After a fairly slow episode of Fox's action drama '24' last week, things have picked up and the latest installment brought the right dose of gruesome action and political skullduggery to keep fans happy.
Last week's episode ended with a small bomb blowing away President Palmer and ex-terrorist Assad. This week, we find that Assad has died (unfortunate, since that character was quite interesting) and Palmer is stable but still pretty badly beaten up. As such, the Cabinet, lead by the Secretary Of Defense (or as I know him, Warden Norton), decides that Vice-President Daniels must take over. Too bad for us, since it means that we get an over-the-top, mustache-twirling villain of a politico.
We find out his true colors after Tom Lennox is set free by his co-worker Reed and runs straight to the Secret Service, admitting his own participation and having Reed and Carson arrested. As Lennox is interviewed, Daniels comes in and threatens to destroy his career, if he doesn't step back behind his plans from earlier on this season, and also reveals that he'll be blaming Assad for the assassination attempt. The end of the episode sees him giving an address to the nation, that dirty rat!
Jack and ex-President Logan, meanwhile, have finished getting dressed (thank God) and head over to the Russian consulate. Logan interrogates him politely, but gets nothing out of him about the whereabouts of the Russian radical Gredenko, despite knowing that the consulate is lying through his teeth. Hey, at least Logan didn't fudge the truth about things. This leads Jack to desperate measures: he will go into the consulate and do his own style of interrogation to get the info. Which he does, quite painfully, by taking a finger off. He gets the location of Gredenko and some other shocking news: the terrorist is working on aerial drones, which will release the last three suitcase bombs within the next two hours. So what will Jack deal with after 8:00 P.M.?
CTU doesn't get much time to shine this week (thankfully), but we see Bill Buchanan reunite with Karen, who decides to go back to the presidential bunker when she hears about what happened to Palmer. Also, at the end, we see Buchanan decide to help Jack, who has been arrested for torturing the consulate--can't a guy get a break? As things end, it looks like Jack will get saved by a smart Russian guard who calls CTU, but things end badly for him when another guard kills him. So, the question is, how quickly will it take for Jack to get out next week?
At the halfway point of the season, I have to say that things were a bit slow after both the four-hour premiere and the death of Jack's brother Graem, but this episode was back to form, and next week looks even better with the return of both Martha Logan and Aaron Pierce. Stay tuned for more '24',' folks.
