Season 5; Hour Sixteen (10:00pm - 11:00pm)

Air Date: 3 Apr 2006
Reviewer: D

We’ve been bamboozled! We’ve been baited and switched! We’ve been sold a bill of dirty Vice Presidential goods and I for one bought the whole package! And, I must say, I am loving it!

This may not have been my favorite episode of all time (that would probably be one of the “return of Nina” eps from back in season 2) but it’s definitely in the top three. You know how you can tell a great episode of 24? When almost everything that was shown in the coming attractions happens in the first 10 minutes. Judging on a highlight versus length-of-show basis, I would say that makes 24 about 6 times better than the average show.

The folks at 24 have tuned their “yank the viewer’s chain” machine to a supremely fine hum. For instance: the coming attractions last week made it seem like Jack’s survival would be in question after the explosion at the gas plant. But only a few minutes into the show, Jack strolls out of the fog – with the music swelling in the background of course – with no apparent ill effects. Except for looking like one of the chimney sweeps from “Mary Poppins,” that is. Kudos to the cinematography dudes for that shot by the way; very picturesque. Jack is carrying Bierko who, while holding precariously on to life at this point, will undoubtedly be snuffed out before too long thanks to his eminent visit to CTU Medical, aka the Death Clinic.

What’s interesting to me is that something about surviving the calamitous explosion of an entire industrial facility has knocked a new thought into Jack’s head: that this stuff going on is bigger than previously believed. For a very tight episode, this is one of those things that stuck in my craw. Nothing really changed between last week and this (unless you are an LA area gas customer – bummer about the range not working, dude; how about Denny’s again tonight?) and yet something has altered Jacks’ perspective. Has he been peeking at the end of the scripts? Naughty Kiefer!

I did love, though, due to whatever this sudden illumination was, that he declares that he’s scared because of it. Jack? Scared? This is a guy who’s been through nukes, biological weapons, heroin addiction, two near-death experiences and a ridiculously ill-advised affair with that Mexican chick. If he’s scared now, I believe we all should prepare for a little trembling in our boots.

Back at CTU, bureaucratic wrangling is reaching a fever pitch. And while I ragged on this in-fighting ridiculousness a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t mind it so much in this ep, mostly because of the pockmarked nastiness of this Miles Papazian character. It makes me wonder: do casting directors specifically advertise for actors with bad skin to play evil dudes? I only ask because I’ve got some pretty unsightly acne scars of my own and I never realized I could translate those to a career.

Besides having one of the most obsequious names of all time (Miles? Is that an English pantywaist name, or what?) Papazian is like Othello’s Iago in his devious and slimy servitude. I don’t know how he comes up with Audrey for his plan to lend credence to the CTU overthrow (oh, wait, that would be those pesky 24 writers) but it sure comes in handy later on.

And let me digress for a moment on the weird underlying message in this whole subplot, if you’re willing to walk down this path. In real life, Homeland Security is a department created ostensibly to make us safer, to increase communication and coordination between the various security and intelligence services of the government. But here we have Homeland (even the word is used ominously…) absorbing another agency, firing the qualified people and lying about the heroic work of CTU in order to legitimize their actions. Is this a political statement, or is Homeland just a convenient bad guy to employ in a bureaucratic scuffle? What do you think?

Homeland’s Karen (why are the chicks all called by first names, the guys by their last?) [Well, everybody calls Curtis by his first name...but I think he's the only one. --J] is urged to action by Vice President Gardner who seems at this point to be solidifying his role as inner circle bad guy. The actor who plays Gardner (Ray Wise) does a pretty good slimy of his own to match Papazian, though I just had the occasion to watch “Rising Sun” – that Sean Connery Japan-bashing movie from about 13 years ago – and Wise practically secretes slime in that film. [In The Chase, Wise plays a rich dude who tries to capitalize on the publicity of his daughter being kidnapped. --J]

In a scene that will echo resonantly in just a half-hour or so, Buchanan finally spills to Audrey that CTU is being eaten up by Homeland, though he had demurred on the point earlier. That’ll teach you to be honest, Bill!

But the real meat of this episode begins with the big reveal that Evelyn is the First Lady’s assistant and NOT a Secret Service agent. OK, OK, so that’s not the big reveal but it was a bit of a surprise to me. I just assumed she was Secret Service because she was around all of the time and, if she isn’t, well where in the hell have the guys with black suits been that should have been shadowing Mrs. Logan for the past 15 hours? Jeez, the Bush twins can’t run a 10K without a shadow – you think they let crazy Martha run around unprotected?

Anyway, not to toot my own horn here (toot toot!) but I’ve had my suspicions about Evelyn since Walt Cummings did his swing-and-shake routine back around Hour 7. Sure, my suspicions were totally off the mark and I couldn’t even get her freakin job right, but still, something told me we’d be seeing more of Evelyn. Little did I know that she’d be involved in one of those child-endangerment subplots, which, if you remember back to Day 1 and Jamey Farrell, have a rich and vital tradition at 24.

There are so many things that are cool about this Evelyn thing that it’s hard to even spit them all out. Finally, we have a better sense – though hardly crystal clear – of why David Palmer was given his involuntary tracheotomy way back at Hour 1. The involvement of the First Lady also makes a semblance of sense now too. And perhaps best of all, it gives a reason for Wayne Palmer – and excellent actor DB Woodside – to be involved in the goings on. The scene with Evelyn, Wayne and Pierce was probably my favorite of the night. Wayne’s guttural growl at Evelyn was downright spooky and filled with the pain and anger of someone who’d lost his brother, mentor and hero. And then Pierce’s courteous but firm “If I may…” was interjected just like a southern gentleman would say in between pouring the mint juleps. “Terrible warmth we’re having ‘round here Miss Evelyn, and, if I may, the angry black man is correct is saying these bad guys will slit your poor girl’s throat just as soon as kissin’ their granny.” Pierce and Palmer have a natural good cop-bad cop chemistry; someone should give these guys their own show!

Evelyn seems like a bit of a nudge holding out to get her daughter back before she’ll spill the goods but a) given the goods she’s going to spill, I can understand her wanting to be sure (In fact, I could understand her wanting to be in Lithuania when she spills but I guess that’s a little implausible); and b) this allows the biggest of the big reveals to happen at the end of the hour which, face it, was just too cool for words. More on that later.

OK, I’m 1200 words into this commentary and I haven’t made it past the first 12 minutes. That’s another way you can tell how good an episode of 24 is…

Back at CTU, a herd of wonks from Homeland have arrived. I’m not sure if that’s the correct collective noun for wonk (or dweebs or geeks for that matter). A gaggle of wonks? A byte of wonks? A willy of wonks? However you say it, the uber-wonks have arrived and the CTU-nionists are being let go. While this is certainly effective for complicating things, it’s a little ridiculous. How many people in California could find a suit at 10pm at night, let alone be coerced into putting one on? And then going to work? And at a place that was filled with deadly nerve gas just a couple of hours ago? “Um, Karen I, like, really want to help with the whole national crisis and all, but has OSHA been through that joint yet? I mean, I am totally allergic to linoleum off-gassing, I so will not be able to handle that Sentox stuff. And sure, I’d like to save the world or whatever, but NOT if it means missing my 7am yoga class…”

Chloe is quickly usurped by the blonde anti-Chloe – it’s a good thing they didn’t touch or they would have disappeared in a violent matter/anti-matter explosion. But in the midst of the confusion, Iago…I mean Miles, approaches “Miss Raines” with his offer. I have to echo J here in heaping praise on Kim Raver for her work as Audrey. I’m not even going to make any “so thin she makes pipe cleaners look chubby” jokes. Her getting up into the face of Miles was a great interpersonal moment and almost had the seething undercurrent of contempt that Jack/Kief would bring to that kind of encounter. Almost.

Speaking of Jack, his request for help has Audrey flipping on her principled rejection of Miles within 3 minutes. Those were a noble three minutes though. I wonder if Jack is going to be pissed later when he finds out what Audrey had to do. He did bark “just figure it out” though. I wonder what Jack’s reaction would be if she called back and said, “OK, I figured it out but it involved selling Kim into white slavery. Any problem with that?”

Karen and Miles are skeptical but really, not nearly skeptical enough. And wouldn’t Miles be monitoring Chloe’s activities like a hawk after agreeing to keep her on. Or hell, even a sparrow could probably figure out that Chloe was re-routing satellites and such.

In the big scene with Chloe, Buchanan, Miles, and Audrey, there was some great nervous music playing in the background – one of the first times I haven’t found the music annoying when it gets big and intrusive. You’ve got to feel for Buchanan in this scene; his “team” – well mostly Jack and Chloe – have been responsible for saving the lives of thousands and at the same time a large number of its members – except for Jack and Chloe – have died a horrible, pink-milkshake-drooling death. Will Bill turn bitter? That wasn’t exactly a “let bygones be bygones” look he gave Audrey on his way out.

But before this, there is that tense scene with Pierce and Palmer coming up on Gardner in the halls of the presidential retreat. Gardner seems suspicious, maybe because Wayne is holding his hand at a weird angle behind his back. Maybe Gardner wasn’t suspicious, he was actually afraid Wayne had a water balloon behind his back and his nice suit was going to get soaked. Whichever it was, it even further cemented the thought that Gardner was a bad egg, an inside operator, a double-agent, a two-timing doubletimer, or, as Jimmy Cagney used to say, a dirty rat. Oh, you 24 writers, we are SO in the palm of your hand at this point…

Palmer floats a pretty implausible cover story but still it appears to do the trick, especially with squeaky clean Pierce playing along. Still, when the two of them scurried down the hall like nervous kindergartners, you would have thought it would have garnered the attention of even the most lackadaisical observer (for instance, me).

Soon after, there’s a nice interlude with Evelyn and Wayne driving to the meeting place. It’s a little maudlin for the typical 24 episode but still, these are the scenes I like: where for a little while, you don’t have to suspend your disbelief as high as the ceiling and can actually imagine for a moment that these are real people and this is how they would react in such a situation. Again, this is one of those things that 24 has a certain luxury to do – versus a movie that has to fit all the emotion and the explosions into 2 hours – and luckily the 24 writers have not overindulged it, using it sparingly and effectively. Of course, if Wayne and Evelyn’s car had suddenly exploded after that little talk, I would have been really pissed (though not altogether surprised).

Through some magical cell phone business – hell, I can’t get mine to display the correct date – Jack is patched into the call between Henderson and Evelyn. I like it that Henderson is suspicious – even though he’s not quite suspicious enough. There’s also a great 2-second scene while Evelyn and her daughter are talking and you can see Jack on one of the three split screens. It’s just a second of “Jack the Dad” reacting to a daughter in danger and one of those things that we 24 viewers just take for granted at this point. This kind of split screen work just didn’t exist on TV before 24 and still nobody does it better. Worship at the throne of 24, you peasants! We are not worthy!

After a quick false alarm with Jack sneaking up on the barn (hey, with everything else going on, 24 can be forgiven the occasional fake out), we are on our way to the coal plant where Henderson awaits. Does the Prez really have a retreat this close to a coal plant? He’d probably be more concerned about the Clean Air Act if he did. Also, last hour it was a gas plant, this hour a coal plant – is there some hidden fossil fuel commentary going on here too that we don’t know about? Some English grad student could have a field day with all this stuff.

Two great moments before the commando action begins: Jack scares Evelyn into following the plan (nothing like threats to make an already freaked out mom comply) and Wayne defies Jack by coming along, once again bringing up his dead brother and pressing the point that of course Jack can’t argue with. This is just great stuff from Woodside. I take back all the bad things I said about him two seasons ago. (But to be fair, it was his subplot I didn’t like, not him.) [Personally, I loved the exchange between the two where Jack comments on the danger involved and Wayne says, "I was a Marine, Jack." Jack replies, "I know, WAYNE. But you never saw combat." It looked like Wayne was going to cry. But cool character development that Wayne was a dog. -- J]

And then, after the action begins, the hesitant pause from Wayne before he pops the bad guy – very nice and completely plausible, I think. Then Jack scrambles Bravo’s radio – after slitting the guy’s throat by the way; let’s hope the kiddies were all in bed – and fools Henderson into thinking his team isn’t being slowly picked apart by his old protégé Jack. Don’t you think even over a faulty radio Henderson would have recognized Jack’s voice – like a tinny echo from bad memory? Oh well, it worked for me. Mostly because – between the Wayne stuff and the Jack stuff – 24 again packs more action into a 5-minute commando scene then Vin Diesel sees in half a movie (of course, his last two movies were “The Pacifier” and some stupid legal movie that tanked, so I guess I can forgive the guy).

So the shooting begins, a couple henchmen go down and Evelyn gets hit but our buddy Henderson skips away in Evelyn’s car. It looks like Evelyn’s injury may complicate things later on but luckily they didn’t kill her off because that would have pissed me off (and also would have gotten dozens of other fans arguing about the silent clock again – please, enough already! How about a spirited discussion about what the various sounds of 24 are supposed to represent – the ticking of the clock: why is it so metallic sounding? It’s a heartbeat sure but whose: the Terminator’s? The Tin Woodsman? Also, how do they make that “crinkling of metallic cellophane” sound at the beginning of the episode? [I sort of asked for suggestions as to what that noise was but got no responses a few years ago. I think it sounds like busting open the seal on another hour of goodness. --J]

So then of course, it is the BIG reveal of the episode and damn if it isn’t a doozy. Henderson promises that Jack and Wayne will be killed and to whom does he promise that to? None other than bird-necked, jiggly jowled, Nixon-esque hairlined, snivelling non-leader Logan. My, what a master stroke. Can 24 really transform Logan from such a weak twit into a calculating evil mastermind? That remains to be seen. But regardless, it’s a great way to set up the final third of the season with a whole new dynamic.

One of the gazillion things that are great about this scenario is that it throws a new light on events now in the distant past. The whole Walt Cummings relationship, for instance: do YOU still think Cummings was a suicide? I sure don’t. Was he in cahoots with Logan and took the fall for him mostly for Mike Novick’s sake? Or was he unknowingly complicating a plot that Logan was working on separately? And the First Lady, who has remained largely sane and out of sight for the past several hours, does she not suspect the badness inside her boy? Will she be the vital person in exposing it/affirming it/bringing the bad boy down? [And does anybody else see an opportunity for Wayne to run for President? I sure do... --J]

Yes, this was pure genius folks, and if there was any concern before that 24 couldn’t keep up the pace during the final 8 hours, I certainly don’t have any now. After the initial shock and awe of this final reveal subside, I can imagine people are going to take pot shots – it’s unbelievable, going too far, could never happen, etc. etc.. In advance I say, shut up you whiners – you’re just pissed because you got fooled with the rest of us.

And if 24 can still bamboozle veterans like us, well, there’s no telling what could happen next. Hold on to your hats, people.