Nine years (our time, not his) and eight seasons of 24 later, Jack might dispute that assertion (or at least say he had eight really long, bad days).  Despite the changes in presidential administrations, CTU staff and nefarious villains, one constant has remained: Jack Bauer will put himself on the line for what is right.

And here he is today, at the end of his eighth longest (and final) day.  The U.S. government is in turmoil, a foreign government he nearly decapitated will be gunning for him and Jack Bauer is a man without a country.  Hardly the thanks one would get for putting ones life on the line.

But Jack Bauer would have it no other way.

Despite all the conniving and cover-ups, in the end, President Taylor decided not to sign the peace agreement, thanks to a video file (attached to the audio evidence) recorded by Jack, likely for his daughter Kim’s eyes.  But it took a lot to get there.  Jack got into the secure perimeter by commandeering the vehicle of Logan’s main flunky.  He had Logan in his sights and was planning to assassinate the Russian President Suvarov, but was dissuaded by Chlöe, who convinced him there was a better way.  Jack was apprehended by CTU, but thanks to Logan, his escort was ambushed and Jack was about to be killed before President Taylor (who had seen the error of her ways) stepped in.  She’s going to resign for her part in the cover-up and urged Jack to leave the country.  And once again, Jack Bauer is on the run.

Overall, it was a decent final episode.  It’s the third or fourth final hour in which Jack was out of it for most of the episode, letting the rest of CTU take care of the action.  And as rumored, it sets the story up for a possible movie franchise (Jack vs. Russia).

As much as the story of the last few hours was driven by Jack’s quest for revenge for Renee’s death, it was also driven by Logan’s desire for revenge against Jack.  A few weeks ago, Logan expressed his opinion that Jack ruined him, and not his own criminal actions.  Logan’s continued actions in his final hours-putting the hit out on Jack, crowning Pillar with a whiskey bottle, and ultimately, his attempted suicide were all results of his desire for revenge.  But he didn’t win.

And as much as he has his life, I’m not sure Jack’s a clear winner today either.  Sure, he was the hero, getting the truth about Hassan’s death out into the light.  Of course, he took out a number of Russians to do so, and it’s understandable that the Russians would be gunning for him.  But what I don’t get is why Taylor told him to leave the country.  She (or whoever the next president is) can protect Jack.  Rather, she’s driving him out into the open.  At least Chlöe gave him a nice head start.

Sure, I’ll watch the movies whenever they come out.  And it will be nice to see the adventures of Jack Bauer in a much shorter, more self-contained environment.

Some other thoughts:

-Felt bad for President Hassan most of this episode.  She was pretty much bullied into signing the treaty.  But that look she threw Suvarov at the end was worth all of the headaches earlier.

-Jack Bauer is unique in U.S. history.  He’s the first person to be the first told by two separate Presidents of their intention to resign their office.  But I don’t see that one making it into the 24-universe Trivial Pursuit.

-I actually watched this episode (at first) during the commercials of the Chuck finale.  Don’t know what that has to do with anything, just thought I’d mention it.

-I was surprised by Jack’s sleeperhold on Chlöe.  And she probably was too.  But at least the last few moments of the series were shared by the two of them.  It was only fitting.

-I’d say this season was above average.  Wasn’t one of the best, but it was far above the dreadful Season 6.  I’m sure I’ll miss this show, but it was time for it to be over.

See you on the big screen Jack!

What did you think?

I’ve said it before and it bears repeating- with 24′s end approaching, they’re going all out.  These last few hours have been all action with a constant stream of Jack Bauer kicking ass.  And I can’t complain.  Well, that’s not true.  I do have one small complaint about tonight’s episode.  We saw Jack take down (without using lethal force) a bunch of Secret Service agents.  He then fled the scene with a former president in tow.  He beat up Charles Logan (something he should have done five years ago).  He beat up a bunch of Russian goons in a parking garage.  But his final killing spree went unseen.  There were some promising images, including the one of the head consul with a poker through his chest.  Sadly, we did not get to see how that happened.

It seems as if everyone’s gunning for Jack.  The Russians tried and failed.  The Americans aren’t doing much better.  And it’s unsure who Jack’s final target will be this year- whether it’s the former bassist of Foghat Russian President Suvarov or will end up being U.S. President Taylor (although every other time he’s been on the show, Suvarov has been a good guy).  And it’s tough to imagine Jack taking out either President without serious international ramifications.  But ramifications be damned, the show is ending and all people want to see is Jack Bauer kill people in the most imaginative ways possible.  And get revenge, which is something he’s closer to doing.

One of my complaints earlier this season was  Jack constantly falling victim to the same tactics villains have used in the past.  At the end of tonight’s episode, it was revealed that Jack planted a bug on Logan which enabled him to find out the depth of the conspiracy.  A similar thing happened back in season five, with Jack outsmarting Logan the same way.  It would be hypocritical of me to not complain over this, but I’m not going to.  I thought it was a great callback to their previous encounters.  I’m only hoping that Jack took the opportunity to record the half of the conversation that he heard and is able to use that to his advantage later on.

While the big story here is Jack’s revenge tour, another element is his bringing the conspiracy to light.  And it’s looking like that will be tougher and tougher to do, with the President cracking down on any and all evidence.  As Logan told her, disaster looms (not just for her, but for the country) if the truth gets out.  But how does this season end with it not?

Taylor’s first mistake was listening to Logan. And since then, she’s become more like him.  It would have been nice to have her have a little more backbone (especially after last season), but you know what they say, once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

I have to admit, I’ve spent the past week thinking that after the LOST finale on Sunday, I’m not really going to be in the mood to watch the end of 24.  But with the direction the show is taking, I’m looking forward to next Monday.

Some other thoughts:

-The scene where Jack took out Logan’s car in the tunnel was awesome.  Even more impressive was the fact that Jack did it without killing any of the Secret Service agents.  I don’t think they’d allow a sitting President’s motorcade to travel down a tunnel.

-I can’t take credit for this, this is all The Civee: “Jack is still showing him some respect…he’s calling Logan Mr. President!”

-I’m not sure what Chlöe, Arlo and Agent Freddy are up to.  It’s nice that they’re in Jack’s corner.  But if it comes down to a head-to-head, I don’t see Agent Freddy stopping Jack.

What did you think?

So once again, thanks to a SIM card that survived digestion, Jack Bauer has his target: former President Charles Logan.  After an awesome scene which saw him take out a group of Russian special agents in a department store, Jack (with a little help from Michael Madsen) captured the shooter responsible for Agent Renee’s death.  Meanwhile, at CTU, Chlöe and the formerly pervy Arlo worked behind the scenes to help Jack.  And at the UN, Logan continued to try to get himself back in the President’s good graces while trying to pick out a tie to wear on his first date with President (Mrs.) Hassan.

Or something like that.

Oh yeah, and Jack snapped by torturing the shooter six ways from Sunday before cutting him open to retrieve a SIM card from his gastrointestinal tract.

Even though tonight’s episode served to get things in place for the final three hours of the season, it was a good episode.  Just as it’s fun to watch the weasely Logan worm his way back into the public spotlight (because being on the 1:00 news is a good thing, right?), it’s also fun to watch Jack take out a bunch of bad guys in a crowded shopping mall.  Sure, the torture went a bit too far.  It’s a bit tough to take Jack as a good guy when (as Agent Freddy pointed out) he’s in the same ethical boat as those behind the conspiracy he’s trying to uncover.  But this is 24, and ethics schmethics, Jack Bauer is still fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

Only thing is, he only has three hours left.

boop…boop…boop

What did you think?

Because we are nearing the end of 24 (save for some possible feature films sometime in the future), we the fans (at least those who would rather Google “Jack Bauer kills a guy with a screwdriver” than “President Wayne Palmer”) are getting what we want.  At this point, the show is light on boring political scenes, idiot family members and an unnecessary focus on incompetent bureaucrats.  Rather, we’re getting a lot of Jack going rogue, uncovering government conspiracies and killing bad guys.

This show can’t go out on a better note.

Tonight, Jack and Agent Freddy teamed up to rescue former Agent Dana from the clutches of the vile private security contractors.  They succeeded, although Jack took out poor D.B. Sweeney (still not using his toe pick).  Logan convinced President Taylor to put his lackey in charge of the Jack hunt, and then started coordinating with the Russians in an effort to take Jack out.  Dana escaped from Jack and Agent Freddy, but Jack tracked her down.  And then he killed her.

I have to admit, while I was sad to see it wasn’t Agent Freddy that got to kill Dana, I’m glad to see her go.  While her death was satisfying from a story standpoint, it had echoes of Jack’s best kill ever.  Jack secured the evidence linking the Russians to the conspiracy, yet Dana said she had more to offer.  Jack told her she didn’t.  Then promptly pulled the trigger.  In a way, it’s an homage to this line of dialogue:

Jack Bauer: You don’t have any more useful information, do you, Nina?
Nina Myers: (weakly) I do.
Jack Bauer: No, you don’t. (shoots and kills Nina)
(Day 3: 2:00am-3:00am)

If they’re going to re-use plot elements, I’m glad they’re re-using the good ones, as opposed to Jack getting fooled by the old car in the tunnel trick.

I liked this episode and don’t have much else to say other than the two following random thoughts:

-So Logan’s bootlick is now in charge of CTU.  For continuity’s sake, they probably should have brought back Miles Papazian, although there would be a few problems with brining him back.  First of all, for destroying the evidence linking Logan to the Season Five conspiracy, he’s probably in the middle of a nice long jail sentence.  Secondly, as a character, he was extremely annoying.  And bringing him back would force the writers into having Jack kill him off.  And there may not be enough time left in the day to justify that.

-Logan had quite a reaction to Mrs. Hassan’s speech (“What a magnificent woman”).  He’s been single for a few years.  She’s now single.  She’s a bit more mentally stable than his previous wife, and she’s definitely more modest (you won’t see anyone accuse her of being the first lady of cleavage), but I think these two could definitely make it work.

What did you think?

On the other hand, you have President Allison Taylor, who we learned last season was a person of such character that she’d sacrifice her family to do the right thing for her country.  But things have changed this season: she’s travelling down the path of corruption, escorted by former President Charles Logan, the poster boy for presidential corruption.

So Jack is doing what he’s done many times before to varying degrees of success.  And the President is uneasily participating in a cover-up to secure a peace deal.  It will be interesting to see how Jack and the President converge and if both, one or neither will get what they want.

Also tonight, we met two new characters.  Michael Madsen is playing the part of Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State. And one of the new American villains, a private security contractor, is played by D.B. Sweeney, who hasn’t been seen since (one of The Civee’s favorite movies) The Cutting Edge.

Jack’s helicopter escape didn’t last long, as he landed, evaded the NYPD and enlisted the help of Michael Madsen for some weapons.  Logan talked President Taylor into turning former Agent Dana over to Sweeney’s private security firm.  Chlöe outsmarted Sweeney, and tried outsmarting Jack by giving him a fake address of where Sweeney was taking Dana.  Ethan quit, telling the President he could not support the choices she was making.  Jack knew Chlöe was setting him up, attacked the CTU agents guarding the dry cleaning facility and had a nice talk with Agent Freddy over his responsibility for the day’s actions.

So Jack and Agent Freddy are now teamed up to find former Agent Dana to get the truth about the conspiracy.  Chlöe is torn between serving her President and Jack.  And President Taylor is protecting the Russians and pulling the wool over the IRKians eyes by not telling them that their new peace partners killed President Omar.

It’s surprising that this day’s events, which at one point seemed so convoluted, actually make sense now.  Still, it’s clear that Jack and former President Logan are the only players with an actual plan, while everyone else seems to be making it up as they go along.  As Ethan hinted in his post-resignation conversation with Logan, Logan did have everything (with the possible exception of Jack’s involvement) planned out all along.  Whether his plan is to pull Taylor down to his level, or to simply make himself look good in the eyes of the public, the outcome of his plan will have some ethical casualties.  I’m not saying that I’m as into the political part of the storyline as I am Jack’s actions, but I’m looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.  As I mentioned above, it will be very unlike 24 to give us a happy ending for both Jack and President Taylor.  Someone is going to end up disappointed.  And once again, it’s looking like Charles Logan is the reason why.

One final thought about tonight’s episode: after Jack stormed the dry cleaning facility, he talked Agent Freddy into helping him on his quest for truth.  Even without knowing about Freddy and Dana’s adventure with the rubes earlier in the day, Jack spelled it out for Freddy: his involvement with Dana made him complicit in her actions.  Whether that’s true or not, it gave Freddy the motivation he needed to get on team Bauer.  Now hopefully, his motivation isn’t to reunite with his one time love, but rather to get vengance, Bauer-style.

What did you think?

Now that President Hassan is dead, the focus of the season seems to be bringing the Russians and the IRKians together to complete the peace treaty.  The Russians clearly don’t want to sign on, so they’re playing tough to get.  To get the Russians on board, President Taylor has enlisted the help of one of the series’ best villains, former President Charles Logan, last seen stabbed through the neck by his crazy ex-wife.

Meanwhile, Agent Renee may have spotted a Russian mobster as part of a paramedic team, but Jack told her to forget it.  They went back to Jack’s place for a romantic interlude where, after the aforementioned interlude, the previously mentioned mobster picked Renee off from across the street.

And at the beginning of this week’s episode, Jack is pissed.

This week, we found out something big: that the Russian government (or a group within the government) has been behind everything this season- from the involvement of the Papa’s mob to the IRKians getting their hands on the nuclear materials to President Omar’s death.  It was all so that Russia would have a way to get the peace treaty to fall apart before it even had a chance to be signed.

And somehow, Charles Logan knew about all of this.  As we found out tonight, he has contacts everywhere who filled him in on everything.  And he used that information to blackmail the Russians into reversing their stance.  He succeeds, but there’s another wrench thrown into his plan to regain respectability: Jack Bauer is on a quest to bring Renee’s killers to justice.

Jack, out for revenge (which he’s calling “justice”), had an interesting chat with the former Agent Dana where she promised to reveal information about the perpetrators of the plot in exchange for the immunity she narrowly missed a few weeks ago.  Jack almost gets this information.

Yet Logan, who is either still playing up a hidden agenda or simply holding a grudge against Jack, urges President Taylor to put the peace agreement above getting the truth out there.  Taylor agrees and orders Jack detained and Dana held in solitary until the events of the day blow over.

Jack doesn’t like that idea.  Neither does Chlöe, who’s now in charge at CTU (the President’s staff having decided that Hunchback Hastings was responsible for a lot of the things that went wrong earlier in the day).  Chlöe doesn’t agree with the President’s decision, but plays along and watches in surprise as Jack commandeers the helicopter that was supposed to ferry him off to the Air Force Base and far away from the peace conference. As tonight’s episode closed, Chlöe ordered the Air Force to take out Jack’s chopper.  Once again, Jack is rogue, and hopefully for more than the ten minutes he spent on the other side of the law earlier this season.

Even if Jack only had a few key scenes tonight, this was a solid episode that set up the final hours of this day (not to mention the final hours of the season).  We have Charles Logan trying to play the part of the good guy (while it looks like he has a more insidious agenda).  The President is determined to see the peace agreement signed, even if it means sacrificing her principles.  Jack is rogue.  Chlöe, who has consistently been the smartest person at CTU is now in charge.  However, her first assignment is anything but enviable: she’s going to have to try and stop Jack.

Logan is a compelling character and it’s great to see him back.  I have a feeling we’ll be guessing until the final hour whether he’s truly trying to redeem himself or whether he’s got more sinister motives.  If he’s going to be a villain, they couldn’t have picked a better choice.  However, the more interesting storyline over the next few hours (hopefully) will be the Chlöe vs. Jack struggle.

For the past five seasons, she’s been the one person who has had Jack’s back (and vice versa).  Now, she has to stop him.  And it’s not like previous authority figures who were either incompetent or hated by the 24 fanbase.  Chlöe is the first likable person (well, I suppose first likable person since Bill Buchanan) who has had to stop Jack.  The audience is as close to her as a character as it is to Jack.  I think this is a great setup for the series’ final stretch.

And as I mentioned before, Logan is back.  Here’s a guy that went from clueless putz to evil mastermind and has made all of the series’ other villains pale in comparison (except for brief stretches of the Blofeldian Jonas Hodges).  Sure- his character has a clear motivation- he wants his legacy back.  It appears that by doing one good act to get this treaty signed, he will have put himself back in a position of good.  However, the 24 audience knows better.   His dealings with the foreign minister, where after ordering an espresso for breakfast, did not quite fit with his new ethical public persona.  He has contacts and information and was threatening the minister with these facts.  Even after hearing his plan was successful, he pressed the President to proceed with the signing, regardless of how he brought the Russians back to the table.  But more telling was his response to hearing Jack Bauer was involved: “Bauer torpedoed my presidency…he tried to ruin me….he almost did.“

Here is Logan at his most delusional.  Jack was just doing his job.  Logan’s actions in Season five being brought to light (where he ordered the assassination of several Americans, including a former President, allowed terrorists to attempt to kill the Russian President on American soil and planned a terrorist attack against Americans) brought him down. Jack got that information out there, but Logan was the one who signed off on those actions.  To blame Jack for his personal downfall possibly shows us his true motivations. And it will be interesting to see how they play out.

Some other thoughts:

-Now that Logan’s back and dealing with the Russians, I hope they bring back former Foghat bassist Nick Jameson to play the part of Russian President Suvarov.

-Six hours left and no sign of Aaron. Maybe the Secret Service Agent that Logan wanted dismissed will be replaced by an old friend.

-Only one re-used plot device was obvious tonight: the audio file of doom (from Season 2).

What did you think?

Also, I’ve been unable to convince The Civee to name our daughter Chlöe.  You win some and you lose some.  I hope everyone out there has a good night and enjoys the episode.

First off, I didn’t realize until late this afternoon that tonight’s episode of 24 was to be two hours.  But the clock is winding down, and with May a handful of weeks away, I guess FOX decided to speed up the final hours of the last longest day of Jack Bauer’s life.

As for surprising, well, (and this is something we’ve seen on 24 before), sometimes you (and in this case, Jack, President Taylor and the rest of CTU) have one of those days where you do everything right, hit all your marks, but everything goes wrong.  Well for Jack, it went very wrong…

…it all started going wrong for Jack when President Omar decided to sacrifice himself, knocking Jack out with a crowbar and going with the rouge special forces operative.  The operative turned over Omar to Tarin and the terror bunch, and CTU ended up with the nuclear device.  Meanwhile, the bad guys still had President Omar, so after Jack let President Taylor know about General Egghead’s plot, Jack committed grand theft auto and enrolled Chlöe in his dual quest to track down the CTU mole and Tarin.

President Taylor arrested General Egghead.  Agent Dana (the CTU mole) tipped off Tarin, who sacrificed himself in a parking garage while another getaway driver secreted President Omar to Samir’s secret hideaway.  Meanwhile, Dana’s moleishness was revealed, and she struck a deal- Samir’s location for her freedom and the promise that Jack lead the rescue team.  As the Russians threatened to pull out of the peace agreement, Samir broadcast his “trial” over the Internet, Jack, Agent Dana, Agent Freddie and a CTU squad stormed the apartment building and killed Samir and his goons.  But it was too late.  In a chilling end, it was revealed that the feed was delayed and Samir had already killed President Hassan.

And with eight (or so) hours left, we’re wondering where the story goes from here.  CTU has the bomb.  President Omar and his killers are all dead.  The CTU mole is in custody, as is General Egghead. My guess is that it all comes down to the Russians (yet again).  At least the last eight hours will be a clean slate and we’ll get another (and hopefully final) main villain with whom to end Jack Bauer’s television career.

Despite the fact that we didn’t get what I was hoping to see (from last week’s promo), I was very happy with tonight’s episodes.  Yeah, yeah, they recycled some plotlines (broadcasting a show trial over the Internet has been done before, and the garage swticheroo is practically the same as the old car in the tunnel trick), but we got enough action and plot movement (not to mention a shocking ending) to make it all worthwhile.

Some other thoughts:

-Poor, poor Agent Dana.  Not only did she not get paid by her mysterious benefactor, but the rescue mission didn’t work out.  That probably invalidates her pardon agreement.  They’ll probably keep her around because she might provide a clue as to the identity (or something about) the villain for the day’s remaining hours.

-There’s probably some inverse proportions law here, but ever since Dana’s moleishness was revealed, Arlo has been a lot less annoying.  I didn’t think he’d live after his encounter with Dan in the server room, but he did.  I was expecting him to either rat out Dana or bite the big one.  And while he did neither, he wasn’t that bad either of the two hours tonight.

-The doors to the interrogation room they held Agent Dana in reminded me a lot of Darth Vader’s chamber in the Empire Strikes Back.

-After Jack noticed that President Omar was killed, they showed the computers playing the feed.  Shouldn’t he have cut the feed or something?

-Rob (General Egghead’s treasonous accomplice) got off lightly, only getting a slap from the President.  Although, when she told Rob that she’d throw the switch herself, I believed her.

What did you think?

In it’s early seasons, 24 was a revolutionary show.  Everything came together in the show’s fifth season, which represented the peak of the story of Jack Bauer.  But after that, the show suffered a sharp decline.  Season Six was easily the show’s worst.  But in the past two seasons, the show has rebounded somewhat, becoming interesting (although no longer groundbreaking) once again.

I’m looking forward to the end of the series because Jack Bauer the character will (hopefully) get closure and peace.  I also think that ending the series will be a good thing because while the stories of Days Seven and Eight have been entertaining (or at least better than Day Six), many of the story devices seem (to a long time fan with a good memory) like we’ve seen them before.  Two weeks ago, I bemoaned the terrorist’s use of a tunnel to hide a getaway and an EMP device.  Well, story elements once again seem familiar as Jack has to put up with members of the president’s cabinet working against her and a (quasi) major character suffering a heart attack.

Earlier this season, there were a few episodes in a row where I remarked you could miss the first 40 (or so) minutes, but as long as you caught the last 20, you were fine.  Tonight was another one of those episodes.  During tonight’s first 40 minutes, the (newly) evil Agent Dana passed along information about police roadblocks to the terror crew.  President Taylor talked with the terrorists, who wanted President Hassan of the IRK turned over in exchange for not detonating their nuclear device.  While President Taylor refused to give in to the terrorists, some bald-headed guy pretending to be a general talked Taylor’s chief of staff into going against the president’s wishes and sending in a commando team to extricate Hassan to turn him over to the terrorists.  Meanwhile, Jack was busy escorting the Hassan family out of the U.N.

And that was the first 40 minutes.  Once Jack got the Hassans out of the tunnel, they were ambushed by the world’s quickest commando team who killed a bunch of Secret Service agents (sacrificing themselves so Jack and the Hassans could escape).  Jack, Agent Renee and President Hassan fought back against the commandos before overcoming one of them and finding out their orders came from General Egghead.  With the terrorists poised to strike, the unlucky soldier told Jack he had to turn over Hassan.  But Jack had the perfect response: “I don’t take orders from anybody but the President of the United States.”

And that’s pretty much what happened.  Like I mentioned earlier, the sedition thing’s been done.  And Ethan’s heart attack (which I thought he was faking to get himself free) was kinda-sorta done already too, with the pills really hammering the point home.  My problem with this plot line rests in General Egghead.

In the picture, the General is the guy in the top frame in the suit.  Every other time we’ve seen a general on this show, they’ve been in uniform.  Granted, tonight, the U.S. Army wasn’t painted in the best light (much like the NYPD earlier this season), and maybe he was out of uniform to give a bit of a rogue element to his character.  Still, I hope he sticks around to get his comeuppance.

One other interesting development tonight was finding out the full name of the main bad guy in charge (so far) this season:

Yup, it’s good old Samir Mehran.  So far, he’s the one responsible for all the chaos this season.  Thing is, we know nothing about him.  In other seasons, we’d get some brief biographical information about him from either his co-workers or some random person at CTU.  But on Samir, we’ve got nothing.  We first met him in a warehouse and we know that he’s a pissed off IRK-ian.  Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.

I don’t really have anything else to say about tonight.  I have to admit, the previews for next week looked pretty good.  And I can only hope that if they choose to re-use old story elements, they pick some good ones.

What did you think?

However, during the last two days, Chloe was always treated as a sideshow- forced to withstand the mendacity of the intellectually challenged Agents Janis, Arlo and Dana.  But tonight, that all changed.  24 may be the story of the longest days in Jack Bauer’s life, but tonight’s episode was all Chloe.

It would be an understatement to say that Chloe has been underused this season.  Just like last season, Chloe has played the part of a fish out of water in the new CTU (although last year, it was the FBI). But in her actions tonight to get CTU back up and running after an EMP attack, Chloe’s story brought me back to simpler times when she stopped a terrorist’s runaway car with an automatic weapon.  Or that time she put down a lecherous barfly with a taser.

With CTU’s computer system out of commission thanks to an EMP attack and the NSA honing in on CTU’s territory, Chloe took matters into her own hands and went rogue, Bauer-style.  She pulled a gun on the head NSA tech and locked herself in the server room, trying a risky procedure to get the computers back online.  Her plan almost didn’t work, and was nearly foiled before Hastings stepped in to give her more time.  Not only did she restore CTU’s servers, but she also got Agent Renee back in the action, as she was the one person Chloe trusted to help Jack, who was unreachable.

I did worry for Chloe for a second, after she got the computers back online.  One of the servers blew a circuit (technical term) and Chloe told Hastings that she needed another minute or two in the server room.  Usually, it’s at that moment when the whole system goes kablooey (another technical term) and fries any and all in the vicinity.  Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and Chloe was back upstairs getting everything else under control.

In a surprise development, I have to say that I’m starting to like Hastings.  Sure, he’s still a perv.  And he’s got that hunchback thing going on.  But lately, he’s been showing some backbone.  Early on this season, he looked like another pencil pusher whose priority was anything but fighting terrorists.  But lately, whether it’s standing up to the FBI, striking a deal with Jack, or sitting back and letting Chloe do her thing, he’s been an effective head of CTU.  And that’s good to see.

His only shortcoming tonight was, as Chloe suggested, not sending any reinforcements into the field for Jack.  Jack, Agent Owen, Agent Freddy and some other CTU agent tracked the bad guys to a pier and were immediately pinned down by snipers.  They sat out the longest shoot-out (necessary for everything to go down at CTU) before Jack made a play to use the world’s last landline phone to call CTU.  Jack’s play involved stealing an idea from the A-Team; cannibalizing his vehicle for a shield.

Unfortunately, Agent Owen and the other member of the CTU junior squad had never seen an episode of the A-Team.  Consequently, they panicked, not realizing the shield would hold.  And they died.  Letting Agent Freddy make a run for the phone, Jack took a few bullets to his vest and ended up in one of the sniper’s crosshairs before being saved by the return of Agent Renee.

Unfortunately, while Jack, Freddy and Renee stopped the snipers, the main terror squad, headed up by Tarin and the dude with the goatee was across the river, loading the nuclear rods into a taxi.  And in tonight’s most shocking development, they now have an ally at CTU.  Agent Dana gave 24 fans even more of a reason to hate her- in addition to having a horrible, boring sub-plot, she’s now evil, making a phone call to the terrorists in the episode’s closing minutes.

In addition to the call, she also killed Stephen Root.  In the discussion after last week’s episode, pretty much everyone thought that Root’s character would turn out to be much more than a parole officer.  Unfortunately, he was just that, and he went out like a chump.  I thought it was upsetting because it was a waste of such a great actor, even if the idea of some jabroni parole officer making himself at home at CTU during a terrorist attack was implausible to say the least.  At least Root got something out of his death scene by copping a feel on Dana as she choked him out.

Dana thought she was being clever by hiding his body in a super-sized ventilation duct.  However, she apparently didn’t notice one thing: she left her fingerprints all over the room.

I think CTU’s crack squad is going to trace this back to her and soon, thanks to some lingering odors.  I’m not talking about his body decomposing, at least not yet.  But Root’s character was in the car all day.  He was probably overripe before he got to CTU.  That room won’t be smelling CTU fresh for long.

Overall, I thought tonight’s episode was above average, especially in the wake of the last few weeks.  I’m glad Dana’s evil, because now I have a rational reason for disliking her.  I’d still like there to be a bigger bad guy, but there’s time for that.

One other thought:

-CTU started recovery efforts pretty quickly.  Last week, I bemoaned the fact that CTU’s machinery wasn’t protected from an EMP attack.  According to Popular Mechanics, it’s costly, but not that difficult.

What did you think?