Season 5; Hour Eleven (5:00PM - 6:00PM)

Air Date: 6 Mar 06
Reviewer: J

I want to start off by saying that this past Monday night might have been the point where this season went from “having potential” straight to “excellent,” at least for me. There have been plenty of good scenes, good episodes and the like to this point. However, those two hours back-to-back just felt like endless excellence and excitement, while seamlessly blending together scenes at the Presidential retreat, CTU, the terrorist hideout and so on. Scenes shifted from one to another without jarring imprecision and the acting was, as usual, excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed the two hours and honestly (like almost everyone, I would imagine) I thought the second hour was superior. But D gets to opine about that hour. For me, I will be focusing on the first hour shown on March 6: Hour Eleven.

We kick off with Tony finally being a factor again. We haven’t seen Tony since he played the role of a vegetable while Jack was fighting with an assassin and the killer was whizzing bullets over Tony’s melon and into the wall of the clinic. Little did Tony know that that was the best things would get for him for a while. Sleeping, that is. Tony comes to (conveniently as an hour begins) and asks to speak with Bill Buchanan. Bill wants to tell Tony the truth about Michelle’s death, which happened like ten hours ago, but the doctor is worried that Tony is too fragile for this. Interesting, since soon after the doctor and Bill both play shifty-eyed games of denial with him, Tony goes to find out for himself what’s up with Michelle. I mean, did Bill forget that Tony was a federal agent for quite a few years? Tony, predictably, goes to pieces when he finds out that Michelle is dead. The CTU database is replete with pictures of Michelle strewn on the Almeida lawn. Who shot those pictures? A neighbor ambling by with a camera phone? Tony does tell Bill that he needs to speak with Jack. Interesting. Bill ignores this request.

The President is in a doghouse like no other as we begin this hour. The Suvarovs and First Lady Martha are choppered back to Camp David Palmer and ushered inside. Yuri Suvarov finally voices his concerns and intimates suspicions that all is not kosher. I was wondering when this might happen since I imagine Mr. Suvarov is former Russian military, being the President of that nation and all. Logan blames his wife’s weirdness (and presumably her lack of willingness to engage in a First Lady sandwich) on her recent chemical imbalance. Suvarov clearly wants to call bullshit on Logan’s story but he simply walks away. Prior to this, there was an interesting scene where Logan actually acts Presidential and says that they’re going to need to honor the treaty they just signed to pool information about potential terrorists. You mean, like you did just last hour, Charles? Instead of asking this, Suvarov agrees. Interestingly, Suvarov has yet to ask, “Meester Pres-ee-dent, vwhere eez your cheef of staff?”

Jack is on his way to Henderson’s house to pull a little surprise spy versus spy on Robocop. And I imagine he’s more than a little pissed after Christopher’s little exploding clipboard gag back at OmicronSentoxVille. Anyway, somehow Jack beats Henderson back to his house. Maybe Henderson had to stop in at the morgue to have some new embalming fluid inserted. Seriously, is it me or does it look like they exhumed Peter Weller for this role? Anyway, at the Henderson house, Mrs. Henderson is surprised to see Jack, but not as surprised as I’d expect her to be since, you know, they all thought Jack was dead. Well, not Henderson. He used his Robotic senses to detect that Jack was still alive.

While Jack is rooting through Henderson’s computer files while Mrs. Henderson sits on the couch, Chris Henderson himself has called his bank “in Buenos Aires” according to the Fox Web site and “asked for access to his safety deposit box.” Really? He drove to Brazil and back to L.A. in like 15 minutes? Now that’s just silly. I mean, I’m assuming that’s where he got that suitcase of cash that Jack eventually uses to try to convince Mrs. Henderson that something’s amiss. Henderson himself of course denies it, even preparing to take a bullet from Jack the torturer. Jack decides instead to put a bullet in Mrs. Henderson’s leg to make Christopher talk. It doesn’t work. Jack folds, the first time we’ve seen him quit on torture this quickly. He just knows Henderson won’t talk so he decides to trundle him back to CTU where they have more than bullets with which to torture.

Meanwhile, this year’s most dubiously twisted connection begins to come into focus. McGill’s lame-ass sister’s boyfriend, Dwayne (incidentally, is “Dwayne” the first name with the highest percentage of losers attached to it?), is in contact with one of Bierko’s men to sell him Rudy McGill’s CTU keycard. Uh-oh, that can’t be good. But, really, I don’t see why they’re going to all this trouble to get into CTU – didn’t McGill get back in without the card after getting his ass kicked a few hours ago? And if the guards didn’t stop him then (cardless, bleeding, disheveled), then they’ll probably let a well-groomed terrorist in. While waiting to make the exchange (reportedly for $20K), Dwayne and Sister Switch use the keycard to cut lines of cocaine. I bet CTU keycards aren’t used for that very often.

McGill is permitted to call these morons again and he does, once more threatening to call the police. Which he does not make good on. Nicely done, McGill. You think you’re in a world of hurt now.

Meanwhile, the terrorists are still pissed that the Suvarovs survived the motorcade attack and spend the hour attempting to deploy the nerve gas in a hospital. Long story short, Curtis and a tactical team save the day by locating the canister, running through the busy hospital hallways with it and depositing it in what looks like a neo-natal incubator. Hopefully, they took out whatever preemie was occupying it previously.

Back at the ranch, Martha is refusing to see her husband. She even goes so far as to order Evelyn (lucky Evelyn) to bar the door and not allow any visitors, especially her rat-fink, chicken-shit husband. Evelyn dutifully blocks Logan’s way when he comes to visit, saying that Martha doesn’t want to see anyone. I liked Logan’s awesome reply: “I’m not anyone, Evelyn.” Of course, then he pusses out and backs down to her. Typical.

In another interesting scene, Martha asks to see the hobbling Aaron Pierce, who is still apparently on duty. She clutches his hand and thanks him for saving her life and he is very professional yet warm in his response. Mike Novick walks in on them and it’s made out to be like Novick walked in on Aaron bending Martha over a chair, when in reality she was emotionally touched by the fact that Pierce saved her life. I don’t know, I don’t think it’s out of line to squeeze a true friend’s hand who just risked his own life to save yours. Either way, Aaron is as flustered as we’ve ever seen him and Novick gets all pissy with him to not let it happen again. Oh, whatever, Mike.

We wrap up this exciting-yet-only-an-appetizer episode with Bierko’s henchman having McGill’s sister and Dwayne bound and gagged in their apartment. This is an odd way to do a money exchange. This terrorist (named “Ostroff”) then clips Dwayne in the back of the melon. Oh, so I guess he decided to pay them in a different manner. He then helps Jenny McGill kick her drug habit cold turkey by aerating the back of her skull. Yikes. A rather brutal scene, even for 24. Ostroff swipes the keycard and strolls out. We don’t see whether or not he took their last line of coke to add insult to injury.

This leads us right into (and I do mean right into – there was nothing in between) Hour Twelve, which was quite awesome. And it is here that I will hand the baton to D and sit back and enjoy.