Season 8, 4-5AM: Women Rule!

Oh boy, I haven't cheered often at 24 this season.  But when Cloe called Renee to get her to track down Jack, I heaved a heavy, "YEAH!" almost dislodging the fat, round cat from my lap (no small cat, that one!).  OK, it was only 20 seconds of Renee, but seeing her possibly back in action got my hopes up.

Why is Chloe calling for backup for Jack?  Why can't Director Dopey do it?  Why's Jack need back-up anyway (he is, after all, very capable of taking care of himself, as Dopey mentioned).  Wow, you sure ask a lot of questions for someone who missed the best episode of the bunch this season!

Chloe called Renee because she's worried about Jack--strange, that, as she should know better than anyone else alive (or dead) that Jack can take care of himself.  But maybe she thinks he's lost his edge now that he's a grandpa.  CTU is down hard because of the EMP, and Dopey doesn't have agents to spare, especially because where he presumes Jack is is 3 square miles!  Too big to cover without CTU having its eyes and ears back.  Ah, here we learn another difference between traffic cameras and drones--with CTU down, the drones might crash into populated areas when they run outta gas--no such worries with traffic cams.

And, alas, Chloe calling Renee means that Tony probably really is permanently dead, otherwise Chloe would have surprised us even more by calling him.

Jack needs help because he called NSA to shut down all bridges and tunnels once CTU went down (here I am worried about all those commuters at 415am, but no one mentioned them--or the panic that shutting down the city like this would cause--isn't that always the reason for not doing things like this?  The writers must have tired of the trick we discovered earlier this season of having characters notice the absurdities of the plot and thereby defuse our disbelief), then went to the only place left for them to cross the U235 into the city--the East River!  Duh!  When he gets there, with Freddy and two red-shirts (I'm still hoping they make it!), both he and Freddy find their phones don't work when they call for back-up.  Are you surprised to learn that from this observation it takes Jack all of 15s to figure out they've found the terrorists?  He slams it into reverse, taking immense fire, and slams it between to shipping crates.  Good thing those CTU SUVs are fully armored.  So now we have a fire fight between 4 cornered CTU agents and uncounted terrorists.  With Jack one of the agents, this fight should be over in about 20 s, right?  Oh, here's where those clever writers surprise us again--Jack misses every time he shoots!  I've never seen him miss so many times.  Just to show you how much he misses, he runs out of ammo, announces it to the world, then reloads to miss some more!  The only reason he has to reload is for the writers to show us that this show is not so unrealistic.  The reload was otherwise insignificant to the plot.

Jack gets a chance to do more than miss, though, when he spots a land-line across the road.  If only there weren't so many baddie snipers (they're not shooting any better than Jack, by the way).  This gives Jack the chance to go all McGyver again, and to show off his classical learning.  I'm not sure where he found the armored plates (removed from the SUV?  Without a blowtorch?), but he fashioned them into something of a phalanx (sans spears) so the 4 of them could move (slowly so as to not break the formation) to the land-line (fully confident the baddies won't figure that out and cut the line, if they haven't already).  Naturally the most experienced of the red-shirts gets scared and impatient and breaks ranks and gets shot.  The rest make it, but the shot agent writhes in pain, taking occasional fire (somebody's seen Full Metal Jacket), drawing the heartstrings of the younger red-shirt who disobeys Jack to retrieve him.  Almost back to shelter with impatient agent, young red-shirt takes fire, and Jack and Freddy drag them to cover.  Youngster asks if oldster is OK.  Freddy shakes his head no, but Jack (no fan of Immanuel Kant) lies to youngster as he tries to tend to his wounds (looks more like he's choking him, but we know he's not as he keeps imploring him to live even though we're all better off with him dead, what with the baddies repositioning, and Freddy having lost one or 2 of them).  Youngster finally dies, too.  Oh, well, so much for hoping to be surprised.  This show is so predictable....

Jack decides he has to draw the fire to give Freddy a chance to reach the land-line (not much hope for Freddy either, though, as the land-line is a call box with no cover, but nobody notices this inconvenient truth). Jack maybe gets one baddie, one baddie has a bead on Jack and somehow misses.  Jack keeps missing all the baddies he shoots at, finally takes a few rounds to the vest and goes down.  Freddy gets to the phone and dials the operator.  Baddies take a bead through the 'scope on Jack's head, about to go all melon in The Day of the Jackal (at about 1:23) on him, and then you see why I've given all this detail of the plot--I'm cheering like I did when the Millennium Falcon pulled Luke's fat out of the fire in Star Wars!

Renee!!!!  Now we have real talent at work.  Not only does she find Jack in that 3 square miles of waterfront (probably not all that hard with all that automatic weapons fire), she sees there's only a couple snipers (all on the ground now, after some were a couple stories up earlier), and she takes them both (where are the others?  Jack couldn't take these 2 out himself?  Well, not when he's shooting like this.  Musta been a long day already) out with a couple shots just as they're about to finish off Jack.  Freddy yells, "Clear!" (I thought that a bit premature, but we had only 4 minutes left, by the clock).  Then she runs to Jack, tells him he's OK (just a few to the vest), he wakes up and believes her, and everything is right with the world.

Except CTU is down hard--or is it?  Jack sent NSA over to help (before his cell line was jammed), and wouldn't you know it, an egotistical engineer (anybody know any of that type?) shows up to save the day.  Chloe has her own ideas about how to get CTU operational, but engineer doesn't believe her idea will work and insults her even more than not believing her does--he actually has the nerve to insult her!  She gets to screw up her face a lot this episode.  Renee tells her to do whatever she has to, she then takes a gun to the engineer telling him--"you're probably a good guy when you're outside of work, and I see you wear a wedding ring, but leave now and let me have my way with the computers or I'll shoot you."  Wow, Chloe using her people skills--musta learned those from Jack.  He leaves, Chloe nearly saves the day in time, but Dopey breaks down the door with engineer in tow.  And here we learn the season must be winding down (only about 12 hours to go, I think)--Dopey does something right!  He gives Chloe her requested 10 more minutes!  Chloe doesn't electrocute herself or burn down CTU as engineer predicted (with that prediction, why wasn't there fire suppression folks nearby?), but she gets CTU back up and limping.

That leaves one woman of note unaccounted for--Dana.  She thinks the EMP has her outta the woods with parole officer Root, but even with this national security crisis, he won't go away.  Even with the EMP erasing all the systems and the backups (what the heck are the backups doing onsite????), he won't go away.  Even with him knowing how slimy Kev is, he won't go away.  He just asks for a meet with Dopey, and Dopey agrees (in 15 min)!!!  Dana is all flustered as always. She tells Dopey that Chloe's plan to get CTU back up won't work (he ignores her advice).  She finally tracks down parole officer Root (I've been wondering where this plot line is headed, kinda wondering what parole officer is doing still there) while he's waiting for Dopey.  And parole officer finally makes a fatal mistake--he tells Dana he knows she's lying, and unless she comes clean he's gonna make sure she takes the full fall.  Never threaten someone when you don't know all the facts (like how desperate Dana is).  Dana strangles him right there and hides the body behind a panel in the room.

Now, we're all thinking how can she possibly think she'll get away with this???  Won't it start stinking?  Won't there be just too much physical evidence for her to escape?  What'll happen in a couple minutes when Dopey (who's starting to make the right calls finally) comes looking for him?  And here's where 24 finally pulls the trump card we've been waiting for.  Dana makes a call, and says CTU is back up, and she's taking care of things.  What's so weird is that she no longer sounds unsure.  Yep, the moment we've been waiting for is good acting!  And on top of that, all the writers are laughing about all the complaints about Dana--she was just talking to the terrorists, not Freddy!  (Makes you think back to all the Kev parts of the plot, why she had to look so sad when psycho stabbed him, why she looked so unsure while tracking down Kev, but I'm not going there).  How quickly we forget there's always a mole in CTU!

And the highlight of next week's scenes?  We see terrorist say, "give me your answer in 1 hour."  That means most anything that happens will be meaningless because it won't be resolved till the following episode!  So, I already know I don't really have to pay attention next week! Sphere: Related Content