Season 5; Hour Seven (1:00PM - 2:00PM)

Air Date: 6 Feb 06
Reviewer: J

Welcome to 24’s first letdown episode in quite a while. I was wondering rather excitedly if they’d be able to keep up the action quotient that they established in the opening four hours and I actually held out hope that they’d be able to. 24 always seems to come through and I expected this time to be no different. While I’m still very much intrigued and into this season, some of this is starting to feel a little too recycled, which is something that sometimes happens in a fifth season of a TV show. (For example, look at The West Wing, a show that was a media darling for the first four years and then absolutely fell down the stairs in season five. The show never really recovered and was ultimately cancelled last week.) But this particular episode seemed really oddly edited and sort of bumpy in plot details.

Let’s talk about what felt kind of tired this week.

• The casualty projections. We heard Lynn “Rudy” McGill on the previews telling us breathlessly about casualties “in the hundreds of thousands.” Whoop-dee-doo, Lynny, you shoulda been here a couple years ago when a frickin’ nuke went off in California! Oh, yeah, and a weaponized virus was released in an LA hotel just three years ago.
  
• Spenser Wolff’s playing the “Honorary Agent Who Is Reinstated After Being Uncovered As A Mole” role. He’s apparently the only one who can hack into something or other that Chloe babbled about. But I thought Chloe could do everything? Nevermind. But this was done several times in past seasons, right down to someone being fired and sent home (see, O’Brian, Chloe) only to be brought back a few hours later. In fact, sometimes agents are tortured and then put back to work. When Spenser is sent packing, we are treated to Edgar smirking at his computer screen. I think we’re to assume that he’s psyched at Spenser’s firing but he could just as easily be looking at the Little Debbie Web site.
  
• A crazy periphery character related to a main character but who probably has little or no input on the overall plot (nor any of the pointless plots). Playing this role is Lynn McGill’s sister, Jenny, who reminds me a lot of Switch from the original Matrix movie. Remember Michelle Dessler’s crazy brother from Season Two? Remember Chase’s bastard child? We’ve been here and done this. [And who can forget Erin Driscoll’s twitchy, suicidal daughter? The only family members they’ve used that were moderately successful were Jack’s in Season One. – D]
  
• Conflict between the first lady and the President. Granted, it’s a little different, but I didn’t like Sherry Palmer and I don’t like Lady Martha.
  
• Heartless bad guy who ruthlessly kills people he promises not to hurt. Did anyone think Erwich, formerly of Yellow Tie fame, was going to let that motorcycle mechanic live? Come on, 24, don’t start fading on your ability to surprise us.
  
• Wronged woman shooting a vital bad guy after CTU busts their asses to get him into custody. (See Saunders, Stephen.)
  

Let’s not pretend I thought it was all bad, though. Let’s also talk about some of the things we learned this hour. Well, for one thing, Lynn McGill is not a field agent. His junkie sister, whose name is Jenny but I must call Switch, calls him up on his cell phone to hit him up for money. When she first called, I thought he was banging her and then he expositioned for us that she was his sister. Weren’t you then expecting him to whine, “I’m telling mom!” at some point along the way?

McGill tells her that he’ll meet her in a shady, poorly visible, perfect-place-to-kick-someone’s-ass-discreetly parking lot across from CTU. Only he doesn’t add in all those descriptors. He does tell her that he’ll meet her in 20 minutes and then proceeds to not meet her for 40 minutes. I thought this anal freak was punctual? This tardiness apparently pisses off Sister Switch who stalls for a few moments, giving her previously unseen hoodlum friend the chance to mug Lynn from behind. Yes, this is a great idea – assault a federal agent. Why not just knock over a 7-11? Isn’t it more likely that you’d get more cash that way than by mugging McGill? Either way, I hope they didn’t take his access card for CTU. I know what a bitch it is to get a replacement in my office.

Getting back to my point, Lynn just takes his ass-beating and heads back to CTU. Wouldn’t even the pencil-pushing-est of CTU agents have some weapons and/or hand-to-hand combat training? Kim Bauer claimed to have weapons training two seasons ago and we know Chloe can fire a gun and defend herself. I remember how much of a puissant our old friend Chappelle was right up until the end. In fact, the only division agents I remember having any sort of ability to act as a field agent were George Mason and Michelle.

Anyway, on the subject of odd editing, we had the President apologizing to Martha and her seeming to accept his apology and kick his ass at the same time. Martha comments that she thinks Logan will need her help and in the split-second where you can tell Logan thinks he’s forgiven Martha hits him with a vicious, open-handed right cross. Wow, what a crackling slap that was! You wonder how much fun they had doing that scene. (“Okay, Greg and Jean, let’s do it again… from the slap!”) Anyway, Martha wants to help him out and finally we see Mike Novick reappear, showing no ill effects of whatever was used to subdue him last hour. I sure hope he watched the previouslies.

Mike wants to cover up Cummings’ involvement in the assassination of Palmer, but Martha has a mini-freak out and says that they cannot lie to the American people. Right. Martha, this is Earth. Earth, Martha. Have you two met? More to the point, her husband has risen, however questionably, to the highest political post in all the land and she doesn’t think you can lie to the American public? Okay.

Either way, Logan concurs with his wife’s suggestion that they draw up a press statement (there’s Logan focusing on PR again) as Mike looks as though he wishes he had a belt to hang himself with. Mike is then dismissed by the Prez to look for such a belt.

On the Erwich front, he knows that Cummings was trying to screw them over and so he is trying to figure out how to use the canisters at his own disposal. We’re to believe that the man Cummings had on the inside spilled the beans on the plan to remotely detonate the canisters. So Erwich, somehow, is put in touch with this man Rossler, who officially ups the creep factor of 24 to previously unseen levels. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

Erwich learns he must get into the canteens of death somehow and to do so he needs some way to cut through metal. Carefully. So where does he go? Right, to a motorcycle shop. The dude there confirms he has metal cutting tools and Erwich puts him to work, not for one second showing any concern that there’s a margin of error of only millimeters. A lot of confidence in motorcycle mechanics, eh, Erwich? I guess he likes Orange County Choppers.

The point of cutting those canisters open is so that he can reset them to function at his whim. And he needs Rossler to help him do this. CTU uses some of their stealthy technology to track a phone call between Rossler and Erwich. Never mind that if they’re using a frequency that easy to check, there must be thousands of other phone calls also within earshot of their equipment. Regardless, Jack and Curtis move in on Rossler’s lair, which is guarded by armed security guys who are ready to shoot visitors as soon as their security monitors fritz out. Well, somebody warn the UPS guy. I’ve never lived in a building with a doorman or a front desk but if this is what it’s like, sign me up. Ain’t nobody gonna piss me off again.

Anyway, Curtis has moved on from having only one line in last week’s episode (and from delivering pizzas) and is part of the two-man team that consists of him and Jack. As they approach the guards on Rossler’s level of the building, the guard simply open fire, apparently not for one second caring if they’re shooting at a federal agent. Consequences, schmonsequences. It proves irrelevant for the guards, however, as Jack and Curtis take them down. They use decidedly different methods, though. Jack shoots the guards while Curtis – apparently in an attempt to save ammo – tries to bounce the guards’ bullets off his chest and back at them. This doesn’t work and Curtis goes down in pain. Fortunately, he’s wearing a bulletproof vest. Jack proceeds into Rossler’s penthouse, thanking his lucky stars that Curtis is so much bigger than him and, thus, an easier target.

In the apartment, Jack takes a shot at a now-armed Rossler, hitting him in the leg despite appearing to aim at Rossler’s chest or head. Now that’s a magic bullet. I’m telling you, go back and watch it again. Jack never aims low.

Nevertheless, Rossler is injured and gives up his gun while Chloe tells Jack that someone else is in the apartment. D speculated a lot last week as to who this might be and it turns out to be no where near as suspenseful as it was made to seem. It’s just some dumb whore. Literally. A mail-order sex slave named Inessa who was imported from Russia perhaps a month or two ago. Let me ask this – where did she think she was going? Or are these girls kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery? And how does it all work? Is she yours forever? Is she ever repossessed if you don’t make payments? I think the reason nobody knows the answers to these questions is because it’s just all too creepy and disgusting to try to learn more about. The fact that it goes on is enough to make my lunch come back up. I’m all for sex with young girls, but when I say “young” I mean like 22. This girl is reportedly 15. For that, Rossler should have his nuts stapled to one end of the coffee table while Curtis sets fire to the other end.

Instead, Rossler demands a deal in which he gets immunity and his sex slave and walks away in return for giving them Erwich. Jack has no interest in this and in full view of Buchanan, Audrey and McGill he and Curtis grind boots against Rossler’s gunshot wound to try to make him talk. And given how quickly Rossler seems to be coming around, I would think a little more would have made him talk. However, McGill – pissant that he is – steps in and orders Jack to accept the deal. Which is interesting, given that the deal to set Mandy free last year had to be approved by the President. Apparently now McGill is senior enough to dole out federal immunity. Whatever.

It turns out that McGill was eager to speed up the process of getting information from someone in order to stop someone else from murdering thousands of Americans because he was late for his meeting with his crackhead sister. See, this is why young people with crackhead siblings shouldn’t be in such positions of authority. I mean, really, did McGill just do what I saw? He ordered Jack to accept Rossler’s ridiculous deal and then said “We’re signing off here,” so he could get to his meeting with Switch. Of course, right after saying they were signing off, he ordered Buchanan and Audrey to make sure Jack sticks to the deal. How can they do that if you’ve just signed them off of the transmission? And what makes him think that those two would do anything he says? They’ve already proven they do respect Jack and don’t respect Lynn. Oh, whatever.

So then Lynn goes across the street and endures his ass-whipping at the hands of Sister Switch’s crack buddy.

In the meantime, Jack now has to break the news to Ivana Humpalot that she has to go with Rossler. Go with him? Where? Jack promises to follow them and perform a snatch job. He also promises to get her away from Rossler. But to my last question – where? Where is Rossler going to go with a hole in his leg? Inessa, the well-stacked, 15-year-old Russian hooker (man, imagine the Google hits I might get now) doesn’t take the news well. But Jack promises over and over that he won’t let Rossler hurt her again. Finally, she seems to relent eerily.

And shortly thereafter we find out why she relented. Jack left her alone to get dressed and in doing so she managed to arm herself with a 9MM handgun. I’m not sure if I like the 9 as an accessory with that outfit. Come to think of it, how could she hide the bulging gun under a slim-fitting outfit? (I often have the same issue with my…ahem…weapon.)

Anyway, Insexa McSexslave decides that she ain’t going anywhere with Rossler and as soon as she’s back in the room with him, she fires several very accurate rounds into his torso. Rossler goes down and dies with a shocked expression on his face. Serves the sick bastard right, although I’d have wanted to see him suffer a while lot more. Jack’s only remorse is that they’re now fucked with regard to getting Erwich to fall into their trap. He does not tell Inessa how she can make it up to him, but perhaps that happened while we were watching something else.

Over at the Hidden Valley Presidential Retreat, Logan and Martha are working on his statement. Martha is all authoritative and is sort of acting like a crazy person would act when given the chance to act like one of the rest of us. Seriously, I don’t care if she’s pissed and wants to be involved. She’s still prone to emotional freak-outs and with Logan acting as Presidential hissy-fitter, we’ve got plenty of that in the hopper already.

Speaking of which, I never talked about why Jack is still on the job, did I? After he beat down Walt Cummings and Aaron took Cummings away, Jack prepared to leave. Logan then had a little flip-out, clearly scared about being left alone to, you know, run the country on his own. Jack made it clear he wanted to disappear again for his daughter’s sake, or some such shit like that. Logan then begged him to stay on despite the fact that he knew Jack didn’t have the same sense of loyalty to Logan as he did to Palmer, even going so far as to acknowledge that they have “a complicated past.” Wait, did they sleep together once and then Jack never called? Oh, right, Logan means the way he threw Jack under the bus 18 months ago when the anger of the Chinese government came crashing down upon the President. And speaking of that, where the hell are those Chinese? And where’s Agent Bern? I’ll bet Jack wants to kick his freaking ass. I hope the whole Chinese angle isn’t completely ignored since that was reportedly the original focus of this season but was then scrapped in favor of the one we’re currently seeing.

In order to manufacture a reason to bring back Elisha Cuthbert, Jack asks Audrey (yes, of course, why not Audrey?) to try to track down Kim and bring her into CTU so that he (Jack) can tell her that he’s alive in person. Hmmmm…. I wonder how willing Kim will be to come to CTU, the place that, as far as she knows, took the lives of both of her parents. Especially with no real explanation.

Towards the end of the hour, we learn that John Allen Nelson’s arc on 24 as Walt Cummings has come to an end. Novick calls the Prez and tells him to come to someplace nearby. The Prez quite rightly asks Novick just to tell him what happened, to which Mike responds “Just come here, Mr. President.” Ah, nooooo, Mike. You could just tell him. I realize that’s not as dramatic, but what was the point of this? As Logan and Martha walk into wherever Mike is, we see Cummings dangling by the neck from his belt. I’m sort of curious as to how he managed to hang himself since the last time we saw him, he was cuffed and guarded by Secret Service. And, presumably, had his belt around his waist.

Random Observation #1 – Did everyone see John McCain’s cameo? It was actually in the upper left corner when we were in a splitscreen as we came back from commercials about halfway through the show. He brought a file into the conference room and handed it to Audrey, then left. Hey, if we don’t fix Social Security, maybe that’s the future for us – retirees being gophers in offices where technology has passed them by.

Random Observation #2 – Is Tony waking up anytime soon? Was the press announcement that Carlos Bernard was coming back for this season simply to deceive us? I wish he wasn’t injured because then he and Jack and Curtis could be tearing shit up.

As I said earlier, I found this to be the first bit of a letdown episode for me this season. As always, I definitely still enjoyed it but I didn’t feel it was up to the standards we’ve come to expect.