs lets him know Bauer escaped but that the hard drives were wiped. He also learns CTU has been digging around in their offshore bank accounts and that it's Chappelle who's been digging. We also learn that Saunders knows Chappelle as well as Jack. He phones the president again and explains that he has a small job that needs taken care of as a sort of preamble to the main event. The president is to have Chappelle killed and his body brought to a trainyard downtown by 7am. Palmer's first instinct is to refuse such a horrible thing. But Saunders reminds Palmer that what is happening at the Chandler Hotel could happen in hundreds of locations around the country if he does not comply. Tick boom, tick boom...
Holy shit.
Anyway, the quote above refers to the final goodbye scene between Michelle and Gael. It moved me to tears and I'm almost considering *not* rewatching this episode because it was so gutting. Ahhh who am I kidding.
Just after Michelle shoots the panicked guest who made a break for it, SWAT enters the lobby inducing even more panic. For a brief instant we can see Michelle still reeling from having to shoot that guy, but then she switches back into kickass mode and fires her gun into the air one more time to startle everyone into calming down. She gets on the hotel intercom and explains the deadly situation to them, asking them to remain in their rooms if that's where they are, or to return to their rooms if they have left them. She tells them a team from NHS is on their way to begin testing procedures. As she finishes, the terrified wife of the dead man discovers her husband lying in his own blood on the floor. She quickly works out who was responsible for his death and lays the guilt onto Michelle, "You were supposed to protect us..." As if Michelle needs reminding of that. As someone pointed out on one of the boards though, hubby didn't seem too concerned about his wife as he made a break for it.
We turn to Jack for a little bit as he speaks to Palmer about the call from the terrorist. Palmer wants to know why he used to Jack to get through to him. Jack is uncertain. All Jack knows is that this guy knows him and seems to harbour some ill-will towards him. After hanging up with Palmer, Jack begins working through the two leads that they have - one of them being the fact that Alvers was with this man recently. He and Chase ask CTU to get a description of this man from Alvers.
After Palmer hangs up with Jack he tells Wayne that he doesn't believe he has any choice but to comply with the terrorist's demands - for now.
Meanwhile, Head Hotel Security guy (Phillips, his name is Phillips. I keep forgetting :) ) asks Michelle if they're all going to die. Logical question I think and you really have to admire this guy's calm exterior. Kudos to Phillips for being stoic and professional while facing almost certain death. Michelle tells Phillips that there is a minute possibility that some people will be immune to the virus. But that most will die. He takes the news with reserved dignity. Soon after this exchange, Dr. Nicole Duncan arrives with the hazmat team in full biogear which is kind of creepy.
As the hazmat team sets up for testing, Michelle speaks to Tony. She tells him that she had to kill someone attempting to escape and you could really feel her sense of remorse and regret over it (I knew it!). But Tony tells her that she had no choice, that it was necessary and now she has to focus on the situation. Tony also tells her to question Alvers regarding his boss' description.
When she arrives in the basement she finds Alvers wiping the blood away from his nose. He begins ranting that they had a deal to kill him when he began showing symptoms. But Michelle tells him in a no-nonsense voice that she doesn't think he's told her everything yet while she sets up a Thinkpad thingie and connects with CTU and Jack. She begins grilling him about the description which Alvers gives up pretty quickly. Mid-30s, no facial hair, British accent etc. Chloe begins cross-matching the description against everyone in Jack's service files and flashes images up on Michelle's screen. None of them are a match. Suddenly, Jack gets an idea (you could almost see the light bulb above his head too). He tells Chloe to widen the search to include 'presumed dead'. She does and bam! The image sent to Jack's screen that Alvers identified is one Stephen Saunders.
A visibly shaken Jack explains just who this guy is (and this is really pretty nifty the way the writers have worked this...) Apparently Saunders is one of the men Jack thought was killed during Operation Nightfall. Cast your mind waaaaaaay back to a conversation Jack had with then-Senator David Palmer. Palmer mistakenly believed Jack wanted revenge for the death of his men in Kosovo when he went in to take out Victor Drazen. Remember that? Well, Saunders was one of those men thought to be killed. He was on loan to CTU from the British agency, MI-6 for that mission. "I left him behind." Jack mumbles to himself, placing even more blame on himself. Ahhh Jack. You need a big hug.
Back at District (as I have finally discovered that that is where Palmer lives while in L.A.), David and Wayne are discussing possible scenarios with the chief of Homeland Security, including not calling the virus by its proper name (it's unfamiliar and that's likely to cause more fear); instead they'll call it Legionnaire's Disease. Homeland Security wants to go to threat level red which the president ok's. They also discuss grounding all flights throughout the country. David tell HS guy to put the FAA on alert and warn them of a possible shutdown soon.
The phone rings... it's Saunders with further instructions for David. Because his call could be (and is) traced, Saunders keeps it brief. He tells David to send a Secret Service agent out to a mailbox located across the street from District where they will find a package wrapped in black. They are to bring it to David within ten minutes. David has no choice but hey! At least we get to see Aaron! I love Palmer's doorman - err secret service guy. Aaron brings the package in after scanning for bombs and we learn it's a phone. A non-traceable phone of course. And it's ringing....
Meanwhile in the batmobile, I mean Jack and Chase's SUV, Jack is pondering the chain of events that could have turned Saunders from a dedicated agent to someone willing to wipe out a huge portion of the population. He speculates that
Saunders must have been imprisoned after the mission and tortured. It's the only thing he can think of to explain how Saunders could have turned. Jack gets a friend of his at the L.A. office of MI-6 on the phone and asks if he's been briefed on the situation. Tomlinson has indeed and has a list of Saunders' contacts onscreen already. The only one they can find that hasn't been confirmed dead is a lady named Diana White. She used to run a high-end escort service for powerfully wealthy men. She also used to live with Saunders. Funnily enough, she happens to live in Los Angeles. Jack and Chase head over to her home.
Now at the Chandler Hotel, the beleaguered guests seem to be in a state of numb shock. They line up for testing as directed and Michelle goes first. Dr. Duncan explains that nasal swabs give quicker results and are just as accurate as blood tests, but the results will take a couple of hours. You can tell Michelle is scared but she's really shouldering it well and carrying on with her responsibility. I'm so proud of her :)
At District, Palmer reluctantly answers the demanding telephone Saunders has sent and is ordered, rather snidely, by Saunders to give a press conference. What he decides to say at the PC is entirely up to Palmer, but somewhere in it he must use the phrase, 'The sky is falling.' It seems obvious that it's a signal of some kind and Wayne is hesitant about going through with it. But again, David does his own thang and calls a conference.
While all of that is going on, Tony's trying to get answers out of NHS about any possible hope for an antidote to this virus. He's beginning to get more desperate about Michelle. Great work here from Carlos because you can definitely feel the guilt and tension he's portraying. It must be so difficult to remember events from episodes filmed weeks or even months ago and still carry that emotion through each time because it has to be seamless.... I digress though. NHS tells Tony that there is a 100% mortality rate for this virus and his gruff exterior is beginning to crumble I think as he worries about Michelle. Kim happened to be in the office as he got off the phone and Tony tells her he feels bad about the way he treated Michelle after she went to Chappelle about his abilities.
Now, I would have liked to have seen Kim sort of apologise for that just then because frankly, that was her fault. She took her concerns to Michelle and they ended up being unfounded. I know I defended Kim saying she is, in effect, still a newbie at CTU and only thought she was doing her duty - that said I still think she should have taken that moment to say a quick 'I'm sorry for that' to Tony. Instead she just offered her support. The Chappelle barged in and brutally told Tony to either leave and go hold a vigil outside the hotel for his wife, or stay and do his job. He was really rough about it too and I'm not sure if that's just Chappelle being Chappelle (ie. a bit of a prick) or if he was trying to jar Tony enough to shake him out of his descent into misery. He told Tony that he had to begin operating as if Michelle was dead and make the rest of this mission about revenge.
Whatever the reason for Chappelle's harshness, it worked.
Jack and Chase arrive at Diana White's house and break in. After a clever little shootout, Jack tells Diana he is taking her in for questioning. She demands a lawyer, as you do, and Jack cheerfully replies that she is not under arrest, but that she is being taken to MI-6, a foreign agency and her constitutional rights no longer apply. I had to grin at the way jack said that to her. He even followed her into her bedroom as she changed clothes, not taking any chances on her escaping, and she brazenly whipped off her robe, flashed Jack and got dressed. Jack didn't even blink. (Kiefer may have asked for a retake or two though :) ) Off they go to the MI-6 offices.
Now we come to the part of the hour that had me in tears. Michelle went in to be with Gael after Duncan tells her he doesn't have much time left. Gael is covered in boils and lesions. He's bleeding freely and obviously in excruciating pain. Yet they still have him sitting on overturned crates in a lonely basement. Gael expresses remorse because he hesitated before trying to reach the vial. "I hesitated because I was scared. I only needed a few more seconds to reach it and if I hadn't hesitated I could have prevented all of this." Michelle tells him that he was the bravest man she ever met and that it's not his fault. He did everything he could to stop this. She offers Gael her gun should he wish to end the pain but he bravely sticks by his religious principles and suffers to the end. Michelle leaves Gael alone. Soon after, Gael is dead.
Back to Palmer. It's press conference time and Palmer chose to announce the threat - well, he announced that the threat level is now red. He also says that all airports will be grounded, but that he doesn't make this announcement because 'the sky is falling' (clever, very clever!), but he wants to err on the side of caution. He fields a couple of questions from the press and heads back to his office.
Just then Jack, Chase and Diana have arrived at MI-6 and are informed that Diana is the owner of the Chinatown address where Saunders was last seen. Interesting. (And for anyone a little confused about the official FOX site's research guide for this hour, that address was a 'Go' parlour where people sit around playing the ancient Chinese game of Go. I know I was confused about that. I thought they were all playing Mahjongg or something.)
But we don't learn much more because a helicopter appears at the window and opens fire, spraying bullets and glass everywhere. Diana is killed and Tomlinson is also hit. I don't think he makes it, but he does manage to tell Jack that Saunders' files are stored on a particular server in the IS room. Jack and Chase dodge bullets and race to get to it killing a couple of Saunders' henchman inside the building along the way. Jack breaks out his knife, (a Microtech Halo perhaps?), finds the correct server and begins attempting to unscrew it from the mainframe with the knife. That's when we hear an ominous, eerily familiar beeping, whiny noise. Apparently henchmen were busy while Jack and Chase dodged bullets because they managed to attach a bomb to another mainframe and Jack only had seconds to get the server he needed out (unscrew it faster Jack!).
They *barely* made it before the bomb exploded.
And now Michelle, having witnessed the horrible way in which Gael died and knowing the suffering many people in the hotel are about to go through (including children), Michelle asks Tony for a supply of cyanide capsules used for captured agents. She rationalizes that the guests should be given that option - that it should be their choice. She feels it's humane rather than let them suffer the agonizing effects of this virus. Tony says he'll see what he can do. Chappelle happens to catch Tony pulling the capsules out of storage and after Tony informs him of Michelle's request, Chappelle shocks the hell out of me by saying, 'Do it.' Maybe the man does have a heart.
Focusing on Saunders in these final minutes, one of his thugs lets him know Bauer escaped but that the hard drives were wiped. He also learns CTU has been digging around in their offshore bank accounts and that it's Chappelle who's been digging. We also learn that Saunders knows Chappelle as well as Jack. He phones the president again and explains that he has a small job that needs taken care of as a sort of preamble to the main event. The president is to have Chappelle killed and his body brought to a trainyard downtown by 7am. Palmer's first instinct is to refuse such a horrible thing. But Saunders reminds Palmer that what is happening at the Chandler Hotel could happen in hundreds of locations around the country if he does not comply. Tick boom, tick boom...
Holy shit.
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