Category: 24 (Page 24 of 25)

Okay, Dada fans, I know it’s “Dizz Knee Land,” no need to harass me.

It’s a pity I’ve already deleted tonight’s episode from my DVR, because when Novick and the President are discussing the pros and cons of changing the route of the Russian president’s motorcade, I would swear that Logan, in his most manic fit of indecision yet, literally clucks like a chicken. “Should we alert the Secret Service?” Novick asks him. “Yes! No! Wait! Buck Buck Brawwwwwk!” Logan stammers, even though his decision to allow the Warlock to bomb the motorcade means that he’s sending his wife to her grave. I would love to know of one president who has ever dreamt of doing such a thing. Well, besides Clinton, that is.

Even funnier is that he wasn’t even the episode’s biggest wacko. Samwise Gamgee locked up Buchanan last week, and this week he fires Sandra Bullock (IT drone Carrie, who’s a dead ringer for Miss “Speed”) for, well, doing her job. He then yells, loudly and nonstop, at Audrey, Chloe, Curtis and Edgar when they try to alert him to the possibility that, hello, the Russian president’s motorcade is about to get attacked. Curtis finally loses patience with how Samwise is running CTU into the ground, and invokes Section 112 (mental incapacity, blah blah blah). And even that isn’t enough to shut Samwise up, who orders the guards to shoot Curtis, the field agent. The guards, knowing exactly how a gunfight with Curtis is going to go down, say, “What would you like us to do, Mr. Curtis?” Smart men, those guards. Buchanan is back in charge, but Samwise is not done by any means, you can bet on it.

I totally want to play Texas Holdem with Marty Logan. She bluffs in the limo at first when Chicken Little calls her and demands that she tell the Suvarovs that she has to get out of the car to attend to some other matters. But after a while, when they continue to drive, she totally plays her hand, knocking on the glass and asking Agent Aaron Pierce, the human Labrador retriever, if there have been any changes to the schedule. Agent Pierce assures her that everything’s fine, but you can bet your sweet bippy that moment of unguarded terror did not escape her Russian “friends”. Expect the Russian president to declare the treaty null and void before too long, and that is what frustrates me the most. Logan should have known – and if it escaped his grasp, Novick should have at least brought it up – that if the Russian president is killed on American soil, the Russians will declare war on the United States. Try explaining that to the American public. “Sorry, guys, I thought that if I allowed the Ruskie vodka swilling atheist to get whacked, I could save some American lives. My bad.” There is just no way of dressing the truth up in that one.

One very telling moment about who the show’s most important characters really are: when the Suvarov’s car took the hit with the missile, Buffybot and I said, “Oh, no, Aaron!” That’s right, we weren’t at all concerned about the First Lady, who in Hour 1 was our favorite character on the show. But you can’t kill the dog, damn it. The producers of “24” clearly know how well loved Pierce is, because Old Yeller then goes on to waste all of the baddies by himself (curious that they only had one missile to launch at the car). How sad it will be, then, when Old Yeller commits some other heroic act in order to defend the people he loves, only to become rabid and force his “family” to put him down.

All this, and I still haven’t mentioned Robocop’s introduction as Christopher Henderson, a former CTU bigwig and current link to the nerve gas. Uncanny, isn’t it, that his instincts haven’t left him at all when his secretary has to unexpectedly leave her post (he waits behind his door and zaps Jack the second he walks in) and he instantly comes up with a way to kill Jack out of sight. As soon as I heard the word “bunker,” I thought, “Bunker not good. Jack die.” Well, anyone but Jack and Keith Richards, anyway.

For those who don’t watch the scenes for next week, for God’s sake, stop reading now! Okay, are we all here? Good. Kim finally comes back, even though IMDb thinks she’s been in nearly every episode this season, and it appears that Tony wakes up from his brush with death. My question is: where is that canister of gas released? They imply that it’s in CTU, but this is Fox, people. When they would advertise “Melrose Place,” they’d say, “One of these characters will die,” when what they meant was, “One of these characters will dye…their hair another color.” You can never, ever take their sneak previews at face value.

There is a hilarious moment in the first few minutes of this week’s episode where Samwise Gamgee has to admit to President Buck Buck Brawwwwwk that CTU lost their lead on the nerve gas, after convincing the president that allowing the terrorists to set off a canister in a shopping mall was the best way to find the rest of the canisters. President Logan then puts Samwise in his place, saying, “No more excuses. You need to take some responsibility.”

Buffybot burst out laughing. “Hello, pot? This is kettle,” she said.

And, of course, she’s right. In the entire time he’s been on the show, Charles Logan has not made one decision on his own. Taking a stand means doing whatever Martha/Novick/Walt/CTU/David Palmer suggests that he do. And now, he’s talking about revealing the path of the Russian president’s motorcade, while the guy is still visiting him after signing a historical treaty, all because he doesn’t have the balls to stand up to the Warlock (good to see Julian Sands working, though it doesn’t look like he’s eating), who is threatening to gas Americans if Chicken Little doesn’t comply. Turns out I gave Goodbye Yellow Brick Tie a fitting nickname after all, huh?

A couple interesting things were set in motion this week. Samwise Gamgee is losing it, sensing betrayal and insubordination under every rock. The intriguing part is that he’s right; Audrey was indeed hiding information from him, as was Buchanan, as is Chloe. Likewise, Logan is losing it as well, completely over his head and torn between two radically different schools of thought: forthright (Marty) and subversive (Novick), the latter of which is far more appealing to his inner weasel.

But that’s not all. Nathanson, the man responsible for arranging the sale of the gas to the Russians, admitted that there is someone else working in the White House that was complicit in the day’s events. This week, they went waaaaaaay out of their way to paint Novick as the mole, but I sincerely doubt that he’s the bad guy. He may not like Logan, but he’s not going to risk having hundreds of thousands of Americans killed just to show his boss how much he doesn’t like him. There are still 16 hours left; it’s too early to guess, though I still hold on to my Wayne Palmer wild card.

The better bit was when the chip that Nathanson gave Jack to track the canisters was formatted with DOD software. That points a bony finger in Audrey’s direction. Or who knows, maybe even her father, former Secretary of Defense James Heller. I find this amusing as well, since Audrey was my dark horse bad guy pick last year. I was wrong then, of course, but how funny would it be if I were right in the end? Yeah, I know. It’s not gonna happen.

Tune in next week, when Samwise Gamgee has to admit that he doesn’t have his CTU key card because he was mugged by his sister’s pimp.

James Brown. You gotta love him.

Ah, it was only a matter of time before the infamous bridge episode appeared. Very little actually happened this week; the terrorists tried to detonate one canister of the nerve gas in a mall, supposedly to test the remote detonators. Of course, the people sent to collect Rossler (our mysterious Russian from last week), who ultimately collect Bauer due to Rossler’s permanent unavailability, conveniently do not know what Rossler looks like, and are completely okay with Rossler’s flawless American accent. Jack, of course, disobeys the coerced order of the President to dispense the gas – he may be a ruthless government agent, but even Jack has his own sense of right and wrong, however morally ambiguous it can be at any given time – and saves the lives of about 900 people in the process…though he ultimately loses the trail of Goodbye Yellow Brick Tie and the canisters after killing one of his henchmen and tailing the other, who kills himself on command before he can be forced to talk. Of course, witnessing the hostile shoot himself in the head should have been enough to make Jack think that maybe they were being watched. But no, the truck carrying all of the remaining canisters drives away, in full view of CTU…from the other side of the street. Sweet Jesus.

Samwise Gamgee, meanwhile, is acting like an injured, cornered animal. I suppose getting beaten up by his sister’s pimp will do that to a person. To make up for his shortcomings, he barks at anyone who dares to cross him, though God love Audrey for having the balls to stand up to both him and Buchanan and force them both to look at the mall scenario from a more humanistic perspective. God knows, that’s more thought than President Buck Buck Brawwwwwwk put into it. How many bucks (wow, I just accidentally made a funny here: President Buck Buck Brawwwwwwk tried to pass the buck…ah, never mind) did he try to pass this week? “This is your call, CTU.” (Uh, no, Mr. President, legally, it’s not). “Mike, what do you think I should do?” The man is the poster boy for CYA.

And that is going to be his undoing, because if they go in the direction they appear to be going, Mike Novick is about to show his inner Anakin Skywalker. Novick has always been a guy who was willing to make a tough decision when he had to, but always had the best interests of the country, if not the presidency, at heart. This season, however, he seems to be much more morally compromised, suggesting that Logan cover up Cumming’s “suicide” (I think we all know that Walt the Weasel didn’t really kill himself) and now going along with the decision to release nerve gas in a mall? That’s not Novick at all. He may be a shady double-dealer, but he’s not a murderer…or is he?

The one great bit came when the righteous First Lady Martha (please, please tell me they’ll take the gloves off her soon) had her first helping of humble pie in dealing with the widow of Walt the Weasel. She had fully planned on telling the woman everything, and then changed her mind at the last minute, presumably because she finally realized how freaking crazy it would sound if she told a woman who’s just been told that her husband killed himself that her loving husband was also a traitor and a conspirator in the assassination of former President David Palmer. She’d react the same way any of us would: “Are you kidding me?” Marty may have thought that she sold out, but in truth, she did the only thing she could have done in that situation.

There is talk that “24” will soon become a feature film, and while in most instances that is a bad thing, I think it would be a very, very good thing here. Forget that Johnny Depp real-time mess that was “Nick of Time,” if you even saw it. I think that moving the premise of “24” to the silver screen will enable the producers to leapfrog some of the things that hold the show back….such as episodes like this one. Oh no, there has to be a major, tense moment at the top of every hour? Life just doesn’t work like that, kids. And making a movie of “24”: would skirt past that predictability instantly. Problems could happen at any time, which would keep the viewer constantly on guard. As it is, we always know that something bad is going to happen at the top of every hour, and no matter how drastic it is, it loses its impact since we can see the conflict coming down Broadway. I love “24,” but I’d be lying if I said that its trappings weren’t becoming a big, big hindrance.

Any frequent viewer of “24” that didn’t see the ending to this week’s episode coming down Broadway needs to pull the plug, because they, to quote lost comedian Jeff Marder, are just taking up space. The second I saw Nubile Russian Girl (her name doesn’t show up on IMDb, nor does the “24” home page give it up) “dressed,” I knew that she was bad news. Buffybot made a reference to everything turning out fine, and I said, I shit you not, “Well, until she kills her captor, anyway.” I didn’t actually say ‘her captor,’ I said his character’s name, but I have since forgotten his character’s name, and his name isn’t showing up on IMDb either. Thankfully Buffybot, being the smart one of the two of us, remembered him from “Alias,” and in a quick search, I discovered that his real name is Patrick Bauchau.

Still, the signs were there for all to see. The episode was wrapping up, and they were thisclose to nabbing the terrorists with the only connection they had. Of COURSE she was going to shoot and kill Patrick Bauchau. And sure enough, she did. Not a bad shot for a 15-year-old who likely never handled a firearm in her life. Still, we’ve seen too many episodes end like this, and it’s starting to get, as you can see, predictable. I’m not saying they must stop doing such things, but how about shaking things up a little bit at the top of the hour? Samwise Gamgee’s mugging, now that was a pleasant surprise, especially since he gave a sweetheart deal to a super bad guy in order to get off the phone and meet his sister in “need.” Now, I will say that the mugging is a surprise, but the whole supervisor-with-a-liability angle isn’t. Buchanan had Dessler, Erin Driscoll had her crazy/suicidal daughter, and Jack had, well, Kim. Man, what I wouldn’t give for Ryan Chappelle to be back in charge again. Pity he’s dead.

Also, in the You’ve Got To Be Freaking Kidding Me department, if a guy with an eastern European accent walks into my shop, and asks me if I can make precision cuts on a whole bunch of mysterious canisters, I would probably call Buffybot and tell her that I love her very much, but I am not coming come from work today or any other day. Still, our lovable lunk of a cutter does what he’s told, because Mr. Yellow Tie (now known as Ivan Erwich, until I give him a new nickname) gives him “his word” that he will let him go. Of course, cutter dude winds up dead. Even if I couldn’t make the call to Buffybot, it would be hard to die without saying goodbye, but how good is the word of a man who instantly pulls out a gun in an attempt to coerce you into cutting open containers of nerve gas? Nope, the dude is up to no good if he’s looking for the kindness of strangers. Take one for your country, and die with dignity. He obviously needs your skills more than he’d cared to admit, if he’s pulling out his gun in the first five seconds.

Kim Bauer’s name pops up on the episode breakdown for this week, but she shows up in name only, thus lending credence to my whole bear trap/hostage situation theory. But even more puzzling than that is the “suicide” of Walt Cummings. Mighty convenient for Novick to suggest hiding the whole Cummings thing under the rug from the public for the time being, and then to be the one who produces Cummings’ corpse to the president, right outside the president’s office. Novick has always been a standup guy, but it would be interesting to see a darker side to him appear, if for no other reason than to have him killed a few episodes from now. Yep, I’m all about the killing. It just makes for better television, is all. Nothing personal against Jack, or Mike, or Kim, or Audrey, or any of the others. It’s just that TV shows show much more respect for their audiences when they treat all of their characters equally, and show a willingness to whack someone that is seemingly off limits.

I secretly hoped that Jack would be killed in the season premiere. That obviously didn’t happen, and now I’m starting to wonder if that was because President Buck Buck Brawwwwwk didn’t get a chance to sell Bauer’s ass to the Chinese first. For every second that Jack spends in the open, the greater the risk he takes of the Chinese knowing that he faked his death, which will wind up in Bauer getting water torture until his dying days. That, obviously, is a risk that President Chicken Little is willing to take. Make a will, Jack, and soon.