Season 8, 12 noon-1pm: Entropy

Catchin' up here after driving cross country.  You'll have a day or so before I get to this week's hour, but maybe I can get some thoughts out on last week's hour tonight.  I watched it on a laptop in 2 sessions today--1/2 before a swim, 1/2 after.  Let's see how good my continuity is.  I was a little continuity-shocked as the first 30 min ended with Russian assassin setting up to shoot a meet Jack set up, that the Logan-plant at CTU thought he was clever enough to figure out.  Seems everybody underestimates Jack.  When I came back to watch the 2nd 30 min, it starts with President Taylor meeting with new Islamic President (wife of recently assassinated president) trying to iron out the peace details.  The juxtaposition of those two made me do a "bugita-bugita-wha???"  But I got over it.

Here's what I'm seeing here--how hard it is to hold secrets in the 24-verse (I wonder how hard it is in the multiverse).  For example, Chloe's trying to track down Jack gone rogue.  Logan-plant, virtually running CTU right under Chloe's nose, captures Freddy after Freddy helped Jack.  Logan-plant interrogates Freddy and doesn't believe Freddy when Freddy says he doesn't know where Jack is, so it's detention for Freddy.  Chloe sneaks in to see him for 90s (I'm still amazed at how much writers can do with so little time--stay tuned for more from this time slot), and Freddy reiterates that he knows nothing , but as the 90s are nearing the end (we see Arlo's timer in split screen), Freddy says somebody local is helping Jack.  That's it, and Chloe is off to the races.  First, she could have already thought that one up and followed that idea, but second, that's all she gets and she's gonna find Jack???

The only way to keep a secret is to never tell it!  Jack, a couple weeks ago, convinced Freddy to help him--remember, Jack used the old give-him-the-gun-and-he'll-trust you trick?  Jack said he couldn't do it alone, and he was right--he needed Freddy to go to the safety deposit box with Dana, but he didn't know it when he started on that sleigh ride.  So, sharing that one little bit, and now we can just bet Chloe's gonna find him.

Now, I know next to nothing about entropy and information theory, but it looks like entropy there differs from the entropy I'm thinking about with respect to secrets, although I just bet someone could or even has applied the same mathematical formalism.  What I'm thinking as a low entropy state is a secret known by one person.  In the 24-verse, entropy increases like lightning.  OK, it took forever for Dana to show us her true colors let alone for Logan to raise his head.  But so much of plot development in this show revolves around uncovering secrets (where's this person? what do they know? what's the next target? who's behind the conspiracy?).  And that's CTU's job and what Jack's the best in the world at doing, so we shouldn't be surprised at how quickly they find the answers to these questions.

Oh, and speaking of questions, that's just what Chloe uses to convince Arlo (nice to see him getting more important and unfortunately, less sleazy, now that Dana's dead) that the Logan-plant is involved in a coverup.  She tells Arlo that Logan-plant isn't even asking the right questions!  How's that for minimal information leading down the path to higher entropy (more widely known secrets)?

Chloe uses that observation to bring Arlo on board with her, but her wiles--OK, she really doesn't have any wiles, so it's her powers of persuasion, which we already know are pretty bad--are almost not good enough to work on Freddy in detention.  Freddy finds that everyone (OK, just Chloe and Logan-plant) wants him on their side (you figure out how the grammar is supposed to work in that construction!).  And he comes to realize, like we did years, days, hours ago, that there are no good guys in the 24-verse.  Finally, Chloe says basically, "you can sit here feeling sorry for yourself; I'm gonna go help Jack," and that does it for Freddy--he looses the tidbit I mentioned above.  At least she didn't tell Freddy, "You did the right thing."

All the while Jack is connecting up with Sidewinder.  Nice to see Madsen back, but I already figured he wouldn't be one and done.  He actually tells Jack, "No," when Jack asks for help.  Then he qualifies it with, "Until you tell me what's really going on."  And here I'm thinking, "Jack's motivation here is really pretty stupid," and I'm thinking Jack's about to realize that he's gone over the top and will return to being a retired grandfather.

No such luck.  Jack sits down, sighs, and says the Russians are gonna pay for taking Renee from him.  First, that seems a bit personal for Jack, the good soldier, but OK, he's had a bunch of bad days.  Though he should know from lots and lots of experience that successful vengeance doesn't keep you warm at night.  Second, a few weeks ago he said he wanted justice.  Now, it's looking like pure vengeance.  And it makes me think on the difference between justice and vengeance.  I'm thinking vengeance is personal, justice is societal.  Justice depends on the culpability and actions of the perpetrator.  Society defines what the punishment is depending on those qualities (making me wonder whether victim statements have any purpose in a trial--at least any purpose in promoting justice). Purposes for punishment include incapacitation (to prevent repetition), rehabilitation, retribution (I'm fuzzy on what this one's about), deterrence, and these measure the proportionality between the deed and the punishment.  Vengeance is driven by the victims, not society, and the victim's loss and emotion measure the level of payment.  I'll leave it to you to figure out which would be better, more fair, or whatever metric you want to use to compare justice and vengeance.  I'm still working on it.

Jack sets up his own ambush with a call to the reporter who flung with the assassinated Islamic president.  Jack and Sidewinder ambush the ambush and play "capture the assassin" (they win).  Jack heads off into torture-land for the first real time this season, but assassin isn't talking.  I'm not going into detail on what we saw (no water-boarding because Jack really is a good guy), but I'm glad I was on a computer screen and I could escape from the maximized view.  After trying more than a couple different means to cause pain, Jack concludes, "This isn't working."  Wow.  Now there's a revelation about torture.  I'll also mention that there was a good bit of vengeance-seeking in the torture scene, too.  (Maybe that's another reason torture of terrorists has so much popular support.)  Confirming that Jack's after vengeance against anyone he thinks is culpable, Jack had started the torture before even exploring the electronic options at hand--assassin's cell phone!  In this high-tech show, electronics are the first place he always looks!  But once he figured the torture path wasn't getting anywhere, he found the cell phone, then figured out assassin swallowed the sim-chip.  No need to go into detail, but ipecac (I'm not gonna link to Family Guy here--you can find that link on your own) didn't play a role in Jack retrieving it.  And what did he find on that phone?  Logan's phone number.  Convenient that just this episode Logan asked for how to contact the assassin.

Jack didn't look happy at finding such a big name "connected" (but even a tenuous connection like this in the 24-verse leads to higher entropy).  Seems like he should have felt pretty good.

Logan is doing a good job continuing to look slimy as his plans fall apart.  His plant is still very toady and loyal talking with him, even when he's about to take the fall for everything falling apart.  And I'm left wondering when will the writers throw us the true curveball of the mole being a nice guy, not an overbearing meany?  Wait, is anybody nice in the 24-verse? Sphere: Related Content