I was tempted to go with one of two songs for tonight’s episode. The runner-up to the Nirvana lyric above was Garbage’s “Stupid Girl,” in reference to the subplot where Starbuck lets her hilljack ex-con lover and his troglodyte friend loose in an evidence warehouse…but it didn’t seem emphatic enough. No, for that to be the lead, I needed a song with a title along the lines of “You Are the Dumbest Motherfuckers in the History of Dumb Motherfuckers,” and a quick check of my iTunes library reveals nothing that has both ‘dumb’ and ‘motherfucker’ in it. I am clearly listening to the wrong bands.
Slumdog President is fast becoming my second-favorite character on the show this season (though he’s admittedly a distant, distant second to Renee Walker). He was smoove like Wilt Chamberlain – take that any way you like – when the peace accord was about to be signed, but Jason Schwartzman’s betrayal has evidently shaken him to the core…or has it? That’s the beauty, if you want to call it that, of this show; we only know what we’ve seen, so we have no way of determining Slumdog’s next move, since we don’t know really know him at all. On the surface, the sudden paranoia and ruthlessness is in stark contrast to his affability in the first two hours. But who knows, maybe the reason he’s so shaken is because he thought he and Jason Schwartzman were on the same page, only to discover that little brother was much more hardcore than he ever knew.
Speaking of Jason Schwartzman and hardcore, he has now been screwing those two hookers for three hours. Good on ya, mate.
If you take a step back, you have to wonder how Vladimir Guerrero didn’t see that he had been set up for failure six years ago when Jackie first entered his life. She’s suddenly back, and she has this “German” partner who speaks perfect English, and would you look at that, he wants to buy uranium rods, something totally out of Vladimir’s league. Could you make some calls, for old time’s sake? Even funnier that he thought that any of these Russian godfathers would actually tell him over a cell phone, “Why yes, I do have some enriched uranium rods. Why do you ask?” I’m no small-time gangster, but if I were, I would not be making awkward phone calls late at night to guys who could erase my entire family tree in 24 hours. Just sayin’, it would be bad for business.
“What’s my sign? ‘Out of order.'”
Ah, but Crazy Jackie has Vladimir’s number, and when that happens, you can throw all logic out the window. (Trust me on this, I speak from experience.) And if you didn’t already know that the producers of “24” are expecting their audience to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, you sure as hell did after tonight’s episode, where Jackie, having just filleted Vladimir with a bread knife (knew that was making a callback), accidentally stabs Jack in the stomach during her fit of rage. Jack falls to the ground, but still has his wits and faculties enough to throw the bread knife at Vladimir’s suspicious right-hand man…and stab him perfectly in the neck, killing him instantly. Gales of laughter came from the “24” blog headquarters when that happened. “Thank you, Senor MacGyver. You saved our village.” “Don’t thank me. Thank the moon’s gravitational pull.” Both are equally as likely to actually happen.
Oh, and apparently Jackie’s stabbing of Jack was just a flesh wound. Whew. (*slaps forehead*)
Finally, let’s get to Starbuck and her dumb, dumb, super-fucking dumbass plan to send Kevin on his way by giving him access to an warehouse filled with evidence lockers. Oh noes! Kevin’s even dumber buddy – don’t be surprised if they reveal that he’s illiterate – is going to mess everything up by poking around in the cell to look for more bling, and when we revisit them, he’s trashed the place like a toddler in a toy store…and the supposedly street-smart Kevin allowed it to happen. In the name of “South Park” character Jimmy, “C-C-C’mon, fellas.” For those of you who have been reading these rants since the season premiere, you know that I’ve been begging Starbuck to come clean for weeks now. She had everything in her favor then. Now, not so much, especially since Shoeless Joe beat down a cop with a baseball bat. Ugh, Dumb, mother, fuckers.
If there was a positive note to tonight’s episode, it was that Wolfhausen’s minions brought Jack through sewer tunnels as a means of evading government surveillance. That was a nice callback to when Jack called the Russians a dirty people in the previous hour. I guess they showed him.
All right, let’s get to the tune. I think it’s incredible what Dave Grohl has done in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death, but damn, man, what I would give for one more Nirvana album.
