I asked my friend Chris what the heck I should write about. I mean, this wasn’t a bad episode, but there certainly wasn’t much significance either. Do I tell everyone how, lying in the dentist chair today I channeled my inner Jack as the needle hit my tooth? Should I start a SWOT analysis of Tony’s leadership style?
“Write about how the president’s daughter is going to screw everything up,” he said. Bingo. Kinda forgot about that option.
Look, “Livvy”, I get your anger. Hodges being set “free” would be an insult to you, your family and the American public. Plus, you’ve got a mother who, though President of the United States of freaking America, is always 3-4 steps behind and seems to have inherited the Curtis Manning memorial “all my lines are seven words or less” role (seriously, it’s always “Almeida?”, “What?” and “How did we let this happen?” Cherry Jones can’t spend more than nine minutes a week memorizing her lines). I get it. I do. But…
Isn’t your real argument that Hodges didn’t actually earn his pardon? What info did he actually provide? That other, unidentified people are part of this? That one of them is his fake lawyer? This earns him a full pardon? Seems like he should only get partial credit. You know, like how your Calculus teacher used to score you on those derivative/anti-derivative word problems.
Yet the Taylors would be wise to note that there does seem to be a larger scale enemy, a faceless organization of powerful military contractors operating independent of central leadership a la the Alliance of the Twelve from Alias. We know this because of a conference call featuring several characters with partially obscured faces, plus the assistant coach from Remember the Titans and the blonde lawyer from last episode. The blonde lawyer, by the way is now an unnamed redhead who appears to be Tony’s girlfriend. In the absence of a name – and really, why is 24 naming drone FBI employees but not major antagonists? They keep doing this – I’m going to call her Aisling (my lone remaining redheaded friend).
Aisling IMs Coach Bill Yoast and asks that he go along with her and Tony’s plan for the canister. Standard terrorist operating procedure is to obsessively plan every attack over a six month period, but Tony insists this would be foolish. He and Aisling propose they strike ASAP. The FBI is reeling, Tony says, and “You finish your enemy off when he’s down. You don’t let him get back up and reload.”
Coach Yoast is persuasive enough that suddenly all 12 evil operatives are in favor of striking before the season is over. Whew. Viewers everywhere slide back from the edge of their seat. The 12 have hand-selected 27-year-old Jibraan Al-Zarian as their scapegoat. Jibraan has all you want in a patsy: anger, no parents, a Muslim background, and a penchant for being awake at 3:30 in the morning so his kidnapping will be more fun.
And fun it is! Jibraan’s brother, seen seconds earlier discussing whether or not Muslims would be blamed for the attacks even though he looks more like the point guard for the Dallas Mavericks than a Muslim, is knocked out by two of Almeida’s cronies (note: hurts that Tony has cronies. I so want him to be a good guy). Seconds later, Jibraan is captured as well, with Tony holding a gun to his head and demanding he shut up if he wants to live. Patsy? Done.
Tony’s right: the FBI is reeling. They’re being led by a man with a terminal illness. Their second-in-command was shot in the neck 16 hours ago and hasn’t let the wound breathe. They have stock agents asking questions like “what leads do we have?” during a briefing, as if that information wouldn’t be covered. In perhaps the ultimate sign of desperation, they’ve reverted to CTU mode, which means reactivating the old CTU servers and getting the surviving members back together. Granted, the surviving members are only two (Jack and Chloe). But still.
Having said that, you’ve got to like the FBI’s chances, and we all know the reason why: Jack. Let’s just assume for a second that he is actually dying…I mean, isn’t messing with him kind of like messing with a grizzly bear that’s been knifed? Their rage reaches a new level of intensity? With that in mind, how on earth did Tony leave him alive? How can he tell Galvez that “you don’t need to worry about Jack anymore”? Of all people, Tony is the one saying this? Has he learned nothing? Ay-yi-yi. Come on, man.
Favorite parts of tonight: 1. Hodges saying the President doesn’t have the stones to allow the Hodges family to die;
2. Jack not disagreeing with him;
3. Tony killing Galvez using nothing more than a phonebook and shower curtain. That’s Jack Bauer territory right there;
4. Jack yelling that David Palmer gave the order to reboot the CTU computers. For a second I forgot about his degenerative condition and thought Palmer had been raised from the dead. Hey, it worked for Tony.
5. No Kim Bauer
