Season 8, 6-8AM: I FORGOT!!!!

There I am, bracket busted to pieces like Jack's shooting this season, blithely watching Duke and Butler in a classic final, down to the last 30s, feeling happy that I'd get to watch this fine game, then catch 24 at 9, when I flip to Fox during a time out.

What!!!  That's Jack!  And Chloe.  And a robot trying to defuse a dirty bomb.  But it's only 830!  What's going on?!?!?!?!

Oh, I'm such an idiot.  I'd been looking forward to this 2 hour, get-24-fully-on-track this season all week, but March Madness musta hit me big time.  And here I missed sunrise!!

So, OK, Duke is up by 1, Butler has the ball, they've been turning the momentum their way for the last 3 minutes, and I just don't know who's gonna win, and I can catch 24 on-line later.....

But who cares?!?!?!  I'm watching Jack.

Then the phone rings.  OK, if I'm taking Jack over the last 10s of one of the best college basketball games ever, and the game's still on the line, you know it better be an important phone call.

And I'm back, to catch the last 4 minutes of the 1st hour.  I'll leave the phone call to your imagination.

Now I'm thinking the bad thing about 2 hours back-to-back is I miss out on one chance to see of scenes of next week's show.  On the other hand, I used to think the "Previously on 24" scenes at the start of the second show in a back-to-back were pretty stupid.  Not anymore--boy, did they come in handy this time 'round.  I felt all caught up, and I got to see something you don't see everyday--a president conking Jack on the head (also finding the bomb and Ethan being alive and President Taylor playing whack a mole, er, slap a weasel--more on the mole in a moment).  Probably a bad omen for the Islamic Pres, though--you can't bop Jack and get off scott free.  But as it took less than a minute to get caught up, it made me stop to think just how little substance these shows have.  Those writers have such a cake job--find hackneyed excuses to add suspense to pad the hour, then punch the clock and go home.  If you manage to advance a plot, so much the better, but don't go too far--you still have 8 hours left to fill this season.

Speaking of cliches, lucky you--you might get two posts from me this week, if I catch the hour I missed.

After coming up to speed with the Previously scenes, I'm ready to rock and roll.  We get a few gratuitous suspense moments, just to wear out that circuit, then Jack, Chloe ("if it was a snake it woulda bit me"), and Renee team up to track down the mole.  With the best agents in the world on the case (Freddy can be excused because he has other thoughts in mind for her), Dana doesn't stand a chance, especially when it's late in the season.  She's a sharp tool in the shed, though, now that she's shed her flaky persona, and she makes a good run for it, but once she's surrounded in the parking garage, she doesn't stand much of a chance, even after blowing through 2 clips, and seemingly having more ready to pop in (maybe I'm tiring of this "realism": if they have limitless numbers of clips, how's that different from never running out of bullets?), especially when she doesn't have a mole of her own helping her out (like she did for Tarin, which only led to the best car crash of the season--Tarin zooming is big SUV at Jack, then off the roof of the garage, nearly earning a perfect 10 from the judges for the twisting flip--Chloe says no one could survive that fall, and except for her forgetting what Jack did last season--"this is gonna hurt!"--she's right).  Especially when Freddy, betrayed Freddy, heads to the garage.  Freddy shoots out her tires as she's speeding at him, she crashes and survives--nice plot device those air bags--Freddy confronts her, but CTU takes her into custody when she says, "I'll talk, but only to Jack."

Never woulda heard that from a terrorist in seasons of yore!  Then, Jack was always one little excuse away from causing a lot of pain on anyone he suspected of being bad.  This season, grandpa doesn't doesn't even explain, "she won't talk, torture won't work on her" anymore.  He goes right to bargaining.  Don't we all fondly remember Michelle (wasn't it her?) getting drugged up in a CTU holding room?  Why not try the same on Dana this season?

No, we're better than the terrorists finally.  So much so that we don't even have to say we won't stoop to their methods.  Hmm, maybe Renee of a season ago got through to Jack in the same way he got through to her.  He tries to call Dana's bluff ("once the terrorists kill Islamic Pres, you have no leverage"), but Dana sees that as a bluff, and calls right back.  Jack caves and calls (President Taylor), bargaining immunity for info. And all those other immunity deals Taylor did when Jack asked have worked out so well that she buys off on this one right away (though she did try to weasel out of it on a technicality).

But don't think we miss out on torture and drugs.  Kidnapped Islamic Pres gets drugged to make his resistance lower.  He's still too tough for the kidnappers trying to coerce him into apologizing for his "crimes."  Kidnapper threatens to cut off body parts, but 24 doesn't do that anymore (not since one weak CTU agent lost a finger a couple seasons ago), preferring cleaner torture--electricity and more drugs.  As he's about to get shot up again, kidnapper changes his mind, figures he'll never cave, and decides to rant and rave on a "live" internet feed before slitting his throat.

So, now we got the live feed and Jack headed to the scene with a team.  He gives them a little pep talk, tells Renee he wants her with him rather than running ops (she's all, "Whaaa?" he's all, "it's against my instinct, but I need all the experienced agents with me."  I'm all, "Whaaaaa?  doesn't CTU have any good agents anymore besides Freddy?  And does this mean Renee's going down, too?  Say it ain't so!"  Oh, and nice touch by Wersching--she's headed to her assignment after Jack finishes his pep talk, then he calls to her, and she looks surprised--it's that attention to detail that makes this show so realistic).  They sneak in to the apartment building, Jack kills someone for not looking all that bright--fortunately Jack found a gun on him after the fact, that he quickly unloads and stashes on top of a fire hose cabinet--no kiddie's gonna look up there!  They find the right apartment, it has a quiet 6 year old in it (hmm, 2 strangers with guns come in saying they won't hurt me??  Yeah, I'm keeping my mouth shut.) and her mom.  Jack heads back, into the closet, Renee watches mom.  Good thing Renee has a roving eye and spots the platinum blond wig.  She's as quick as Jack at making the right inference (hidden blond wig + Arabic woman = danger!), and she blows away mom just as mom reaches into the sofa cushions and finds a gun.  Yeah, all terrorists hide guns in the sofas cushions for when company shows up unexpected.  Or was it, "I'm always losing things out of my pockets into the sofa.").

Jack finds Narnia, or is it a time hole (around 37s and 60s), and quickly shoots everybody, with terrorist still on line reciting the crimes of Islamic pres before killing him.  Only Islamic pres is dead (Jack didn't do it).  It's the Richard Pryor on Saturday Night Live trick, and Jack and all of CTU fell for it.

And that leaves us with Dana's immunity worthless (immunity expressly conditioned on recovering a live pres), the peace deal dead, and the only bare glimmer of suspense being something about the Russians--not the mob Russians we started with, but the political ones.  Although, is there really much difference?  That peace deal has always been more than it's cracked up to be, at least for me.  Is that what this season, now this series, has been building up to?  Peace in the Middle East?  (How West Wing again, like Ethan's heart.  Has this show really veered sharply left?)  And the best they can do to heighten it is to threaten me with ex-pres Logan showing up?  Is 24 going all On the Beach? Sphere: Related Content