Season 5; Hour Nineteen (1:00AM - 2:00AM)

Air Date: 24 Apr 2006
Reviewer: D

That Dr. Romano – he’s even worse than I thought!

But first – for a show where the body count has often run into the dozens, 24 is suddenly awfully coy about the ultimate disposition of some key people. In the hours previous, there were Evelyn and her daughter, presumably dispatched by Henderson. I figured we were spared that scene just because it would have been… um, what’s the word… oh yeah, cruel. Random security detail personnel and the occasional bank manager can catch a bullet and no one flinches, but a do-gooder damsel and her innocent daughter? Off them and someone sure as hell would’ve raised Cain. (Which reminds me: I hope Wayne and Jack dumped the bank manager’s body or else that squad car is going to be getting a bit oogy smelling by the morning.)

Then in this ep Pierce has mysteriously been “taken care of” and we have Heller’s “Thelma and Louise”-ish launch into the big blue. The vagueness is of course intentional. You may have noticed that there really isn’t any ticking bomb time pressure left in this season’s plotline right now to keep the more resolution-oriented viewer tuning in. But that type of viewer – which is not me, I obviously just keep tuning in for the show’s music – will tune in to see whether either of these beloved characters has really bought it. The Fox website, which stated the finality of Tony’s death unflinchingly (of course, how exactly does a website flinch?) is purposefully vague about Heller, stating that the car “lands in a lake” and then “descends into the water.”

Then there’s also the possibility that the writers didn’t really know whether to keep these guys around or not. Both are great characters to have in your back pocket and 24 is running out of those so they might have just hedged their bets. Speaking of which, if I had to bet, I’d say that Pierce is alive and Heller is dead. Keeping both of them around would be too corny and an embittered Audrey is a better Audrey.

(Hey, also on the missing in action list, just where are the Russian president and his wife? Have they just slept through this whole thing? Bierko has returned from unconsciousness it seems – let’s see if he lasts another hour in the Death Clinic…)

So beyond the baffling body business (boy, alliteration is the bomb!), another kick-ass episode, I thought, with only a few mild annoyances, a good heart-stopper near the end, and the first peak into the conspiracy behind the conspiracy that lurked behind the original conspiracy. Man, any more layers on this cake and it’s going to topple right over.

I thought the interaction between Jack and Heller was great. Heller realizes he fucked up but his “please forgive me” was delivered in as defiant a tone as it could have been. Jack is relatively respectful – in that he stops short of saying ‘I told you so, I told you so, nyeh nyeh nyeh…” – and also spares Heller from the knowledge of how close his daughter was to being killed (but that her very fancy jacket was not so lucky…no way those stains are coming out…)

Jack wastes no time in contacting his new lapdog Buchanan and his old lapdog Chloe who do their computer magic to zero in on Henderson. This satellite wizardry multiple computer linking network subnet node bullshit was annoying me this episode. I know it’s always humming along in the background but we’re reaching the ‘Star Trek’ zone here wherein technology is used – or made up if necessary – to conveniently shore up messy plot holes. As I’ve probably mentioned (ad nauseum) I work in IT and know at least a little about the crap they spew. You know, shows like “House” and “ER” have actual doctors working as consultants who work with the writers to get the lingo right and also point out that, for instance, decapitations can rarely be reversed. It sometimes seems like the ‘24’ computer tech consultants are actually a bunch of monkeys who rip pages out of an IBM manual at random to put together the techie jargon Chloe and Miles ramble on about. Particularly Miles “checking the binaries” and “machine coding” some such bullshit to track down Chloe. Why not just employ some dilythium crystals and blast a temporary wormhole into hyperspace, reversing the time phase resolution so you could go back to the minute before Chloe snatched your keycard and stop her from escaping?

So that’s my one rant of the episode. From now on I’ll be a good little ‘24’ watcher and just take it on faith that Chloe can tap into anything anywhere that allows her to see anyone. And then send it all over to Jack on his PDA (where he never gets one of those “buffering…” messages that go on forever…) Omniscience comes in handy on television; the “Medium” uses ESP, Chloe use technology. It’s all good.

I’d mention that cute bit of Chloe dialogue in there – calling Buchanan’s computer pathetic and apologizing for bossing him around – but plenty of other folks will have mentioned that by now and, though I never thought I’d say it, I’m a little Chloe saturated at this point. Still love my Chloe, but her relentless pinched look as she types frantically on the computer is getting old. Chloe, dear, Mom always warned us that if you kept making that face it would stick and I’m afraid she may have been right.

Somewhere in here, Henderson has a terse little conversation with the leader of the free world where he mentioned Cummings’ quote suicide unquote. Sometimes I just forget how red Logan’s hands are at this point…We are to find out the Henderson has handed off the all-important recording to someone else which is convenient because it will give Jack someone else to chase later on. Heaven forbid he just bury it in the woods somewhere. It opens the door to the introduction of another special guest star, whoever it is on that diplomatic flight. Who would you like to see? Michael Douglas maybe, in a nice little piece of cross-promotion for “The Sentinel.” I’m rooting for someone hot instead, like maybe Douglas’s impossibly gorgeous wife.

Anyway, thanks to the 47 satellites that apparently survey every road in southern California, Jack is able to zero in on Henderson and he takes off in pursuit. (A detail I loved: as Jack pulls away you see the “To Serve and Protect” slogan on the side of the LA Police car, an appropriate message as Jack goes off to save the free world again…) Eventually Jack is able to run Henderson off the road, apparently into that barn where he met Wayne and Evelyn a few hours ago. Recycling is good! Even if it’s just the locations in television shows… In fact, this barn might have been the same one that Jack’s wife and Kim were holed up in all the way back in Season 1. Who knows? The Fox website – apropos of absolutely nothing – calls the location an outdoor nursery.

Jack finally nabs Henderson only to find out that his ever clever recruiter has henchmen on standby ready to get rid of Heller. The business of the laser sight on Heller was a nice touch. There are few things that I can think of that would be more terrifying. Some mild carping here though: shooter is in a helicopter, Heller is in a speeding car. Wouldn’t some evasive maneuvers be worthwhile before pulling a Toonces the Driving Cat? Hell, Wayne got away from Henderson’s creeps and they were driving right next to him.

Here’s another random thought: maybe Heller did one of those “open the car door and jump out at the last second” things before the car went over the cliff? Hmmm… seems unlikely. Is there any reason for Heller to go into a lake instead of burst into flames – except to keep hope alive that he made it? Final note on Heller: it reminded me that we’ve gone many hours without a terrorist suicide and it was refreshing – well, no that’s not quite right but something along those lines – to see a scene where a patriotic American will also make the ultimate sacrifice in support of a bigger cause. That the bigger cause is exposing corruption within his own country – and not some vague jihadist quest – makes it that much more valiant.

Back at the barn, Henderson still won’t cave even with Heller apparently out of play. It’s funny to me that Jack seems continually surprised that Henderson won’t give up the goods. Remember Jack – you threatened his wife (JoBeth Williams!) and he didn’t cave; you tortured him to the point of death at CTU and he didn’t cave. This man is NOT caving! Though you still haven’t tried waving a Butterfinger candy bar in front of his nose…mmmm…love them Butterfingers.

Back from commercial, Logan contacts what has got to be the ultimate big bads because we only have five hours left in the season, for god’s sake. And we’ve already gone over the leader of the free world’s head; much further and we’re going to be reaching the realm of either God or the devil or quite possibly, aliens.

The leader of the big bads is the actor who played Dr. Romano on “ER”, Paul McCrane,who was such a delectable bad guy, hopefully even when they tried to humanize him by cutting off some of his body parts or something (sorry to be vague on details – I’d stopped watching by then). These big bads – shall we call them the Graham Group for now? – apparently have better monitoring of the situation than Chloe could even imagine, knowing that Martha is still curious and that Pierce is less mild-mannered than he used to be. What could these guys be about? A bunch of oil execs is a little too obvious, though that would make the most sense given the line Cummings (first) and then Logan (now) seems to be pushing. They haven’t yet pushed Logan all the way over to the dark side (as per below) so there has to be something in all of this that he believes is good. Here’s an idea: it’s a cabal of radical environmentalists who really wanted the nerve gas to get piped through natural gas lines all along to highlight the problems with fossil fuels! Or maybe it’s a bunch of Internet execs who want people to be so terrified of the danger in the world that they won’t do anything except sit inside and surf the net all day? I gotta say – beyond the oil execs, you really have to stretch to find something that makes sense (a stretch I’m obviously not up to today).

As per the instructions of Graham, Martha is found and thrown into a locked room to await a showdown with the Prez himself. Nice way to soften her up for the upcoming conversation…the scene that follows is another winner, our boy Logan treading so tenuously on that line between pleading and threatening. Martha does her hysterical thing pretty well too and wins the exit line of the day award with her “the country shouldn’t suffer, you should.” I couldn’t imagine that Logan was going to put her down but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had shipped her off to the looney bin. Instead, she remains free to roam the halls and, particularly if she ever finds out what happened to Evelyn, I think she’s primed to go postal soon. Hey, if Chloe can have her chance with a machine gun, why not Marty?

Jack leaves Audrey at “the nursery” and says the ominous line “I don’t feel right about this.” Did you think Audrey was a goner at that point? I know I did. I’ve got to applaud the subsequent setup with Henderson waking up and trying to get Audrey to make a call to save her father’s life. She’s lost a lot of blood, suffered numerous shocks, is still probably recovering from sleeping with Walt Cummings, and Henderson plays to her weakest point – the possibility to save her heroic dad. Kim Raver keeps getting better as Audrey, enough that I’ll once again suspend any “too skinny” jokes this week (even though I was yelling “just turn sideways” at the TV once Henderson’s men showed up…)

And since I’m talking about Henderson’s hechies, welcome back Curtis and thanks for providing the one “spill your popcorn” surprise in this episode. And what a relief that this was a good surprise. I know ‘24’ is supposed to be a tragedy not an adventure but still, it’s really nice when the good guys win one once in a while. And I was almost as relieved that Curtis’s guys got Henderson as I was that he saved Audrey. Let’s give RoboChris a little something else to do besides drive around chatting up the President on his cell phone, ay?

As satisfying as this interlude was – I actually yelled “Yay!” at the TV set, waking my wife and pissing off the cat – I’m a little confused on chain of command here. Curtis takes an order from Buchanan, no longer the head of CTU which is being run by Homeland anyway. But Curtis is still on the government’s dime, isn’t he? He didn’t need to call in to anyone and say, “by the way, just taking a quick jaunt over by the nursery – tulip bulb sale, you know – and I’ll be back at CTU in an hour or so.” [And with his tac team, no less. –J] I guess he could justify it as following up intel on Henderson’s whereabouts, but still, aren’t some folks going to be a little surprised when he shows up with Audrey in tow as well?

Also, did anyone else get a little nervous when Jack talked about Audrey getting the medical attention she needs at CTU? I think I’d stop at the local animal hospital first – good medical care and yummy kibble snacks too. [Yes, let’s put Bierko, Henderson and Audrey in the same clinic, shake it all up and see what kind of cocktail it makes. –J]

Speaking of CTU, it takes Homeland more than a half-hour to figure out that Chloe’s gone missing. If these guys are this slow on making these kinds of discoveries – and this is someone who was in the same building, for god’s sake – it doesn’t bode well for them making any progress on much of anything else. Shari proves to be an entertaining interview, particularly her closing line “…and people think I’M crazy.” Second only to Martha for line of the night.

Karen finally shows that she isn’t completely a company drone and smartens up to something nefarious going on, though it’s taken everything short of a direct memo from the devil (“Dear Karen, Just thought you’d like to know that Charles will be joining me down here soon…”) for her to get the hint. It’s a heads-up play for her to call Buchanan though I think Bill is going to have a heck of a time ‘splainin’ to the hulks in the combat gear where Chloe got off to.

Karen calls Mike who I’m afraid may not be long for this world either if he keeps asking questions like Martha’s been doing. He says “It’s been a strange night” prompting my next installment of ‘24: The Musical,’ to the tune of “I Only Have Eyes For You”:

Is the loon actually right?
I can’t tell if Logan’s alright
‘Cause it’s been a strange night
For me…

We have another scene with the Graham Group in here, I guess just so we know that these really are the folks pulling the strings. Dr. Romano utters the phrase “11th hour” during this scene which frankly should just be banned from ’24.’ We’re almost at the 20th hour, dipshit; get with the program!

So now we’re down to Jack back at the airport. As semi-ridiculous as it was, there wasn’t ever any doubt that he’d end up in that plane. As implausible as it might be that he’d make it past all of that security without a second look, we are compelled to give him a pass in order to set up next week’s mayhem involving Jack coming off very much like a terrorist. Once again, ‘24’ sets up a situation that poses a bit of subconscious tension in light of the world we live in. Next week, we may have to wonder whether a hijacker could actually be a patriot. Hmmm…

In the meantime, we can savor the sweet setup we have going into the home stretch of the season. Early on, I made some comments about the need to set up multiple compelling stories, not just focus on whatever Jack’s doing. Now we have so many things going on, it’s hard to keep them all straight, with the fate of Pierce and Heller still in doubt, Bierko possibly soon to re-enter the fray, internal strife at both Camp David Palmer and CTU/Homeland, and a whole new crew of bad guys to get familiar with. Now the challenge is whether they can even get close to wrapping this all up by 7:00am in 24-land. Who needs a ticking bomb when you’ve got all of these other messes to mop up?