Season 5; Hour Fifteen (9:00PM - 10:00PM)

Air Date: 27 Mar 06
Reviewer: J

I want to start out this week with a quick word about the “silent clock” that has apparently caused an uproar among some of the shows fans. Mainly because Tony did not “get a silent clock.” Okay, in my opinion, the silent clock is used for dramatic effect and it’s very hard to define when it’s appropriate. Using it sparingly, as they have, is part of what makes it work. If a silent clock was done every time someone of significance died, we’d have them every other week. The reason, I believe, that we saw one at the end of Edgar’s death hour was because it was one of the most catastrophic losses of human life that we’ve seen on the show to this point. And especially this season. The people being killed were the backbone of the only entity that we, the fans, believe could possibly thwart Bierko – CTU. And after the drama of seeing so many workers die and knowing CTU was being rendered moot, we then had the pile-on of seeing Edgar come chugging out onto the floor. Chloe’s face, Edgar’s face, the overall significance of that hour… it all culminated with the silent clock.

As for Tony, his death was somewhat predictable. You could see he was going to lose his nerve in his distraught state of mind and you also knew he didn’t care much about living anymore now that Michelle was gone. And quite simply, having the show end without the beepboop beepboop for two weeks in a row would make it seem kind of silly. So that’s my opinion on that hoopla.

On to Hour Fifteen, which had some more interesting nuggets that continue to serve to keep 24 fresh. For instance, can you ever remember an hour where we didn’t see the President, whether it was Palmer, Keeler or Logan? I can’t. In this hour, not appearing are Logan, VP Gardner, Looney First Lady Martha and Mike “I hate my job” Novick. Last we saw Logan, he was fretting about the martial law order he had just given while Gardner smarmily told him he had things under control. Martha Logan was like, “Dude, I may be crazier than a shithouse rat but even I can see what the VP is doing.” And Mike just rubbed his bald head and wished he hadn’t made the trip to Obscurely Hidden Valley, California. What did they do for this past hour? Perhaps Logan took a nap? Maybe he went and groped Mrs. Suvarov? [Where are those pesky Russians, anyway? – D] Maybe Logan, Gardner, Suvarov and Novick busted out the cards and played gin rummy. (They don’t seem like poker men to me.) Regardless, they are unseen for the hour. And you know what? That was just fine with me. Besides, McGill is dead so Logan isn’t sure who he should yell at right now.

As you’ll recall from last hour, Hot Collette (whose breasts are magnificent, I must say) fingered Audrey, which made Jack angry. Uh, well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, back at CTU, word has traveled fast and Bill has told Chloe to start digging up dirt on Audrey and any connections to the baddies we know of so far. Bill then pulls a McGill and orders her taken into custody. Curtis isn’t there to threaten to draw his weapon if the security guards carry that order, so the motion passes and Audrey is hauled off the one of the holding rooms. Whether it’s the holding room of death that McGill bit it in is unclear. (Interestingly, the CTU guards who take Audrey away are now back in white shirts, circa Seasons 1-3.)

Jack, rather quickly, arrives at CTU and herds Collette in, who is still singing like a parakeet about Audrey. She confirms that she met her and can ID her. Jack is getting increasingly agitated.

I must say, I really liked Jack in these scenes at CTU. His acting was well-done and not just the screaming it has been recently. When he walks into the conference room where Buchanan is arguing that Audrey shouldn’t be tortured by Burke (who was so successful with Henderson), he immediately tells Karen Hayes from Homeland Security that it’s “ridiculous” and that he’ll handle the interrogation. Hayes, quite rightly, points out that his bumping uglies with her is not exactly a secret. The way she delivered that line was great, too, with a mixture of accuracy and discomfort. Jack points out that he wouldn’t let his judgment be impaired just because he’s seen Audrey naked, to which Hayes – again, quite accurately – says, “Is that what happened with Nina Myers?” Ooooh! Burn! Jack looks like he doesn’t know what to say. I guess the Nina stories have made the rounds to every federal agency in the country, huh? Jack recovers nicely and points out that a lot of people were fooled by Nina. I really liked this calling back to characters who are long since gone. As I’ve said before, this is a bit of a shout-out to those of us who’ve been paying attention for all these years. And if you think everyone knows who Nina is, you’re wrong. I know several people who started watching last year or this year. For the most part, they love it, but then there are these kinds of exchanges where they find themselves going, “What? Who?” The truth is, most shows don’t harken back to things that happened years ago, mainly because they don’t think their audience is smart enough to remember or draw the connection. One more reason we love 24, even with its flaws. They know they have a madly devoted following and they play to it with little tidbits like this. Was it necessary? No, but it continued to remind us that Jack’s character has many layers. Just like a cake. [Or as Donkey in Shrek would say, like a parfait. –D]

Anyway, Jack wins, as usual, mainly because he points out that Audrey’s papa is the Secretary of Defense and that Karen’s ass will be in a sling if she’s wrong and tortures Audrey for no reason. And on the subject of torture – since when did Homeland get so casual with torture? Or is this just an example of Karen playing with her new CTU toys? I thought this torture thing was one of the dark secrets of CIA-born CTU?
Regardless, Jack gets the first shot at Audrey and knows he has to be tough with her. Chloe has learned that Audrey stayed at a hotel with our old friend, the late Walt Cummings. And not only did she stay at the same hotel, the hotel has them in the same room. Silly hotel records. (Incidentally, the links to the pics of Chloe are for D – he’s been a fan from Day 1.) [Thanks, J. How can you not love a chick who can begin investigating a lead, uncover a clandestine affair between relatively high-ranking government officials, AND have said affair verified ALL WITHIN 8 MINUTES? –D]

Jack proceeds with his interrogation of Audrey and she looks taken aback by his abruptness/professional demeanor. What, Audrey, were you expecting a hug? A nice piece of acting by both of them here. Kim Raver is fantastic, folks. Whether you like Audrey or not, Raver does an amazing job of portraying emotions and feelings with her glances, her mannerisms and, most of all, those big, beautiful eyes. Eyes often convey true emotion in real life and I think Kim Raver has amazing abilities when it comes to using her peepers.

As for Kiefer, as I said earlier, this episode gave him a chance to do more than fire his weapon. During the interrogation, he catches Audrey lying that she’d only met Cummings in briefings, when in reality she’d taken off his briefs and made him come. (See what I did there? See how I turned that around to make a funny?) When Audrey confesses that she didn’t want to admit that because she was afraid Jack wouldn’t be able to forgive her, Jack calls bullshit by saying, “Because you slept with someone after you thought I was dead?” The way in which Sutherland almost spits out the words was spot-on, as though to say, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Continuing on my waxing about Kim Raver, her fear in this episode was palpable. She knows what CTU is capable of and, more to the point, what Jack is capable of. She saw him torture her husband and knows that they tortured her brother by playing Michael Bolton in his ears.

Jack does shock her when he suddenly throws the table aside and puts her against the wall with his hand on her throat. What’s great about this is that you can see how truly frightened Audrey is – she can barely breathe out the words, “I am telling the truth.” She also knows that Jack is in there because he is trying to get what CTU needs without letting Burke in. She even says, “Do what you have to do, Jack…” which only pisses him off more. He even asks whether or not her father is involved, to which she sadly points out how well Jack knows him. In the end, Jack relents and believes she doesn’t know anything. Hayes, in the observation room, says, “Looks like she broke him, not the other way around.” Uh-oh. Cue Burke.

Jack tries to beat down the guards who are there with Burke to take Audrey back to the holding room but Burke (who was put in a sleeper hold by Tony not long ago, you’ll recall) hits Jack with a taser and cuffs him. When we come back from the commercial, in one of the split screens we can see Jack rubbing his hand and Bill behind him busting a cold compress for Jack to use. We eventually get to this scene and Hayes tells Jack he needs to calm the hell down (I’m curious as to who dragged Jack up the stairs and into the director’s office where they now sit). Jack continues to insist that Audrey’s innocent, presumably because she gives really good head. Or because he believes her. Hayes eventually lets him work with Chloe to figure out if Collette has had contact with Henderson, thus negating her immunity. Not sure how that negates it, but whatever.

Meanwhile, a few other things are happening, though as I mentioned, none involve the President. A girl named Shari is sent down to replace Edgar and Chloe is bitchy at first but relents and is kinder to her for a while, clearly remembering that the last “friend” she wasn’t nice to ended up dead. It turns out that this Shari filed a sexual harassment claim against Miles. (Interestingly, Miles’ character is named “Papazian” and the actor who plays Burke is actually named “Papazian.” These are the tidbits you don’t get anywhere else.)

Anyway, Miles clearly remembers her and at one point tries to mess with Shari, but Chloe backs her up and gets Miles to back down, quite rightly pointing out that they don’t have time for nonsense right now. Idiot. What the hell is Miles doing simultaneously trying to undermine techies while also sitting in on every meeting where torture is discussed? And have you noticed what a creepy stare he gives everyone? Good god.

Meanwhile, Bierko’s men are taking advantage of the martial law issues by carjacking a couple of LAPD officers so that now they can use the cop car to ferry their gas to “the location.” Nice call, VP Gardner – that worked out well. Also, I can’t help but think here about how casual death has become on this show. During the first season, you may recall Jack working with a female LAPD officer to apprehend a suspect but she gets shot and killed in the process. LAPD is pissed about it and Jack clearly feels awful. However, now, we have two officers killed and it barely feels like a bump in the road.

The location they’re heading towards, it turns out, is a natural gas facility. Uh-oh. Does that mean all of their paying customers will be gassed to death while those who shirked their bills and had the gas shut off that morning will survive? Hardly seems fair.

Also, Wayne Palmer is still missing. You’ll recall last hour that he got through a security checkpoint on his way to the Presidential retreat because he wanted to speak with Aaron Pierce. VP Gardner gave the okay to let Wayne through, clearly leading us to believe he’s got something to do with the badness going on. Then a van full of armed men pulled alongside Wayne and, with a clear shot at him… they shot at his tire. Interesting. We learn this hour that they do indeed want him dead, at the order of Henderson, who has about 7 seconds of screen time this hour. You know, this reminds me of one of the reasons I don’t read any of the message boards anymore. It’s because there are so many clueless fans who it seems have no idea what’s going on, saying things like “Person X is definitely involved.” What? The one that confirmed I don’t want to read them anymore and made me close my browser last week was one where, a little while after I posted a comment about Wayne getting run off the road by a Ford van while driving a Lexus, some clueless dolt wrote that Wayne was in a Mercedes and the van was a GMC. Now, I know it doesn’t make a difference at all to the story, but when your observation skills are that poor, why should your opinion on far more complex parts of the story carry any merit?

Anyway, Aaron is getting concerned that Wayne hasn’t showed yet and he keeps getting Wayne’s voice mail when he tries to call. Perhaps Wayne’s phone was lost when he rolled his car down the hill? Probably. And good call by the writers, actually. Again, a little touch of reality. Aaron speaks with another agent who confirms Wayne was allowed through a checkpoint a half hour ago. Aaron then goes to look for Wayne. By himself. And only telling the one agent. This doesn’t seem like Aaron to me, but perhaps he is becoming far less trusting with so many questionable things happening in this administration and it’s causing him to break protocol. He ends up creeping around in the woods in his suit and is almost capped by… Wayne! Who now has what appears to be a sniper rifle. I’m fairly sure that wasn’t a collapsible rifle that he had stowed in his back pocket, so I can only assume a scene was cut where Wayne gets the rifle away from one of the mercenaries on his trail. He and Aaron work their way through the woods to where Aaron’s Secret Service SUV is parked and they get away, though not without having missiles fired at them. These guys are serious about killing Wayne. How did they get through the checkpoint? This damn well better be explained. Regardless, Wayne gets knocked out but we see in next week’s previews that he’s awake […and using the same ‘yelling really intensely’ interrogation methods so popular at CTU…-D] so it’s clearly not all that serious.

Back at CTU, Jack is still frantically trying to exonerate Audrey while Burke pumps her full of truth serum (I just realized how foul that sounds but I’m keeping it in anyway). She is sweating through her blouse and her hair looks as though she spent some time in a steam room. Jack goes into the holding room where Collette is and when the federal marshal (no relation to martial law) attempts to stop him from questioning her, Jack renders him unconscious and takes his service weapon. Hmmm. Now Collette is beginning to get nervous and Jack confirms that she should be when he says he’s going to kill her if she doesn’t tell him the truth since he has found connections to Henderson in the form of phone calls. Collette’s stony disposition begins to crumble and Jack presses her harder. Nice little job of acting here, too, by Stana Katic. The tear rolling down her otherwise nearly expressionless face was well-done and she breaks and admits that she used Audrey’s name because Henderson told her to. She also admits that she knows the schematic is for a gas distribution center. Jack rushes back out and tells Buchanan that this admission voids Collette’s immunity agreement, although I think a confession at gunpoint and with no other witnesses might be hard to get classified as legally admissible.

Nonetheless, Jack rushes in and stops Audrey’s interrogation. Rick Burke, to his credit, immediately disconnects the IV and backs off. After he leaves, Audrey (again, kudos to Kim Raver) tells Jack she knew he’d come for her and it’s the only way she got through it. Kind of sweet, kind of weird…. not really the best time to be making out, but they do finally kiss. Perhaps it’s the solid acting, but I don’t find it hard to see that these two still very much love one another. Diane who?

Somehow, Bill has determined that they have less than 15 minutes to figure out where the gas is being deployed from (I guess he looked at his watch and knew that the hour was ending in 16 minutes). Chloe has many gas distribution centers on her screen and Shari, our pixie little friend, pipes up that she was a chem major and that the pressure would have to be reduced in order for the gas to not be inert. We, of course, saw Bierko bust into the Wilshire Gas Company a little earlier and start shooting workers until the foreman agreed to help him. Bierko must have at least a minor in Chemistry since he also knows that the pressure must be reduced in order to allow the gas not to be rendered useless [Maybe he and Shari were study buddies? –D]. Wow, that would be a kick in the head if he overlooked that, wouldn’t it?

This lowering of the psi cannot be done instantly, you understand, because then it wouldn’t give CTU time to find them. Or because of some technical gas pumping reason. Thanks to Shari’s help, Chloe is able to zero in on the Wilshire company because their pressure has lowered a shitload in the past 30 minutes. Buchanan congratulates Shari and pats her arm as he takes off to inform Jack of where he and Curtis are going. Shari looks after Bill and comments that his touching was “wrong.” Well, unless he also groped her ass, she’s clearly off her rocker. Chloe looks a little weirded out. Why do I think this will come up again? Watch Bill survive a sentox gas attack only to be taken down by a sexual harassment suit.

Jack and Curtis bolt for the Wilshire Gas Company. Evidently, the scene where Jack apologizes to Curtis for carjacking him seven hours ago and leaving him by the roadside has happened offscreen. Or maybe Curtis is just waiting for the opportunity to push Jack out of a helicopter.

At the Wilshire Gas Company, the chopper is able to set down in silent mode. Or, I mean, Chloe says the noise from the place will cover the chopper noise. And the wind, too, I guess. Jack, Curtis and the TAC team descend upon Bierko’s team and begin taking them out with silenced guns. They get to the door of the control room and Jack then gives the curious command to unsilence their weapons. Um, why? What’s the difference?

Anyway, they bust in just as the psi level is getting to where the gas will still be noxious when it’s pumped into people’s homes around L.A. I wonder, though, what if you have oil heat but also have gas for cooking (this is how my house is set up)? Are you slowly killed as the gas comes in via your stove’s pilot light? Or if you have a more modern gas stove, are you okay until you decide to cook an omelet and turn on the burner? So many questions.

Jack, Curtis and the JackCurtisettes bust into the control room and gunfire ensues. Bierko remotely activates the canisters to release the gas into the distribution tank and Jack then learns from the foreman, Sam, that there’s no way to shut the system down in time. (He can not stop the gas, not without a blast, and none of that will change the past. I do not like this Sam I am.) The only option left is to incinerate the sentox by, well, incinerating the natural gas that it’s mixed with. But, J, wouldn’t that create a molotov cocktail the size of a small Mexican village? Why, yes, yes it would. Given the alternative, though, this really is quick thinking by Jack. He gets Curtis and the team to evacuate the people who are still alive and he sets a detonator (good thing he had one in his bag of tricks) for 30 seconds. And then he hauls ass.

Shit starts blowing up when the detonator detonates and Jack is coming close to not getting out of the facility. Just as he does reach the outskirts, he sees Bierko and makes an ill-advised U-turn and runs back into the exploding gas facility. Yes, those words are correct: Runs back into the exploding gas facility. Curtis calls out to him that it’s going to go up like a giant roman candle and for a minute it looks like he’s about to follow Jack. Then Curtis remembers how Jack left him lying in bark mulch on the side of the road and thinks, “The hell with it.”

Back at CTU, this is being played in surround sound on the Spectravision screens just as Audrey – who took only 15 or 20 minutes to freshen up and is now back in her suit jacket with her hair looking nice and full-bodied again – strolls onto the floor and sees that Jack is endangering himself again.

At the soon-to-be-out-of-business Wilshire Gas Company, Jack corners Bierko by the squad car they stole and with his gun on him, there’s a tense moment before an explosion appears to knock Bierko unconscious. However, as Jack goes to collect Bierko (I figured he’d pull him into the police car and squeal out of there) Bierko comes to and the two scuffle. You know, boys, I think that this might be the time to work together. But no, the two fight one another as apparently a major part of the gas company explodes, raining debris down upon the police car. Just before this happened, it looked like Jack and Bierko sort of fell into the open police car door. Of course, the trailer for next week doesn’t show either one of them… is this supposed to make us think Jack’s dead? I haven’t looked at the message boards but I’ll bet there are morons who think he is.

If you were waiting for the typical end-of-episode split-screen, then you were jarred by the ending just as I was. There was that explosion right above Jack and Bierko and then we immediately snapped to the 9:59:56 clock before all the debris had even hit the ground.

As I said, no Jack in the previews for next week (and no Logans, either, for that matter) and I can’t help but wonder where we go from here. I’m sure there is some other objective and a way to carry it out. But for now, the nerve gas is gone since Bierko was using all of the remaining canisters at the gas company. Henderson is still at large so I assume we can expect to have a showdown with he and Jack matching wits. I also assume there is something larger afoot, as Henderson indicated when he said Jack really doesn’t want to know what he knows. Regardless, I will say again how much I love this show in that they could easily have dragged out the gas canister deployment for the rest of the season but they chose not to – they led us down that path with one being released here and there but now they’re all gone. So I would expect some minor back-patting at CTU and perhaps at the Presidential retreat before the next stage of the threat is revealed. Could the Chinese be involved again as they learn of Jack being alive? Is Kim going to come back into play? Was Elisha Cuthbert really brought back just for those two hours? What, for the love of god, does Wayne Palmer know? Will we find out that Novick spent the last hour making a ham sandwich and watching Lost?

We shall see.