A Waste Of A Great Supervillain Moment

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that this season’s villain [My Name is] Jonas Hodges could be the best yet bad guy we’ve seen on 24 because he is similar to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, nemesis of James Bond.

Well the comparison stays apt, because one of the few interesting scenes in tonight’s episode of 24 showed Hodges acting in a Blofeldian manner, even if (forgive the pun) the execution wasn’t all the same.

It’s possible that there were things about tonight’s episode that I wasn’t seeing, but for the most part, I found it boring, especially in the White House scenes.  All of that drama was between the President, the Sherri Palemeresque First Daughter and the (soon to be former) Chief of Staff.

Jack and Tony met up with lucky to be alive security guard Karl before taking on a team of Blofeld Hodges’ lackeys over a shipping container full of Sentox Nerve Gas a mystery chemical or bacterological agent.  That action, taking place in the last 15 minutes of the hour was interesting.  Although, I was befuddled as to why Jack and Tony didn’t take on team terror right away.  Or at least make it look like Karl killed the goon (hey, it could’ve happened!) so as not to arouse suspicion that they were on the case.

Other than the final scenes involving the shootout and Jack’s theft of the big rig, the only other interesting part of tonight’s episode was Hodges’ meeting of SPECTRE the Starkwood Board of Directors.  Hodges was quite animated during this meeting, even taking some time to deal with a dissenter on the board who looked like Bryan Cranston (the guy who played Dr. Tim Whatley on Seinfeld).  The one thing that surprised me about this scene was we didn’t see the Whatley wannabe die–either in front of the rest of the Starkwood Board or during their private moment together.  Even after Whatley accused him of murdering Senator That 70s Show, Hodges kept his cool and didn’t have Whatley walk over a gimmicked bridge that fell into a shark pit.  Hodges makes a great villain, but that was his moment to shine, and he dropped the ball.

One other thing about this episode- at the end when Jack was on the horn with Special Agent Larry Fine, I was wondering- is Jack now off the hook?  You think that Larry would call the White House and clear up the situation.  But then again, this is Larry we’re dealing with.

I leave you tonight with an image of a man and his truck.

What did you think?