Monday, March 29, 2010

24 Season 8: 5AM-6AM Quick Review


Why is everybody whispering on 24 tonight? It's pissing me off!

If you're a mole, you need to whisper intel to the bad guys- that I get. You're at work, you're surrounded by good guys and you're single-handedly undermining the entire effort to save Western Civilization (for what? We don't know yet, but it's probably money and a suite in a Dubai tower or some nonsense). So, whisper your little heart out, Dana Walsh. That's completely acceptable villainous behavior.

(One key piece of information culled from the Walsh/Terrorist whisper-chat is that she's working for someone else. Of course, this is the same person or group that got her criminal ass into CTU in the first place. Let the speculation on the identity of this uber-villain begin!)

Meanwhile, CTU Director Hastings briefs the President (who just woke up apparently?) that the nuclear material is taking Manhattan like a bunch of Muppets (ANIMAL! A-NI-MALLLL!!!!) and she immediately replies: "Get me Jack Bauer." Damn straight, Madame President!

Jack, fresh from a stabbing and some gunshots to the chest, rolls his eyes at Chico, Jr. when he asks if Chloe is trustworthy.  Jack then fails to convince Renee Walker to go back to his apartment, she wants to ride along on the crazy train a little while longer. That's quite alright with me, now that Renee has worked out her Russian issues hours ago.

Jack meets President Hassan's hair in the UN Security Council room to whisper some stuff about getting him "not killed" any further.  I admit that seeing the one-man torture machine standing in the UN as kind of ironic, if not absurd. I like the scenes between Anil Kapoor and Kiefer Sutherland- they are prime examples of professional acting. In another universe, these two guys should do a buddy cop movie together. Something set in the '70s, with lots of chili dogs and shitty driving through San Francisco. Anyway... why were they whispering?

Terrorist Tony Al-Qaeda (thank you for the nickname, Amy!) chats calmly (almost whispers!) with President Taylor and informs her that he's chillin' on some nuclear rods that will take out 40 NYC blocks unless she hands over President Hassan's luxurious hair. Immediately afterwards, Taylor sits though several excruciating minutes of terrible political dialogue (in which her television advisors throw out some absurd ideas like giving in to the terrorists and selling off Florida to the commies, etc.) and she finally flips out and says "No! We're America! AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!" Cue swelling music! I'm setting off fireworks in my house in celebration of Taylor's awesomeness.

Meanwhile, some General (I think his name is Burr) is not convinced Taylor (who saved the country last time things went nutty) gets the seriousness of the situation. So, Gen. Burr tries to enlist Chief of Staff Skippy to help him circumvent the US Constitution to stop the terrorist attacks. More whispering!!! Geez, I may be getting older, but I think my hearing is still within a nominal range. I got my TV volume set to 40! And then when the CLASH OF THE TITANS commercial plays afterwards I go deaf with the cry "Release the Krakken!" Ouch!

Anyway, you know where this is going to lead- some silly rehash of Mike Novick's betrayal of David Palmer. Skippy, I know Mike Novick, Mike Novick is a friend of mine, ah, you know the rest of that sentence!  Back at CTU (working off of room-temperature shrimp and buckets of cold coffee), CTU Director Hastings gives a Knute Rockne speech telling his people to save the world by making phone calls and chatting to people. Ummm, can we use Twitter too, boss? I see #nuclearholocaust is trending like a sunovagun!

Gen. Burr tracks down Chief of Staff Skipster one more time, handing him a jump drive that will cause the downfall of the Taylor Administration. Ethan Kanin walks in on these two traitors and has a timely heart attack, but not before giving Skippy a guilt-trip. I groan at this sort of writing. I... (sigh) let's move on!  Gen. Burr has a crack team of commandos roving around, ready to intercept Jack & Co. while they attempt to escort Hassan to freedom. Too bad these patriots aren't trying to find the nuclear material or bad guys, right? Yeah, well I smell a contrived gunfight coming but I'll take that over no gunfight at all. Lucky for us, Bauer is attempting to move Hassan down a tunnel that's ripe for an ambush! Jack, suspicious of this whole deal, makes a phone call demanding to speak with Kanin, which Skippy intercepts. Jack hates Skippy and almost drops an F-bomb (come on, Jack, it's the last season! Say it!). And just like that, a gunfight replete with terrible aim by professional killers unfolds.

The heroic Secret Service lays down cover fire so Jack and Hassan can flee safely. There are rules to these types of things. The leader of the Secret Service team, a tough-as-nails young lady, gets the most kills against the bad guys because 1) she had lines of dialogue and 2) it's obvious that the writers have a thing for girls with guns (Renee, Chloe, etc.). I wonder if the writers hang around gun ranges in their off hours, trying to meet single ladies packing heat. Ha!

President Hassan makes an awesome kill to close out the gunfight (refrigerator salesman my foot!) and the surviving soldier unloads a ton of helpful intelligence which basically reveals the entire traitorous conspiracy to Jack. The soldier tells Jack to give Hassan up to the terrorists and Jack says he's not too keen on the idea!

Dana and Tony Al-Qaeda have one last brief whisper-fest which results in the terrorists deciding to skip abducting Hassan and go straight for the dirty bomb plan. Why did they bother trying to get Hassan again? They gave up so quickly on the idea, it's as if they really didn't care about it anyway. This is like making a waiter go through the whole list of daily specials when you already knew what you were going to order beforehand. You're just wasting time, man!

So, the bomb is set to go off next episode, and we get a 2-hour bonanza next week which means I need to get some extra sleep!

10 comments:

Sunny said...

@ Adam - I love your re-caps. Maybe you should submit a screenplay for 24 the movie.

B said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

This episode was pretty good. It's arcing finally.

The gunfight was actually pretty good. Jack does a nice tactical reload, although they panned away at the last minute, I wonder if Keifer dropped the mag (AHHH). MP5K action by the Secret Service agents was a nice touch.

By the way, do you notice that when Jack wears the Ralph Lauren metrosexual JACKSACK, the action pretty much sucks, but when he wears the Maxpedition Monsoon Gearslinger (with Maxpedition logo finally being shown), the action is pretty much ass kicking.

Ralph Lauren Jacksack = Weaksauce
Maxpedition Monsoon Jacksack = Win.

Next week's 2 hour looks good. Not wanting to spoil, I see huge potential for a restaurant quality helping of awesomeness.

Don't let me down writers.

J. Todd Hatcher said...

"Son of a bitch hung up on me! I don't give a F..."

Don't worry, Jack. You'll get to finish that line in the movie!

And I salute the awesome MP5-wielding chick secret service agent. She goes down with "B.A. black CTU agent who was unceremoniously shot by Marie Warner" in the book of short-lived B.A. characters.

Loving it, loving it, loving it. And that little preview at the end talking about the "Final 10 Hours" made me wanna cry.

singingdoll said...

According to Entertainment Weekly's recap, the kickass female Secret Service Agent tonight was named MOLLY. (That's my name, y'all. Just sayin'.)

The season is finally starting to get better. I was actually WORRIED about something tonight -- Ethan, mainly, 'cause I love that guy -- for the first time in a long time on this show.

Not excited about the "tick tock" line on the preview for next week. Dana channeling Ke$ha?!?!

TPG said...

Man I really loved this episode, great to see Jack finally get some kills! Check out my recap at:

http://www.thislalife.com/2010/03/24-points-about-24-500am-600am.html

I do one every week!

RogerDee said...

More REDHOT!! Amy V has the nickname of the year and your cribs are off the chain. Now if Jack can gun down Starbuck in the next 3 hrs. we can get the final hours back on track for a grand finale. See you next week on B4B. ( Now I gotta pee on Wyatt's blog)!!

Synbios said...

omg you were extra inspired today, it was hilarious :D

Brian Pelts said...

""No! We're America! AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!""

Heh, that's the same thing I thought when she was making her speech. God bless the hive mind.

I wanted to dig this episode, really I did. You had not one, but TWO heads of state giving respectful bows to the weapons-grade kickassery of Jack, Hastings continuing to be the kind of stand-up CTU director you like to see, and Jack's Spidey-Sense tingling when presented with a 200 yard tunnel littered with random crates. And shooting. Lots of shooting. So why does this episode just get a "meh"? Because the "writing staff" decided to fire the Official 24 Mash-Up Machine once again and give us a note-for-note remake of Tom Lennox's shifty conspiring (complete with the sort of waffling you get when a total weenie gets in over his head) against the President. Seriously, just ONCE I'd like to see a cabinet in 24 that doesn't react to every disagreement with the President with a shadowy, treasonous Plan B. Fucking hell, whatever happened to "agree to disagree"? Where do wet ops teams come into play?

Anyway, as usual I realize I'm being harder on the show than I probably should be, but god damn people. These are the precious final few hours, and they're wasting them with half-assed rehashes of stuff we've already seen. And since a lot of the lure of 24 is the fact that before it arrived, you had never seen anything quite like it on TV, that's possibly the greatest insult they could visit on us.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write an angry letter to the editor and chase those goddamn kids off my lawn.

Dr. Alice said...

I agree this episode gave us more warmed over plots from previous seasons, but I liked it anyway.

1. We found out Dana's a loaner, which is intriguing.

2. President Taylor's rousing speech. Cherry Jones finally got a good scene for the first time this season.

3. The shootout in the tunnel with President Hair showing his badass shooting skills and Renee just being awesome. One of the high points of the season.

4. Heroic SS agents (I'm actually kind of glad Aaron isn't in the show at this point, as this would undoubtedly have been the ep where he got killed).

5. Ethan's heart attack is six kinds of corny, but I'm worried about him anyway. I hope he makes it.