Jack enlists the help of an autistic man to help thwart the terrorists.
6:03 PM – Bill Buchanan introduces Mike Doyle, the new head of field ops. I really don’t know how we’re supposed to take this guy seriously when he’s a dead ringer for Timmy from the show “Lassie”.
6:04 PM – Uh-oh. Milo just called Doyle a jerk.
Now I know why this show is rated TV-14 for strong language.
6:05 PM – With both hands tied, Jack managed to use a belt to wrangle a gun away from the Russian agent who was going to kill him. He then shot him. For the life of me, it looked like Bauer hit him in the knee cap, but then the guy fell to the floor like he was dead. After multiple TiVo replays, there’s no way it was actually a kill shot, but the lack of blood makes it impossible to tell where the shot was actually supposed to go. Because he’s Jack Bauer, we’ll credit him with the kill. And yes, I’m well aware that I need to get a life.
6:07 PM – Jack phones into CTU and says to Morris. “This is Jack, listen I know where to find Gredenko, he’s…” Click. The Russian Consulate shut down the phone lines.
Seriously Jack, haven’t you learned yet? This is the third time this has happend in the past twenty minutes! Just spit out the information!
6:10 PM – Mike Doyle roughs up Morris because he didn’t give him information quickly enough. You would think that someone who fell down a well and was saved by his dog would be a little more magnanimous.
6:20 PM – Martha Logan and Aaron the Secret Service agent make a return. President Logan calls them and tries to convince Martha to speak to the first lady of Russia about allowing CTU to take down the Russian Consulate.
You just know we’re in for forty more minutes of bickering…
6:31 PM – President Logan just landed a chopper on the lawn of Martha’s senior citizen’s residence. None of the old people are even batting an eyelash. They’re just playing their tennis game like nothing’s going.
I don’t care how senile you are, when the ex-President of the United States lands in a helicopter twenty feet away from you, you don’t keep playing tennis. These are the things I notice…
6:31 PM – The awkward first meeting between President Logan and Aaron. It’s really got to burn you when you were once the most powerful man in the world and now you’re under house arrest and your ex-wife is shacking up with a guy who looks like Porky Pig.
6:34 PM – Oh my goodness. Only three minutes in and I’ve already had more nagging from Martha than I can handle. After thirty years of marriage to this woman, that empty house must feel like Disney World to Logan.
6:40 PM – Vice President Daniels just told the Arab Ambassador that if another nuke goes off on American soil, he’s going to start dropping some bombs of his own on the ambassador’s country.
Look, I realize his foreign policy has a lot to be desired, but a tough guy like Daniels is very refreshing after the ninny that Wayne Palmer was. He should definitely look into a career with the WWF after his stint on 24 is up.
6:45 PM – Whoa! Martha just jabbed a kitchen knife into President Logan’s neck out of nowhere! Hey, if the writers are going to kill time with pointless storylines, at least they made it interesting. Definitely didn’t see that one coming.
6:59 PM – It’s a big jump through time, but nothing remotely funny happened since the stabbing. Anyway, as the hour comes to a close, Logan is on the brink of death on his way to the hospital. That made me realize something. If both Wayne Palmer and Logan bite the bullet, 24 will have managed to knock off four consecutive Presidents.
The President played by the dad from the WB’s “Unhappily Ever After” got shot down in Air Force One during Season 4. (Ok, technically he was never officially pronounced dead, but there’s no way he should’ve survived that crash.) Then David Palmer was assassinated in Season 5. And now the two remaining commanders in chief are on their death beds as well.
In all of American History, there have only been three assassinations: Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy. 24 has managed to nearly take down four in six days. You gotta love this show!
Jack Bauer’s Daily Kill Count: 8
The Following Takes Place Between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM:
7:04 PM – Gredenko tells Fayed that CTU knows their location. They then proceed to dawdle around and argue with each other like an old married couple before finally beginning to pack up. Where’s the sense of urgency people?
7:10 PM – After CTU loses track of the airborne nuke, Vice President Daniels orders a meeting of the joint chiefs to discuss a nuclear attack of their own. Usually 24 is known for it’s over the top plots and bad acting, but you gotta hand it to Daniels, Lennox, and the woman from Invasion. The way they pulled off this scene was border-line spine tingling.
7:14 PM – Chloe making calculations on her computer mentions to Bill Buchanan that L.A. isn’t the nukes target because it would’ve hit them already. Which raises the question, why wasn’t anybody in CTU the least bit worried over the past ten minutes? I mean, this place is supposedly three minutes away from every spot in the entire city. A nuke to L.A. would had to have killed them.
7:16 PM – Back at CTU, Marilyn tries to kiss Jack, but he turns his head away. Turns out the man isn’t such a two-timer after all.
7:16 PM – Jack tells Marilyn that there’s another woman that he was seeing before he was sent to China and he needs to work things out with her first. Marilyn says, “Are you talking about Audrey Raines?”. At this point, I’m thinking that Marilyn’s going to say she’s married…
7:16 PM – Nope. She’s dead. Man, Jack Bauer just cannot catch a break. At this point he’s got to be one Chloe O’Brien death away from going postal. The only ray of hope is that there’s a 90% chance that she’s actually still alive and we’re just witnessing the set-up for Season 7.
7:18 PM – Realizing that he’s held back the news about Audrey’s death all day, Jack Bauer gives Bill Buchanan a death stare. Bill, already struggling with the rigors of senior citizenry, undoubtedly just wet himself.
7:24 PM – Vice President Daniels plan to launch a nuke is so horrific that even the warden from Shawshank protests.
7:28 PM – Milo makes Chloe tests Morris’ breath for alcohol. She goes over and sucks on his face. Consider me officially grossed out.
7:31 PM – When Chloe discovers that someone inside CTU is feeding Fayed information to help keep the nuke concealed, Mike Doyle implicates Nadia. This starts a scuffle between the two that gives me a flashback of the Ryan/Eddie fight during Season 1 of “The O.C.” Those were the days…
7:31 PM – Chloe finds out the feed is coming from Nadia’s station. After being apprehended, Nadia claims she’s innocent.
You know she is. The question is, who’s setting her up? Doyle seems far too obvious of a choice. Chloe and Bill are no’s. Milo and Morris have already almost been killed by Fayed. If it’s Doyle, that’s really lame.
7:38 PM – Karen Hayes talks to the President’s doctor about awakening him from his medically induced coma so he can reverse the Vice President’s decision. The doctor says he can’t without consent from the family. They then cut to a shot of Wayne’s sister. This is going to get very lame.
7:39 PM – Morris finds out that Nadia’s computer is send the signal to a location, get this, THREE BLOCKS AWAY FROM CTU! This is just starting to get ridiculous.
7:52 PM – Jack successfully takes down the terrorist controlling the drone, and then manages to redirect the nuke a split second before it explodes over San Francisco. Lame. I’ll tell you why in a minute…
7:56 PM – Jack’s crash landing of the nuke released radiation into the surrounding area. Vice President Daniels is using that radiation and the handful of deaths it will likely cause as grounds to proceed with the nuclear attack on the unnamed Arab nation.
That order is so ridiculously over the top that nobody would ever carry it out. You think that if President Bush ordered a random nuclear strike on a country, people would just blindly listen to him? I sure don’t. That’s why Jack stopping the nuke over San Fran was lame. If he hadn’t, Daniels would have had some justification and some interesting morals and political maneuvering would have come into play. Now they’ve just turned the Vice President into a homocidal maniac and you know they’re going to stop him.
7:56 PM – Vice President Daniels: “How soon after the order is given will the nuclear submarine be in position?”
Warden from Shawshank: “Within the hour.”
Translation: Next episode. Yeah, it’s going to be lame, but I still can’t wait to watch it!
Jack Bauer’s Daily Kill Count: 8
The Following Takes Place Between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM:
8:03 PM – After a long absence, Jack Bauer’s disfigured right hand makes another appearance. I was beginning to think we’d seen the last of it. I’m very interested to see how long it takes before the make-up department gets lazy and his hand returns to normal.
8:06 PM – Gredenko just called a guy and asked him to download some security specs. The guy then sent his autistic brother, Brady, to do some hacking and get them for him. There’s no way this is ending good.
8:09 PM – No surprise here, Nadia’s innocent. Apparently Fayed’s people were able to hack into CTU. Now it at least makes sense why I couldn’t figure out who the mole was. These things are usually pretty obvious.
But the plot does thicken as a really bad actor hands over the microchip that proves Nadia’s innocence to Doyle. He then tells Doyle to keep it hidden to avoid any potential backlash from unfairly pointing the finger at Nadia.
8:15 PM – Karen Hayes talks to the President’s sister about awakening him from the coma. I think standing in a tank full of mosquitoes while listening to the Macarena and running your fingernails down a chalkboard would have been less irritating than this scene.
8:17 PM – Apparently Karen’s plan is working as they’ve convinced the doctor to take the President out of the coma. In real life, this plan has about a 0.00000001% chance of actually working, as there’s no way the President could regain decision-making capacity quickly enough. He’s been put on medicine equivalent of three bottles of vodka. If the cerebral edema doesn’t get him, the massive hang-over certainly will.
8:20 PM – After tracing Gredenko’s call, Jack Bauer leads an attack team into the house of the guy with the autistic brother. After shooting the guy in the kneecap, Jack reveals his seldom-seen gentle side as he has a heart to heart with the Brady.
I’m just going to go ahead and ask the question everyone is thinking: Why? Why, why, why, why, why?
8:30 PM – Jack partners with the autistic guy in a plan to trap Gredenko. It’s quite possible that 24 has just “jumped the shark”. I really don’t know if its possible to recover from this.
8:31 PM – Johnson, the guy who gave Doyle the microchip, approaches Milo and tells him that Doyle is withholding evidence that would free Nadia. This sends Milo into a rage where he gets into a shoving match with Doyle. After Bill Buchanan breaks them up, Morris rushes over and tells everyone that Doyle already turned in the evidence to him. Doyle, knowing that he’s been set up by Johnson, walks over to him, stares him down, and says “You’ve messed with the wrong guy, for the last time, pal.”
Cue the timer.
Wow. That was amazing. It’s such a rare occurrence to have five awful actors involved in such a high intensity scene. The unintentional comedy was through the roof. Just when you think 24 might be fizzling out, it comes back totally amazes you.
8:38 PM – Emotions are flying high as Milo tries to explain why he initially doubted her innocence. The scene culminates with a passionate kiss between the two as a seemingly jealous Chloe looks on.
Just goes to show that women are powerless to resist the 80’s moustache.
8:41 PM – Oh no! President Palmer is starting to flat line as he comes out of the coma! How could this be? The horror!
8:43 PM – Apparently in addition to an autistic decoy, Jack’s plan involved taking down Gredenko with a tranquilizer dart. Is this 24 or McGuyver?
8:46 PM – After tranquilizing Gredenko, Jack shoots down on of his men, and rushes to the aid of Brady. Not only his he extremely encouraging, but I believe he almost cracked a smile. Is it possible that Jack missed his true calling in life as a special Olympics coach?
8:52 PM – You gotta hand it to Gredenko, the man doesn’t mess around. Even though he’s been bound and set up for questioning, he avoids the inevitable Jack Bauer torture and agrees to give up Fayed in exchange for his freedom.
8:54 PM – Despite the fact that Gredenko is in custody, Vice President Daniels orders the nuke to be launched. Seconds later, he is informed that his order has been reversed… by President Palmer!
8:54 PM – Sure enough, Wayne Palmer is sitting upright in his hospital bed chatting on his cellphone like nothing’s wrong. This whole episode has been sixty minutes of blatant disregard for any attempt at medical plausibility. I’m offended not only as a future doctor, but as someone who was really interested in seeing what would happen if this country launched a nuke.
8:56 PM – An enfuriated Daniels asks to speak with the Attorney General about declaring Wayne Palmer incapable of performing his duties. Beep, boop. Beep, boop…
Jack Bauer’s Daily Kill Count: 9
The Following Takes Place Between 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM:
9:04 PM – So apparently, the Presidency is going to be determined “Tribal Council” style, as President Palmer and Vice President Daniels will each present their case, followed by a vote of the joint chiefs.
It seems a little hokey at first, but when you realize that our current election system basically boils down to a handful of people in Ohio making the call, maybe taking the Survivor route isn’t such a bad idea. Of course, Jeff Probst would have to be involved as the officiator. I think this would be extremely entertaining. Can you really top Condoleezza Rice staring into the camera and just verbally tearing Hilary to shreds as she reveals her vote for John McCain? I don’t think so.
9:13 PM – The tension between Nadia and Milo continues to build, leading up to Milo’s overdramatic line of “I’m not going to forget about the kiss, and I don’t think you are either.”
Out off all the great actors that appeared on The OC, how is this guy the only one who’s currently employed?
9:16 PM – The cabinet’s vote falls 7-7, and since Vice President Daniels failed to win the majority, President Palmer stays in office…
9:16 PM – …or does he?
In a WWF-ish twists, Daniels states that he has actually won 7-6, as Karen Hayes, who resigned earlier in the day, does not get to vote. If only “The King” and J.R. were around to do the play by play!
9:26 PM – A flustered Karen Hayes phones Bill Buchanan. James Morrison proceeds to drop a major turd as he attempts to play Buchanan in the concerned husband role. It was officially laugh out loud terrible.
9:29 PM – The lady from Invasion hatches a plan to perjure by releasing a statement to the Supreme Court saying that Daniels told her he had no intention to reinstate Karen Hayes. Daniels agrees.
While this whole thing was going on, it brought up an interesting conversation between the fiancé and myself. I asked her if she was rooting for President Palmer or Daniels. She gave me a strange look and said Palmer, like it was a no brainer. I then proceeded to tell her that I’ve been rooting for Daniels the entire time because things would be so much more interesting if he was President.
This got me thinking, and I realized that I pretty much always root for the bad guys in 24. I never want Jack Bauer to save the day, because saving the day is boring. I mean, the best moments in 24, other than “Rudy’s” miraculous save last season which was a solid 193 out of 100 on the unintentional comedy scale, were when the nuke exploded in Valencia and when Air Force 1 got shot down. Those were some interesting moments.
Then I also realized that I often find myself rooting against Batman and other super heroes for the same reason. I guess I kind of feel that when these bad guys hatch an ingenious plan, they kind of deserve to have it play out. I mean, it’s kind of lame that these evil masterminds are constantly thwarted by some dumb twist that allows the hero to make an improbable last-second save.
Just to clarify, I’m not rooting for a nuclear attack to actually happen in real life. But on TV, it’s all good. My fiancé thinks I have problems. I think I just like interesting TV. Am I alone on this? I need to find this out.
9:34 PM – Tom Lennox pulls the old “tape recorder under the ashtray” bit on Vice President Daniels. He threatens to release the audio of Daniels and Invasion lady conspiring to perjure, forcing the Vice President to concede the vote to President Palmer.
9:36 PM – During the break, Gatorade ran a commercial of Kevin Garnett as the Gatorade “Milk Man”. In one of the segments, he cheerfully tosses Peyton Manning a bottle. Needless to say, as a dual T-Wolves and Patriots fan, I felt a little bit betrayed by The Big Ticket.
9:40 PM – As CTU prepares to use Gredenko as a decoy to help capture Fayed, they inject him with a tracking radioisotope in his arm to prevent him from escaping.
I tell the fiancé, “Yeah, that will work until he chops off his arm!”.
9:43 PM – Gredenko meets with Fayed. Gredenko shows Fayed that he’s wearing a wire and pulls the plug on the recorder. Fayed starts flipping out, but Gredenko tells him that he has a plan…
9:45 PM – After Gredenko cut off the audio, Jack started running to his rendezous point with Fayed. When he gets there, he finds it empty, but Milo insists that the radio tracker has Gredenko still in the room. Jack finds and axe and Gredenko’s severed arm on the floor.
When you start expecting people to hack off their own arm, is that a sign that you watch too much TV?
9:49 PM – Jack Bauer shoots down two henchmen in pursuit of Fayed and Gredenko.
9:51 PM – Fayed and Gredenko stroll through a bar as they try to escape. Suddenly, Gredenko yells out “That’s him! That’s the terrorist they are looking for!” Fayed opens fire, but is quickly taken down and trampled by a mob.
Am I missing something here? Why would Gredenko do that? I’m very confused.
9:51 PM – Jack rushes into the bar screaming like a madman for everyone to back away from Fayed.
A random dude tells Jack, “That guy just shot my friend”.
Bleeding on the floor, Fayed replies, “I hope your friend is dead.”
Jack kicks Fayed in the teeth and tells him to “Shut up!”
I just thought that was funny.
9:52 PM – President Palmer convinces his doctor to pump him full of adrenaline.
Yeah, from a medical perspective, I’m going to have to say that’s a little unrealistic…
9:53 PM – Gredenko stumbles around unde the pier and eventually collapses on the beach.
I have absolutely no idea where they’re going with this!
9:55 PM – As Karen Hayes and Tom Lennox mend fences, Lennox gets a call that President Palmer is going ahead with the nuclear strike! ALRIGHT!!!!!!
9:56 PM – President Palmer reveals that he simply fought to retain his power, not to stop the strike. He will not be called “weak” and orders the strike. The missile is in the air…
Jack Bauer’s Daily Kill Count: 11
