The show opened up with the sad image of Tony's face being cover in a cloth. Poor Tony. Poor, stupid Tony. Even the bad guy from The Incredibles knows that you don't rant before you kill someone. You just do it. Alas, last week, Tony waited too long to kill Christopher Henderson, and as a result, he was unceremoniously slain. To be honest, I really thought that he wasn't dead. It wasn't until the New York Times revealed that yes, Mr. Almeida's time had truly come to pass. You'd think with his ability to recover from bullet wounds to the neck and wife-shrapnel to the head that a little shot of torture juice would cause only some minor agita, but the big guy was dead as a doorknob, survived only by a lonely Chicago Cubs mug. The curse continues.

Before we could really soak in the momentous sight of Tony's dead body, we then learned that somehow, Robocop had gotten away. Yes, Christopher -- despite being in a coma only, I don't know, three minutes prior had slipped out of the building and back into society. Mad props to the CTU perimeter for that one. But who cares about Christopher. We have other leads, like that hottie woman in the hotel room that we saw for two seconds last week. Her name was Colette Stenger, and her name was found on Robocop's computer. Turns out she was staying at a hotel in town; so you know what that means. Everyone get into the CTUmobile. We're going on a raid!

Meanwhile, over at the Oval Office West, President Pussy's sassy redheaded press secretary was back and readying the media for Logan's big announcement. For those of you who may have forgotten, the evil Vice President had persuaded Charles that the best plan would be to call martial law for Los Angeles. Martha, however, was not for this plan at all. It was just a ploy, she believed, to make the President look awful so that next year, the party's nomination would go to Hal instead. Well, who the hell's gonna listen to a crazy old bat like Martha? So what if she's been right at every impasse? Send that bitch back to Vermont!

Charles gave his wife the "Don't question me. I might just cry" look and headed out to his press conference where, for just one moment, it seemed like he might go off script. The cameras cut to a teleprompter, and we all know directors only show us teleprompters when someone's about to ignore what's actually on the teleprompter. Well, no such luck this time. Logan indeed called for a curfew that would be enforced by the military. Man, this sucks! Why does it always have to come to martial law? Martial! Martial! Martial!

Over at CTU, Bill Buchanan had his Very Concerned face on. It had been a terrible day, and it was only going to get worse. The DOD wanted a list of all CTU casualties, but Bill wasn't going to hand the names over until all the next-of-kin had been notified. Poor Edgar. His next-of-kin died in a nuclear meltdown 18 months ago. What a family legacy. Meltdown, nerve gas -- he probably has a cousin who died of Ebola while getting eaten by a crocodile. Sadly, we didn't get to see Edgar's lifeless corpse one last time. Perhaps the SeaWorld crane already hauled him out of the building. Somewhere a donut is weeping.

As cadavers rolled out of the building, fresh blood came in -- specifically, Karen Hayes and her main gay, Miles. They were both from Homeland Security, and I'm happy to report that Miles was carrying Edgar's lisping torch proudly. His lisp wasn't as severe as Edgar's, but it was there, and I welcomed it.

Anyway, Karen quickly made herself at home in Bill's office while Miles took up that most hallowed tradition: gettin' into it with Chloe.

"Who are you?" she asked angrily (she HATES takevoers!)

"Homeland Security," Miles responded.

"I asked your name, not who you work for," Chloe lashed back. Ah, classic O'Brien. Well, after a few more angry interactions, Miles stated what he was really there for: "We're here on a priority admin directive!" Wow! A priority admin directive! That's almost as important as a socket... or even a perimeter! This guy means business, folks.

Meanwhile, out on the road, Wayne Palmer was driving around, all shifty-eyed and nervous. He was even wearing a trench coat, and if there's anything we know about the Palmers, it's that bad things happen when they wear trench coats (Sherry Palmer, anyone?). Well, Wayne called up Secret Service Agent Aaron to say that he needed to give him something. Something important! Something that could only be discussed in person! Great. So I guess this means Wayne will be dying too. Or he'll get stuck in a curfew bureaucracy. Or both.

The definition of "Shifty Eyes."

Posted by B-side on March 20, 2006 11:40 PM