Well, that didn’t take long. Mr. “I swear on my family’s life” sold out both his Dudley Do-Right brother and morally ambiguous father at the drop of the hat, and by playing the family card, no less. Here’s the thing, though: if the plot didn’t require it, Jack Bauer would never, ever have thrown the handcuff keys to some hired goon that, only moments before, was about to unload an entire clip into his skull. Dr. Evil’s pleas to Jack about protecting family seemed desperate and hollow from the very beginning, and we now know just how meaningless those pleas actually were. But come on, of course they were meaningless to him. He’s been raising Jack’s son as his own. But that conspiracy theory will have to be put on hold for now.
So my left-field theory about Walid being a spy turned out to be dead wrong. But my observation in the first week about the FBI, and how they must be either incompetent or corrupt to allow such chaos to take place on American soil, could be dead on the money. After all, their plan to implicate the alleged terrorist detainees required Walid to do two simple things:
1) Steal the guy’s cell phone without him knowing
2) Return his cell phone without him knowing
You’re kidding, right? Pickpocketing someone is one thing, but giving back something without them realizing it is another thing entirely. There isn’t a single intelligence bureau working under our jurisdiction that would ever dream of doing something so boneheaded.
Which brings us to Karen Hayes’ sudden resignation from President Palmer’s staff, and subsequent request to join CTU in Los Angeles. I found Karen’s willingness to roll over so quickly a bit out of character, especially when it’s the Biscuit that’s asking her to roll over. She had a good game face when he challenged her with the supposed checkered past of her and hubby Bill Buchanan, so what made her change her mind so quickly? The plot, that’s what. Jack acted out of character, the FBI acted out of character, and Karen acted out of character, all because it was required of them. They would be wise not to make a habit of this in the coming weeks. Tony Kornheiser said earlier tonight on “Pardon the Interruption” that he thinks “24” is jumping the shark this very moment. I’m not ready to hop on that bandwagon yet, but episodes like this are only going to fan those flames.
And now, your conspiracy theory of the week.
If your mind is remotely as warped and suspicious as mine, then you watched Milo hand his login info over to Natalie and thought, “Big mistake.” They are setting up one of two things here: either they are paving the way for Milo’s exit – Eric Balfour, deservedly or not, has developed a rep as a show-killer of Ted McGinley-esque proportions – or they are about to expose that CTU has yet another mole bringing them down from the inside (my gosh, who screens the candidates there?). Given that Marisol Nichols is ten times the actor that Balfour is, the former theory would be better for the show, but that is no guarantee that they will do what’s best for the show.
Since the bomb dropped, the show has kinda fizzled. Time to turn things up a notch, guys. “Heroes” is beating you in the Neilsens. There’s a bull’s-eye on your back. Quit playing it safe and start killing people, stat.
