Come on out, you tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorists. After playing coy for the first six seasons, “24” has finally delivered an episode that does what the show had previously been reluctant to do: hit us where we live. Where we all live.
But first thing’s first: Save Freckles! (Insert Ferris Bueller water tower joke here.) Her predicament was actually more dire than I made it out to be, and she had stopped breathing by the time 4B and Chloe arrived. The scene created a clip show of sorts in my head, a History of Cinema Resuscitations. I thought of Ed Harris pounding the bejeezus out of Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio in “The Abyss,” which is still one of the most powerful scenes I think I’ve ever seen. Then Chloe pulls out the syringe filled with adrenalin, and I thought: what on earth did we do before “Pulp Fiction”? That movie really did rewrite the rules, didn’t it?
My next thought, by the way, was of Nicolas Cage injecting himself in the heart with the VX gas antidote in “The Rock.” Anyone else have that same thought?
Emerson is taken out after foolishly putting a gun to Jack’s head, which did not surprise me one bit. Jack and Tony were asking way too many questions, and it was only a matter of time before Emerson decided to call them on it. Tony’s now in charge, but he also knows, after the botched attempt on his life, that Col. Dubaku has no further use for him. Prime Minister Matobo/Bassett is now in play with a wire (Chloe, once again, gets the line of the week with “No, I’m a stay-at-home-mom” as she’s putting the chip on one of his teeth), but something tells me that Jack and Tony need to worry more about Freckles than they do the Prime Minister. You just know that she’s going to spill the beans to someone before the next hour is over, and blow their cover.
“Seriously, did you read my file? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Now shut up and marry me.”
As for the other B-story, I was stunned when SS Agent Gedge actually succeeded with half of his plan to kill Samantha and the First Man, and man, was his murder of Samantha brutal. I hate seeing pretty girls die, but to be fair, she was a dead girl walking from the very beginning. At the same time, I watched Gedge throwing the rope over the rafters and thought, “Isn’t this crime scene going to look just a tad suspicious?” Seriously, you just know that the forensics people on any of the “CSI” staffs would see right through that ruse and suspect foul play. But hey, Gedge was young; maybe he hadn’t done enough killing yet to have a feel for the subtle.
And now, the main story: President Taylor knew an attack was imminent, and refused to stand down to a butcher, even though doing so meant risking the lives of innocent Americans. This is about as unwinnable a position as one person can be in. If she capitulates to General Candyman, then she’s admitting that terrorism works as a form of diplomacy, and opens the door for anyone to take a shot at squeezing us for this or that. If she holds her ground, and lives are lost – and they were, in the form of two colliding planes, and possibly a power plant somewhere in Ohio (I’ve never heard of the city, and I live in Ohio) – then she’s the President that had the chance to stop it but chose not to.
Sound familiar? The President that had a horrific attack happen on their watch, with the world speculating how much they knew before it happened? Uh huh, they just went there.
Granted, the circumstances are much more black-and-white here – Bush wasn’t dealing with rampant corruption, or the dreaded CIP device – but I never thought “24” would get this close to real life, ever. I have to think that an episode like this is going to get the 9/11 conspiracy chatter going again. I’m not sure there is a point to getting it started again, but I don’t expect that to stop people from wondering what Bush “knew.” Mind you, I was not W’s biggest fan, but here’s the thing: whatever it is that Bush knows, you can bet that it’s something you don’t ever want to know. Just sayin’.
I either wasn’t paying enough attention, or there wasn’t a single “Damn it” this week. Can anyone confirm this?
Jack finally killed someone, yay! The streak is over. And from the looks of the preview for next week, he makes up for lost time. Ehhhhhxcellent….
