It turns out our conversation about Tony Almeida pulling a Harvey Dent was one of two “Batman” references that this season of “24” would boast. Yes, he switched teams for a few years, and did some bad stuff. But the business with General Candyman reset his moral compass. So if the FBI has no record of him working undercover, then who is he working for?
Why, Big Balls Bill Buchanan, of course, who has also recruited Chloe – presumably after he hit up Vidal Sassoon for a makeover – in a quest to expose government corruption on a massive scale. So who is Bill working for? This is where it gets a little fuzzy – he doesn’t work for anyone, since no one can be trusted. Doesn’t this mean that Bill, Tony and Chloe are just vigilantes, and their acts against the government could be classified as treason? How is their operation funded? And what exactly do they plan to do with the evidence that they obtain? Take it straight to the President? What if she’s one of the dirty ones?
Actually, one of the things that I like about these first four hours is that there are no clear-cut bad guys. There are lots of stupid guys – Renee knows there is a leak in her department, but that doesn’t stop her from having a candid conversation about it in a crowded hallway – but at the moment, everyone looks like they could be in on it. That’s the point, of course, and odds are that none of the truly suspicious characters are bad (I’m reserving judgment on Ethan Kanin, a.k.a. Warden Norton, for the moment). But I like the paranoia that floats around the new characters. Is Morris the leak? Janis? Surly Sean? The First Husband’s Secret Service agent? Have we even met the leaks yet? There are still 20 hours to go, which is plenty of time to meet a whole new group of scumbags. Odds are, though, we know half of them already. Remember, this is the show that dangled Nina Myers in front of us early on in Season One, at a time when we didn’t want to believe it. There is no reason to think they wouldn’t do that again.
“Guys, someone’s hacking into our mainframe. Oh, and they’re sending me catty, passive-aggressive comments while they do it.”
Something just occurred to me: someone at the FBI called Tony to tell him that Jack and Renee (new nickname forthcoming) were on their way to see Gabriel Schecter. Doesn’t that mean that Tony knows who the leak is? If so, why is everyone still in the dark about the rogue agent’s identity? Perhaps the turncoat only deals with Emmerson, who forwarded the message to Tony. Some clarification on this point is in order.
Is anyone else as surprised by Renee Walker’s sudden metamorphosis from contemptuous do-gooder into a results-only renegade? (Until she gives me reason to do otherwise, she will henceforth be known on this blog as Jacqueline Bauer.) You can count the minutes since she first met Jack, and like some traumatized Stockholm Syndrome victim, she seems to have fallen in love with him, or at least his methods. She watches Jack deprive Tony of oxygen in the interrogation room, then employs the same technique to Schecter’s killer as he lies in a hospital bed in critical condition. She says she wants to make things right by bringing Bauer in after he knocked her out and took her gun – gotta say, that garage escape is one of the more plausible and exciting shootouts the show’s ever done – but on a subconscious level, she has to know that Jack is the reason for, well, every single piece of intel they’ve acquired since they brought him in. And you have to know that once he sees her implement his techniques, he’s going to be on one knee in a nanosecond. Girls like that don’t come around every day, you know.
Small conversation about the B-story: it turns out the First Husband isn’t nuts, and his son was in fact murdered. No shocker here, but one small (which is to say, HUGE) question: how did Samantha come into possession of a flash drive that contains every piece of incriminating evidence that got her ex killed, yet she lives? Ugh.
With tonight’s two hours, the “Damn it” counter is at nine, by my count. Props for giving one of them to a nurse. Why should the leads have all the fun?
One last thought: doesn’t the Prime Minister of Sangala look like he could be Angela Bassett’s brother? Just sayin’.
