Jack Goes Rogue. For Ten Minutes.

At least once a season in 24, Jack Bauer will go rogue.  Whether it’s to save a colleague, a family member, or to exact vengeance on a villain in a way the government won’t let him, Jack throws all rules aside and acts as a free agent.  Heaven help those, good or bad, who get in his way.  Usually, Jack’s rogue status lasts a few episodes, by which time, either Jack lets himself be taken into custody or the authorities realize Jack is right and get out of the way.

Well, in Day Eight of 24, Jack Bauer went rogue.  And it lasted all of ten minutes.

Because he sensed that Agent Renee was being set up to be a patsy, Jack set out to rescue her from an oddly-timed inquisition by a justice department investigator.  To do so, he made his way through the crack CTU security like so:

(In that second frame, Jack is giving the security guy a high five. To the throat).  Jack stops the interrogation, but is quickly dispatched as he tries to flee by a taser to the back.

Later, in a meeting with Hunchback Hastings, Jack gets ready to depart CTU before realizing that the 12-year-old agent Hastings picked to lead a raid to find the nuclear materials couldn’t lead a shoplifting raid on a candy store.  So Jack volunteered to lead the raid for Hastings in exchange for Agent Renee’s freedom.  There was also another part of their conversation that went something like this:

That was most of the interesting stuff that happened in tonight’s episode of 24.  To wrap up everything else, Agent Freddy showed up and kept Dana from killing the rubes by killing them himself.  Lester from Chuck (the IRKian president’s weasly little brother with the Tony Almeida memorial soulpatch) double-crossed Sark, killing him.  But Lester’s new crew wants to use the nuclear materials against the U.S., so Lester tried to escape and informed CTU.  And that’s another hour in the books for Day eight.

Some other thoughts:

-I’d still like some hint of who the big major super villain for this season is/will be.  Most of these bad guys are rotating in and out so quickly that I can’t keep track.  I think Papa set a new record for quickest transition from evildoer to wimp.

-Hunchback Hastings actually seemed like he didn’t want to play along with turning Agent Renee into a patsy.  Maybe his scoliosis medication increases his conscience.

-The third single tear this season for Agent Renee.  She’s gonna set a new record, I tell you!

-Agent Freddy told the rubes never to cross the state line.  But he and Dana live in New York and the park the rubes were in was near a strip club in Jersey City (in New Jersey).  So which state line was he referring to?  Was he telling the rubes not to ever enter New Jersey again?  That’s pretty pointless if he wants to keep them away from Dana.  There are plenty of ways to get to New York without going through Jersey.

-So the Dana subplot is mostly done.  Yay.  I understand they have to give us some other stories to take up time, but in the past, (for the most part), viewers cared about the supporting characters (or grew to like them).  Thing is, they’ve killed off everyone and so we’re left with a rehashed plot like a CTU agent being manipulated by petty criminals who have nothing to do with the main plot.  Gets a little frustrating.

What did you think?

Posted in 24

Published by

One thought on “Jack Goes Rogue. For Ten Minutes.

  1. […] 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. […]

Comments are closed.