Help–Jack Bauer's Brain Is Missing!

Throughout his career as a government agent, Jack Bauer has a history of being one step ahead of everyone else.  Bad guys, good guys, idiot family members, Jack is portrayed as the sharpest knife in the drawer that is the 24-verse.  As a viewer, it’s fun- cheering for the guy who is always right and always gets things done.

But tonight, I have to admit my faith in Jack was broken.  True, Jack’s pursuit of Ike and the information to take down the conspiracy achieved their goals, but he made two missteps along the way that resulted in me shouting at the TV, questioning whether Jack was out of his mind.

First, after pulling Ike’s seemingly lifeless body out of a flaming car, Jack left Ike there to lay on the sidewalk while he helped Special Agent Renee attempt to save Martika.  

Not that I have anything against saving the life of someone who helped you nail the bad guy, but I’ve watched way too much TV to expect Ike to still be laying there when Jack is done trying to save Martika.

Secondly, shortly after procuring a chip from Ike’s body, Jack proceeds to hand said MacGuffin over to a random police officer who just so happened to be standing by a helicopter.  Now, that chip contained the names and information on all of the government agents involved in the conspiracy, right?  Then why would Jack hand that over to some random police officer?

Luckily, neither of these missteps came back to bite Jack in the ass.  Hopefully, Jack’s brain was catching up on its sleep this episode and his body was on autopilot.  Jack will be back to normal next week (I hope).

Despite Jack’s questionable decisions, the whole pursuit of Ike and retrieval of the microchip is over.  But the name of the game is 24, not 9, and there’s more to talk about.

One thing I’ve always hated is the dragging out of storylines involving moles.  That’s why I’m happy that even though I called it a few weeks ago, it was a nice surprise Special Agent Bryllcreem was quickly found out and apprehended. It really wasn’t surprising that he manipulated the trampy FBI agent.  Nor was it surprising he framed and killed her. It was surprising that Special Agent Larry Fine has his act together enough to figure out what was going on (although he did have help from Chlöe) and put a stop to Brylcreem’s tratorious ways. I actually was proud of Larry during the moment pictured to the right.  However, that pride went away when Larry let Brylcreem go after after Brylcreem asked to speak to a lawyer.  Larry should have responded to the effect of: “Your lawyer’s on his way.  His name is Jack Bauer.”  Or he should at least squeezed his upper left arm a little.

Some other things:

-Larry likes to go on and on about how much better the FBI is than CTU.  I hate to tell you this Larry, but CTU had surveillance cameras in their server rooms.

-I feel like I ask this every season, but are there any family members of main characters out there who are not annoying?  I get this twitch everytime the show even mentions a family member and an undeniable urge to find that person and slap some sense into them.

-This week’s 24-flashback moment: a bad guy has a chip containing sensitive information implanted between his ribs.  I’m just glad this chip didn’t take nine hours to decode.

-So Ike’s weasly in-country contact is actually Senator That 70’s Show’s aide.  And Bill is asking the President to “talk to” Senator That 70’s Show.  Yeah, there’s gonna be some conflict there.

-If you want more 24, check out Blogs.4Bauer.

What did you think?