Season 5; Hour Nine (3:00PM - 4:00PM)

Air Date: 20 Feb 06
Reviewer: J

After leading us to wonder if perhaps Erwich was the main bad guy for Season Five, Fox cleared that up this week by abruptly ending Ivan’s reign as lead singer of the Yellow Tie Band. The man who ended that reign (and Erwich’s life, as it turns out) is a man named Vladimir Bierko, whom the Fox site lists as Erwich’s “superior.” Are the ranks that clearly defined? Because maybe when this is all over, Bierko and Erwich and guys like that can come do a lunch-and-learn at CTU around chain-of-command and things of that nature. Anyway, Bierko knifes Erwich in the gut and kills him and then turns to the remaining Yellow Tones, who are giving off that “Hey, dude, we didn’t like him anyway, anything you say” look. Bierko exposits for us that he has secured more men “at great personal expense” and he did this because he “anticipated this.” Really? Well, this makes at least three 24 bad guys who were staggeringly good at predicting human behavior. […or who have been watching ‘24’ reruns…-D.]

Bierko is PO’ed that this Nathanson guy duped them, or tried to dupe them, which continues to lend credibility to Dead Walt’s story that they really did intend to use the gas on the terrorists. What still is a bit mushy in the middle, however, is the reasoning behind the need to kill David Palmer. That storyline is unfortunately disappearing in the rear-view mirror and I don’t think it should. There has to be a better reason that the lame-o ones that Walt and Nathanson have been spouting. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, Nathanson (who remember, “went dark” when Walt tried to call him) is freaking the hell out and getting in his car. Now, I don’t know what he’s been doing the past two or three hours while he’s been “dark” – maybe taking a nap? Or maybe it just took him this long to get down to his car and ensure that there wasn’t a surprise package underneath it. Speaking of that, is anybody going to remember to go de-bomb Chloe’s Prius? Oh, hell, it’s a Prius, let it blow up. You just hope that Chloe doesn’t forget about it after working for 24 straight hours. Like she finally gets home, changes the sheets to remove the Spenser from them, and goes to make a bowl of cereal and realizes she has no milk. Then, ka-boom. Man, that would suck. For her. And whoever has the spot next to her.

Back at the CTU ranch, this is the episode where McGill begins to completely unspool. The first time we see him, he’s making a phone call to his sister, Switch. Switch’s boyfriend is the one who beat the ever-living hell out of Lynn (probably only partly because his name is “Lynn”) and took his wallet. As noted, they do have Lynn’s keycard to CTU, which Lynn is asking for back. He goes so far as to say they can have his money and max out his credit cards, but he needs his keycard back. Let’s stop a second here. For one thing, why are you asking? You’re a federal freaking agent. Send LAPD to that apartment to take back your property. I don’t see the problem here. Kick down the door, beat down the loser and take the wallet. Second, Lynn, you can cancel your credit cards. That’s fairly easy. Although perhaps not in the middle of a national security crisis. No, during those you only have time to meet sketchy relatives in shady parking lots. You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe Lynn’s parents wanted two little girls so they just named him Lynn. Then they could dress him in pink next to Jenny and send out Christmas cards that said from them “and Lynn and Jenny.”

Anyway, Lynn picks up his ringing phone thinking it’s Jenny calling him back and instead he’s greeted by President Logan screeching at him about failing at the mall. This only further compacts the stress ball that is Rudy McGill’s brain and he stalks into the conference room where Buchanan is leading another 2-minute meeting. I’m usually about two minutes late to my meetings so at CTU I’d miss everything.

Lynn openly questions why Audrey keeps defending Jack’s actions. Well, wait a minute, Lynn. You wanted to use her closeness to Jack for some asinine reason when you assigned her to question Diane. Now, it’s not okay that she is close to him? Oh, right, you’re a freak from Division, I forgot.

He snits that he wants Jack brought in for disobeying the order to allow the gas to be released. And I have to say that unfortunately I have to defend McGill on this one. Jack heard the entire discussion over his earpiece. Bill and Lynn agreed it should be released and even Logan came to that conclusion. Only Audrey was squawking otherwise. So CTU went through the right protocols and the right process and Jack, as a newly re-minted field agent, is supposed to follow that order. And he did not. So he should answer for it. Curtis tells him as much and offers to lighten Jack’s load by carrying his gun for him. The one that fires bullets, you perverts.

Meanwhile, Audrey gets a call from Nathanson, who it should be pointed out, obeys the law and uses a hands-free device. Nathanson wants to talk to Jack and does so through Audrey. Audrey puts him through to Jack who pretends it’s a personal call. To which Curtis gives him the go-ahead to get out of the car. Ummm, okay.

Anyway, Nathanson tells Jack where he wants to meet, which is apparently on the list of places the terrorists will look for him. Jack agrees to meet him there (in “ten minutes,” in LA, as we approach rush hour) and hops back in with Curtis. As they’re driving, Curtis brings up Audrey and how she’s a good person (though I don’t know how Curtis knows this) and kind of intimates… something. Though I’m not sure what. Maybe that Jack and her should try again? I don’t know. And I don’t know what interest it is of Curtis’. Regardless, at the next stop sign, Jack jacks Curtis in the noggin and puts him in a sleeper hold. Well, that’ll teach Curtis to ever bring up Audrey to Jack again. Yikes.

Oh, wait, that’s right, Jack just wanted Curtis’ car. How come Jack talks his way into getting people to listen to him sometimes but other times he just beats them up to get his way? Curtis has always shown loyalty to Jack so wouldn’t it be worth trying to be diplomatic?

He removes the hulking (and now sleeping) Curtis from his SUV and lays him on the side of the road. I thought sure Jack would call for someone to come find him but he didn’t. He did, however, leave Curtis with his cell phone and, presumably, cab fare.

Back at CTU, McGill is spending all his time trying to prove that Audrey is working against him. Way to focus, Lynn. Audrey, of course, realizes that he’s snooping and asks Chloe to incriminate herself by erasing the log of the call to Jack. So much the “clean” line Nathanson asked for, eh? Chloe, bless her heart, tells the technically-inept Audrey that all the calls are indexed and there’s no way to remove just one, at least not quickly. So Audrey has her erase all of her phone calls for the entire day. Lynn glances down at Audrey from her office and sees her on the phone. Then he sees there are zero calls in the log for her workstation. Lynn then looks down towards Audrey again and thinks to himself, “No wonder the Department of Defense has such spending issues. Raines has been here all day pretending to make phone calls.” Or he realizes something is up. But I like my version better.

Around this time over at Camp David Palmer (tm, reader Bill), Mike Novick comes to the President with Walt’s cell phone. There’s a terrorist on the other end – Bierko – and he’ll only speak to Logan. Much to my disappointment, Logan does not respond “Fuck that noise!” He really should, though, because there’s no way that anyone should even be answering that phone and if they are, they shouldn’t be bringing it to the President. It’s kind of…. what’s the word? Ridiculous. Nevertheless, Logan takes the call and is told he has to provide Suvarov’s motorcade route back to the airport so that they can attack him; otherwise, they’ll release the gas on US citizens. Logan immediately begins to consider this as an option which, despite his inability to make decisions, is indeed the lesser of two evils. However, this entire exchange illustrates the point of why we don’t negotiate with terrorists. So what if they blow up Suvarov? What next? They’ll still have the nerve gas. There’s no good ending here and Logan would see that if he could see past the next 15 minutes. But he cannot, despite Mike’s prodding.

At CTU, McGill is turning nuttier than a fruitcake [I’m thinking it’s that magic ring in his pocket that’s doing it…-D], which makes it hard to believe it was just a few hours ago that he not only saved CTU’s ass by recognizing Jack’s distress call at the airport, but he also gave the okay to disregard Logan’s order to stop the investigation while Logan was under Walt’s influence. McGill was an okay, albeit annoying, guy back then. Now he’s just going off his rocker with conspiracy theories. He confronts Bill about Audrey and Jack, and Bill acknowledges they were bumping uglies but never invited him to join. Mainly because he wanted to hump Michelle’s leg. But that’s another story. What I found amusing was when McGill showed Bill that Audrey’s phone log was erased, Bill casually suggested it was a “glitch.” Yeah, nice to see how nonchalant we are about glitches in the communication and technology arenas of a national security division.

At this point, Jack is arriving to meet Nathanson, who is still somewhat calm. However, this all changes as Jack notes a helicopter landing with men jumping out who do have machine guns and don’t appear to have handcuffs. Jack astutely deduces that Nathanson is in deep el shitto. Nathanson quickly realizes the whole game of making sure Jack wasn’t followed is moot now since it appears he himself was followed. They agree to meet on the roof which makes zero sense to me [‘Let’s meet on the roof where a confrontation with a helicopter will be much more photogenic.’ –D]. Nathanson survives several shootouts on the lower floors of the warehouse, thanks to pillars he can hide behind and whatnot. Meanwhile, Jack is taking an awfully long time to get up a flight of stairs to where Nathanson is (the second floor). Or wait – Jack said to meet on the roof, right? But wasn’t Jack already on the roof when he saw the chopper land? What’s going on here? Did Jack fall back into the alley or something?

Naturally, they get to the roof and Jack aerates the two shooters just in time to save Nathanson’s ass, but then the chopper is back and shreds Nathanson. Jack is able to disable the chopper with his pistola and gets over to Nathanson who, with his dying breath says “my pocket.” He’s wearing a suit, though, and doesn’t specify which pocket. Maybe he just wanted a hand job? Regardless, Jack finds a computer chip (presumably Nathanson’s dry cleaning ticket was in the suit jacket) but Nathanson dies before telling him what it is. So Jack plugs it into his cell phone/PDA/waffle iron.

Jack’s next move is to call Audrey, who has McGill literally breathing down her neck. Audrey thinks quickly, I must admit, and pretends someone was trying to reach IT and accidentally dialed her extension. How she knows all this after not having been in this building in 18 months I have no idea. However, my thought was that I would have completely frozen up at that point. Audrey didn’t and sent the call to Chloe as McGill furrows his brow and thinks “People dialing wrong extensions leads to a lack of productivity – I’m putting that in my report.”

When Jack gets to Chloe, he’s all, “What the fuck is Audrey’s deal?” And Chloe fills him in and round and round we go. Now we’ve got the same deal as in previous years, with Jack, Audrey and Chloe (and eventually Bill) playing the roles of Michelle, Tony, Jack, etc. and McGill playing the role of the outfoxed man from Division (usually Chappelle). You know, CTU’s job would be a lot easier if they could all just do whatever the hell they wanted all the time because it usually seems to work out. Following a structure just seems to get in their way.

Anyway, this leads to Bill distracting McGill from Audrey’s desk so that Audrey can get Chloe a DoD password to de-encrypt the file Jack sent her. McGill catches on, though, and flips his shit. However, when Buchanan has McGill offscreen, you can hear Buchanan talking about the missing call log from earlier and how they can review it in McGill’s hijacked office. You can also hear Buchanan say something about using McGill’s keycard. Very subtle, but it was interesting to me.

Back to the aforementioned shit-flipping being conducted by McGill. His psychosis and paranoia (while actually accurate) lead him to tell Audrey he’d throw her bony little ass out of the building if her poppy wasn’t the Secretary of Defense and that he doesn’t have the same problem with Buchanan since his dad is…. retired and playing golf in Boca Raton, I would imagine. Anyway, he tosses Buchanan in a holding cell while Audrey tells Lynn she’s going to tell her daddy (with “her” referring to Audrey, not Lynn, for those who aren’t yet familiar with the names and the reality that McGill has a girl’s name). And then he’ll be sorry. Lynn assures her that she doesn’t want to threaten him. Really, you little puke? Why is that? God, Lynn’s making it really hard for me to defend him by being a complete asshole.

Anyway, during all the commotion, nobody notices that Chloe is not being her normal nosy self and is instead busily working away at her station. She lets Jack know that the chip had info from a company that developed some isotope that has something to do with the nerve gas. I’m not getting any more into it than that since I struggled with high school chemistry and only went to my college chem class because there was an incredibly hot girl who sat next to me in lectures and even agreed to study with me.

Jack somehow knows that a guy named Christopher Henderson is an exec at Omicron, the company that is responsible for this isotope. Something tells me this will be important later on. In fact, I already know why it’ll be important but I’ve gotten flak from readers for revealing “spoilers” and, while I don’t really care, I can avoid it on this one so I will.

Toward the end of the hour, we’re back at Camp David Palmer where the first lady has been pleading with Logan not to sign the death warrant of the Suvarovs by turning over their motorcade route. He again points out that it’s not so simple and that if it’s them or American citizens he’s got to choose them to take the bullet. Or bullets, as it were. Martha seems to come around to his point of view and then has to go out and cheerily say goodbye to the Suvarovs. So Mr. and Mrs. Russia flew into America a few hours ago and are now heading right back out? Wouldn’t the President offer to let them stay the night or for a meal at least? That’s a hell of a travel day.

Anyway, Martha keeps trying to get Logan to do something to stop the motorcade from leaving. When he does not, she does the logical thing – she hops into the motorcade with the Suvarovs. Oh, wait, no, that’s not logical. My bad.

Aaron, who to me is like what it would be like if one of us were actually in the 24 world, looks at her wearily and tells her they’re not detailed for her to ride with them. She says they can follow if they like and he relents and says he’ll just ride up front. Martha is clearly freaked by this because she, too, likes Aaron and doesn’t want him killed. But one would also assume she doesn’t want herself killed… right? I mean, am I wrong here? Does this think that by her being in the motorcade that Logan will call it back? Maybe that’s her thinking but that’s an awfully big risk to take.

As she jumps into the seat across from the Suvarovs, they look about as pleased to see her as someone whose mother-in-law just jumped in right when they thought they were rid of her. Mrs. Suvarov seems somewhat pleased but the Russian prez seems hesitant. He probably wanted to do it in an American limo on their way to the airport. His wife is rather attractive, after all.

As we roll to the final seconds of the hour, the multiple split screens show just how badly things are coming apart at the seams. Curtis is walking back into CTU after having been ambushed by Jack and you just know McGill is going to accuse him of being complicit with Jack’s rogue-ness. Buchanan is stewing in a holding cell, still standing and not even loosening his tie. Jack, still off the reservation, is on his way to Omicron to talk to Christopher Henderson. And Mrs. Logan is about to make the President have to make another difficult choice. She should know by now that that’s not his strong suit.

Oh, and the terrorists, now with frontman Vladdy Bierko, are planning to intercept the Russian motorcade and kill all those inside.

And it’s only 4 PM. Will the CTU staff be able to make it to the happy hour at TGI Friday’s at 5? We’ll see.