TivoBlogging: The Following Takes Place Between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM

08:00:00 to 08:17:21

Imhotep decides the time is right to call the president and make his demands. "Mr. President, we are prepared to offer a ceasefire." Chapelle responds, "Well, I know last time, you were just manipulating us to eliminate a rival leader, and you still carried out terrorist attacks after we fully complied, but I've got a really good feeling about this time."

Imhotep relays his terms: "You are holding 110 prisoners at Palmdale Air Base. Release them, and I promise to stop terrorizing your country." Chapelle says he'll think about it. Now, Gloria Allred wises up. "I can't believe this is Imhotep's endgame." Barbara Boxer slaps her for expressing an opinion without having children.

Back at CTU, Chiggy reports 122 dead in St. Louis, more than 200 dead in Baltimore, mostly children. Sidebar With the Chicago Hotel and the LA bus bombing, that brings the single-day death toll to at least 300, with whoever was killed on the bus in El Lay. So, over 11 weeks and assuming the terrorists take weekends off, that would be at least 17,000 civilian casualties since the terror campaign started. Just to put things into perspective./End Sidebar Kemper orders Al Bundy O'Brien to put filters on the prisoner's files, to reduce tar and nicotine, I guess. But Bundy thinks that work is beneath him. He and Kemper get into it, and Russet Potato Face has to break them up. "I don't have time for your personality disorders" she tells them.

Jack, still in his handsome long john shirt, still all grim and goth from his 20 months at the Beijing State Pen jumps into a car with Bashir, forming the team of Bacardi and Synthehol. They are still following the Handler. Jack checks the map, "Oh, snap! He's headed north. We'll never be able to tail him." Jack calls CTU and asks Chiggy Killer for surveillance assistance. Chiggy tells Russet Potato Face to get on it, and tells Jack about Imhotep's offer. Jack grimly tells Chiggy to get him some Cola to mix with his Bacardi, and tells him he doesn't think they can trust Imhotep (the bad terrorist) but they can trust Bashir (the good terrorist). Russet Potato Face, for once, can not get access to a surveillance satellite. So, Jack has to improvise.

Jack grimly carjacks a white Ford Bronco from OJ Simpson and Al Cowlings, and using simple defensive driving techniques well-known to any California driver, smashes it into the Handler's car yelling "Yeee-hah" and playing "Dixie" on the carhorn. He then gets out and starts yelling at the Handler. David Palmer shows up and says, "Don't worry. You're in good hands with Allstate." Bashir stashes his combadge on an open frequency in the door of his car and offers a ride to the handler. "By the way," Bashir says. "I have this obsessive compulsive disorder that compels me to narrate my driving route, saying aloud street names and precise locations wherever I go. You don't mind, do you?" The Handler does not mind.

White Castle (as in "Harold and Kumar Go To”) returns to the Everyman house and takes the family hostage at gunpoint. The Everymans try to show that they are tolerant and open-minded, unlike the neighborhood bigots, by giving him unquestioning cooperation. "So, you're one of the 'terrorists,'" Mrs Everyman says, putting air quotes around "terrorist." "Let's negotiate and build some bridges of understanding. Would you like some cookies?" White Castle orders Mrs Everyman to treat his gaping leg wound and Bill Everyman to deliver the package for him. Bill Everyman at first refuses, but when White Castle accuses him of being an anti-Arab bigot, Bill Everyman is cowed into making the drop.

08:21:44 to 08:27:57

Back at CTU, Bundy asks Russet Potato Face, "Why do you always have to take his side, Peg?" Russet Potato Face responds with a double-entendre about his inability to satisfy her sexually.

Bacardi and Cola meet up, and Cola can't believe Jack is helping Bashir. Cola can't forgive Bashir for the thousands of people he killed. "It's not your call to make," Jack says. "It's not my call to make. Nothing means anything any more. Life is pain. Life is only pain. [his large bang falls over his right eye, he jerks his head back to put the bang in place] We're all taught to believe in happy fairytale endings. But there's only blackness. Dark, depressing loneliness that eats at your soul."

Meanwhile, Bashir continues to offer clues to his whereabouts. "Hey, look, we're passing Sand Canyon Road. That reminds me of a blond I used to date."

Back at Casa Everyman, White Castle is whining about the pain in his leg. Mrs. Everyman offers to get him some prescription painkillers and give him a foot massage. Billy Everyteen goes to the kitchen and gets the painkillers, then discreetly grabs a knife from the sink. White Castle orders him to "Sit. Down." using the bitch voice Billy Everyteen punks out and doesn't stab him in the gut and then rub pork on his corpse. Probably because even though White Castle is a bloodthirsty jihadist, he's still Billy's best friend. And only a low-down dirty scumwad would kill his best friend, right?

08:32:23 to 08:37:13

A group of prisoners are marched out in orange jumpsuits to board a bus. Andrew Sullivan immediately begins penning a passionate screed about how no one looks good in orange, and so this is clearly torture.

John Caged Weasel informs President Chapelle that his sister, Cynthia McKinney Chapelle was arrested. Cynthia McKinney and her aide/boyfriend Gee Wally are marched into a DC-Area detention facility that is apparently located in southern California. President Chapelle calls his sister, "What is your problem, bitch?" He arranges for her release. On her way out, she punches a secret service agent with her cellphone. But Gee Wally is left behind at the detention center, as the prisoners are lined up for strip search. Andrew Sullivan is even more outraged. "Why wasn't I invited?"

08:41:35 to 08:48:52

Bashir drops off the Handler in a commercial-industrial district somewhere in La-la Land. AT CTU, Chloe has finally been able to access satellite imagery. "Bring up the data on every commercial and residential building in that area," Token Arab Chick demands. "You mean like I'm doing already?" Russet Potato Face snarls. "I'll cut you, bitch," says Token Arab Chick, “I’ll cut you real bad.”

The Handler has gone into a U-Stor-It, and quickly locates a locker filled with Guns-n-Ammo, as well as Hustler, Teen Beat, and many years of National Geographic. Chiggy wants to move in and arrest him now, and get to Imhotep through interrogation. Jack disagrees, saying, as he often does, that there's no time for this, But despite his never being wrong about anything, no one listens to Jack. A squad of SWAT commandos or something move in to make the arrest. People start shooting. The terrorist drops a grenade. Things explode. Everything in the storage locker is destroyed except, miraculously, a laptop with a damaged hard drive and a PDA with a vital piece of intelligence on it, both of which are located within seconds.

President Chapelle makes his decision to release the prisoners. They are awfully diverse for a group of Islamic terrorists. They include a number of women, Eskimos, dwarves, and even a few Hassidic Jews. Apparently, casting either got lazy, or had to fill its Islamic terrorist extra quota in accordance with EEOC guidelines. Anyway, they are marched onto buses under the orders of Tough Military Guy Who Turns Out to be a Traitor.

Back at Terrorist Central, Imhotep thinks longingly of White Castle's package.

08:53:15 to 08:59:59

Bill Everyman goes to the address he was instructed to go to to drop off the package. He hands the package off to Nondescript Guy. Nondescript Guy cuts it open. It's filled with money. "It's not enough," says Nondescript Guy, "Go back and get me another $50,000." Bill Everyman begs him. "Please, you don't want people to think you're one of those right-wing racist troglodytes do you?" Nondescript Guy lets Bill Everyman call home, White Castle says get the object at any cost. Bill Everyman clocks Nondescript Guy with a lamp, then pounds his head into the cement floor shouting, "Diversity is our nation’s greatest asset." Nondescript Guy dies, and Bil Everyman gets the components, and gets to feel good about helping a disadvantaged minority youth achieve his goals.

Meanwhile, Russet Potato Face has decoded part of the files on the hard drive. Bashir recognizes it as the wiring diagram for a nuclear detonator. Immediately, CTU connects the dots and determines that a Russian scientist stole a suitcase nuke. And, furthermore, he's one of the prisoners being released from Palmdale. Military guards begin searching the plane the prisoners have been loaded onto. But the terrorist, Hassan Nemo, is not in the plane. He was hiding back on the bus. And the Tough Military Guy Who Turns Out to be a Traitor is helping him escape.