Tag: James Morrison (Page 4 of 5)

The only way tonight’s episode of “24” could have been more ludicrous is if it featured a special appearance by Ludacris. Scene after scene contained moments of jaw-dropping ridonculousness (yes, Will, I said it again), be it the dialogue – when Tina’s sister shrieked “You killed her!” at Jackie Bauer, I actually said, “Oh, fuck you” back at the screen – or the laughable attempt by Billy Walsh to frame Erika for everything. I’m actually sad that Erika is dead, because after she had the meltdown in the bathroom, I came up with the perfect nickname for her: Beaker.

Billy Walsh is a dumb, mother, fucker. He kills Beaker, and then shoots himself in an attempt to frame her for everything, without a thought about fingerprints, powder burns, etc. Nope, just toss the gun in her general direction, that should be enough to fool the freaking FBI. Can you picture Gil Grissom investigating that scene? He’d look at the Feds and say, “You’re joking, right?” And if I’m Dudley Do-Right, I don’t care what kind of yarn Billy spins for me; dude is the only living witness to a crime scene. Get his arm patched up, and send him straight to Interrogation Room A to make his “statement.” Don’t forget the pliers and a blowtorch.

Ah, but Beaker wasn’t the only one to bite it this week. Tina does something completely reckless and downright heroic by causing Ike Turner’s driver to crash. (I love how Jack was already pulling the trigger as he was yelling “Put your hands on your head!” at the driver.) Did anyone else find it strange, though, that Tina went from conscious to dead faster than it would take to actually shoot someone to death? Jackie gave up on trying to revive her almost as soon as she started CPR. She made this big scene – several scenes, in fact – about how she said she would protect Tina, yet you wouldn’t have known it from her half-assed attempt to resuscitate her. They should have had her go all Ed Harris in “The Abyss” on Tina. “Fight! Fight!” (*slaps Tina*) That would have been both awesome and fitting, since her character is experiencing all sorts of rage and conflict.

“Listen, baby, I love you for helping me betray our country, but there’s no way I’m leaving my wife for you. Have you seen her? She’s hot. And you talk like a muppet.”

So they kill Beaker and Tina, but First Daughter Olivia Taylor continues to live and breathe. If anyone is looking for proof on why life isn’t fair, there it is. The scene between her and Mommy Dearest was hilarious, with Olivia acting like a sullen teenager. For a minute, I could have sworn that Olivia was even holding her breath, and man, was I hoping that Madame Prez would call her on it. “You realize that I have the power to bring a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘You’re grounded,’ right?”

So the slap fight between Jack and Jackie didn’t end in rough sex, as one commenter predicted, but it actually ended better than that. Is there anyone who is on Jackie’s side of this debate? I know I’m not, and I loved Jack telling her in not so many words, “We have a shitty job to do, so suck it up or quit.” Are we supposed to take her declaration that she was prepared to shoot him as foreshadowing? Ah, who am I kidding. This show never follows up on any of the seeds it plants. Remember Jack’s “nephew” from last season?

This week’s Big Reveal is that the young punk running point on this whole campaign is none other than the assistant to Senator Blaine “my name is a major appliance” Mayer (henceforth known as Senator Red Forman). A brilliant move on the writers’ part, actually, since his boss already wants Jack Bauer behind bars. Still, you had to love the look on his face right before the final clock, when he realized that he was about to be in the line of fire. Hey, if you’re going to commit high treason against your country, be prepared to make some sacrifices.

My wife did not like the conversation between Tony and Jack on the steps. Tony seemed a little off to her, and I see what she means. Could they be opening the door for Tony to still be a bad guy? I hope not, for a couple of reasons, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. And as Inigo Montoya once said, I hate waiting.

Lastly, the selfish writing staff of “24” are getting stingy with the ‘Damn its.’ Only one this week (Beaker). Don’t they realize that people are playing a drinking game to their show? Come on, guys, do your job.

If last week closed to the sound of the studio blinking – we can’t show a chemical factory meltdown, there would be panic! – tonight’s episode featured the jarring sound of metal on metal as the show hit its first real snag. Dudley Do-Right uttered one of the most painful Straw Man lines in the show’s history (“The rules are what make us better,” ugh), and Jack winds up killing yet another person that could have blown the case wide open. For as much as we love Jack’s tendency to torture first and follow protocol later, would it kill them to have him bring the authorities a living bad guy once in a while?

Actually, that whole conversation by the pool was laughable. DDR is all upset about Jacqueline’s willingness to do things Jack’s way, but not once did either Jack or Jackie say to DDR, “We’re not going to hurt the wife or the child! We just have to make Vossler think we’re going to hurt them.” Jesus, that’s Negotiation 101, isn’t it? I thought that Jackie was being hard on the woman at first, but then I realized that if she’s too nice and explains everything, it won’t put the proper fear of God in Vossler. When his wife/widow says to her afterward, “You’re a monster,” I was hoping Jackie would return with something along the lines of, “Your husband is a traitor to his country, takes his orders from a brutal African dictator, and just participated in the kidnapping of the First Man, so you can suck it. Oh, and he’s dead now. Smooches.”

“Can you do me a favor and give me that smoldering stare just long enough for everyone in the office to know that we’re sleeping together? There, that’s perfect, thanks.”

I was amused at the sister of Col. Ike Turner’s girlfriend – her real name is Marika, but you just know that we have to call her Tina – blackmailing Ike. I’m surprised he didn’t laugh out loud when she did it, since he knows she’s in a wheelchair and was probably thinking about feeding her to dogs the entire time.

Once again, President Taylor shows tremendous stones for realizing that what Ike Turner is asking of her is no different than what she asked of the people who lost loved ones on the colliding planes. I was also glad that they had one of Ike’s henchmen remind him that if they kill the First Man, they will have played all their bargaining chips. Ike’s willingness to do it anyway leads me to believe that the show is about to abandon this entire plot – and two things in the scenes for next week’s episode confirm that – and I gotta say, I’m not sure how I feel about that. This isn’t going to turn into Jack Bauer Week on Court TV, is it? God, how boring would that be? But you just know that the rabid Attorney General is looming off camera with the pitchfork and the torch. If they don’t pick that thread back up, it will be a tremendous oversight. When they do pick it up, it’ll be sanctimonious and dull.

So the First Man takes a gunshot to the midsection and is going to live, while Vossler takes a knife to the stomach and dies instantly. Hmmm. Yes, the First Man’s shot is off to the left, but that means it punctured a kidney and would speed up the organ failure, yes? I don’t know much about that sort of thing, to be honest – just that a lack of a kidney is what saved John Locke on “Lost” a while back.

And sure enough, just as I predicted (not that it was a stretch, I know), Janis is wise to Billy Walsh’s philandering ways. Of course, there is no reason for us to witness that exchange unless it leads to something down the road, so what could that something be? Is Erika the mole, and using Billy’s clearance to set him up? That’s the most obvious answer, so let’s come up with a better one: Janis is the mole, and will use Billy’s affair as a means to pin the whole thing on Billy by saying, “He’s cheating on his wife, he can’t be trusted.” Nah, that’s just as lame as Erika using Billy for clearance. They should just have Billy be the mole, hiding in plain sight. No one expects him to actually be the bad guy, right? So make him the bad guy.

One last thought: Ike Turner has proceeded to screw up a whole bunch of stuff in the last two hours. The location of their ops center was blown, he didn’t pull the trigger on the chemical plant failure, and the CIP device has been destroyed. His attempt to use the First Man as leverage has failed, and now his backup hideout has been ransacked and the First Man recovered. This man works for, as we mentioned, a brutal dictator. Isn’t he as good as dead right now? Anyone remember the shot in “The Last King of Scotland” of what Amin did to his wife when she tried to hide the evidence of her infidelity? Isn’t that what’s waiting for Ike? If his head isn’t on a stake by season’s end, we’ve been gypped.

The ‘Damn It’ counter went into overdrive this week. I counted four, which puts us at 14 for the season, far behind where I thought we’d be after eight hours. Pick up the pace, you slackers.