Written by Mitch Cyrus

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We open with a shot of "The Islamic Republic of Kamistan".  Let's see.  It's 8 PM in New York, and it looks to be sunrise at Kamistan...which puts them something like 11 time zones away.

Damn...we're being attacked by Australia.

Fredo Hassan is talking to General Wasid ("Wassssuuuuppp, Wasid?") one of the third-rate third world generals we have seen so many times before, trying to tell him to calm down.  Lacking sufficient 3G coverage from Verizon, and using a "mobile" phone purchased from Radio Shack...in 1982...it's amazing he could hear anything.  I hope he didn't think Fredo said "deposit $100"...I don't think Vitaly Corleonovich would be pleased.  Wasid has his own problems, as President Hassan has ordered a major butt-kicking crackdown on the heels of the assassination attempt.

 

Back in NYC, Vitaly is busy discussing the fate of his radioactive stupid Russian son Oleg with his not-so-stupid son Josef.  Vitaly "reluctantly" disagrees with Josef's desire to try to find some "quiet" medical help.  Chances of Josef listening to his father and letting his little brother dying?  About the same as Rex Ryan passing up an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Chances of Vitaly Corleonovich being named Father of the Year?  Roughly the equivalent of Heidi Montag passing up another plastic surgery.

Fredo tells Vitaly that he'll need "five hours" to get the money.  That will put this right at the nine hour mark, which is where we usually solve The First Big Problem...so they can get to The Even Bigger Problem for the second half of the season.  Which also means that the shelf life expectancy of these two characters is about...five hours.  Vitaly offers to keep Fredo occupied by supplying him with two of the skankiest hoes I've seen since...um...er...hmm...my wife does read this column from time to time...so I have no idea how to finish that simile.  I hope Fredo's got him some little purple pills in his possession, because I'm not even sure Tiger Woods could quite handle five hours of fun and games.

"Why does squirrel hate me?" (Sorry...every time I see Ziya, I can only picture him in that stupid British Airlines commercial about the high maintenance director with a beret wearing squirrel on a little bicycle).  Jack and Renee are working on stopping the bleeding, which is just an excuse to have Renee bending over while wearing a lower cut blouse...and I am a happy man (yes, I am a pig...but a happy pig).  Next week, I'm expecting Renee's cleavage to have its own credit.  Jack calls Renee "unstable".  That's only because the censors wouldn't let him use the precise medical term; "batshit crazy".  Renee doesn't seem to care, as she rightfully reminds Jack that she's the only one who can pull it off.

Ziya wakes up, whines like a little girl about his thumb (the wussy)...until he learns of the possibility of getting over $2 million.  He then offers to cut off any other appendages if she'll bump it to $4 million.

At CTU, KevinBob calls up Dana, and gives her 30 minutes to get over to her apartment for a little blackmail booty call.  KevinBob also gives up the information that Dana/Jenny/Starbuck is also an ex-con...for accessory to murder.  And we have just went to Ludicrous Plot Speed (next up..."They've gone to Plaid!")

Let me get this straight.  CTU can take five minutes to discover every little secret of every person on the planet...but they can't do something so...radical and out of the box...as to fingerprint someone gaining a Top Secret government clearance, and then double checking it against little things like...maybe known criminals?  Wow.  Just, wow.  I've seen higher back ground checking standards at massage parlors (Not really, Honey...I truly don't know what their "standards" would be...it's just a literary device, OK?  Please?  That couch is really messing up my back).

At the White House, we hear President Taylor tell her Chief of Staff Rob Weiss that twelve "heads of State" still plan on showing up tomorrow "for the signing ceremony".  So I guess we know that once Fredo and Vitaly are taken care of, the next group of bad guys will be gunning for them.  Why not?  If killing one head of state is good, then killing 14 of them (the 12 plus Presidents Taylor and Hassan) would be 14 times better eh? (or 14 times more idiotic...whatever).

As Ziya taunts Renee on their drive to see Vladimir, we find out that Vlad's only "10 minutes away".  Sixty seconds earlier, we learned that CTU was only "10 minutes away" from the President at the UN.  Good thing low life Russian dives, the UN Building, and the central nerve center for the security of the entire country are all so close.  How Convenient!^TM

ADD Moment:  Does Jack have the new Apple Tablet?!  Damn, I'm jealous.  Certainly makes more sense than the 100 Terra-byte PDA he used to use.

Pres. Taylor lectures Pres Hassan about how badly things look to the rest of the world with his little crackdown back in Iranstralia.  Omar then gives President Taylor a little lesson in civics.  As in, "we find the bastards who are attempting a coup, and we take them outside and run over them with Honda Civics".  Alison still doesn't get it, and she is showing a "can't we all just get along" naivet