Well that was surprising.
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?
I thought the 2 hours was pretty good. Some decent action (for once), a car drove off a roof, and someone got their neck slit…not bad, if you ask me.
Good call on Vader’s Chamber analogy.