Season 6; Hour Three (8:00AM - 9:00AM)
Air Date: 15 Jan 2007
Reviewer: J
Holy hell. Excuse me, I’m still recovering from last night. Not the four-hours-in-two-nights thing – really just the last ten minutes of last night. However, this review is for Hour Three so I’ll focus on that as best I can right now and then get on to Hour Four later.
As you’ll recall, there are some significant terrorist attacks going on around the country as we began Day Six. Jack has gotten back from China and formed an uneasy alliance with Assad, a man who has been a known terrorist for something like twenty years. Just how a brutal a terrorist we will soon learn.
We move into Hour Three with Jack somehow finding Assad as he promised to do and jumping into the little Toyota Corolla that the two liberated earlier. The two debate what to do and I must admit, I’m really impressed with Assad’s resolve here. He wants to work with Jack and had every opportunity to disappear but he really does care about enacting a real ceasefire and potential “lasting peace.” There’s no other explanation as to why he’d continue to work with Jack in this episode and in the next one.
Assad, however, does not trust CTU or the U.S. government enough to let Jack pull in their assistance with following the “handler,” whose name is Masheer for purposes of this review. To illustrate this point, we see CTU having a conference call with the White House about the happenings in LA and how they’ve confirmed Jack is working with Assad. Bill acknowledges that Jack’s “been dark” since they didn’t listen to him about Assad. Wayne says, “I didn’t listen.” It’s nice that Wayne wants to take the blame and it’s a very stand-up thing to do. However, he wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe Jack and there was significant compelling evidence to support the attack on Assad. We never got invested in that evidence as it was gathered in previous months by Karen Hayes’ team and others, but still.
About this time, Fayed calls in to speak with the President. I love how Fayed can just call in to speak to the President and actually gets him on the phone. I encourage my readers to try this to see how easy it is. Call 202.456.1414 and ask to speak to the President. See how far you get. For an added challenge, say your name is something Islamic, like, ohhh, say, Fayed. Not only will you probably not get the Prez on the phone, you might get a personal visit from the FBI at your door.
Anyway, Fayed wants to speak to the President and demand the release of prisoners, whom he calls “Freedom Fighters,” yadda yadda. I don’t care, terrorist! There’s no way my man Wayne Palmer is going to give in to your demands! The U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists! Plus you already lied to the government in a so-called “deal” once about an hour ago. Right, Wayne?
Wayne ignores me and goes about sort of agreeing to Fayed’s demand.
Jack of course uses his velvety powers of seduction to convince Assad to let him call CTU and bring them in to help, namely in the form of satellite surveillance of Masheer. CTU can’t get a satellite into position for another 10-15 minutes. Assad, to his credit, does not sneer and say, “See? No good to us.”
Jack then hatches a clever little plan. Since it’s going to be hard to follow Masheer without getting spotted, Jack carjacks some guy’s Jeep Cherokee away from him and then drives like a maniac to head off Masheer and basically slam right into him. I have to say, I knew the plan Jack was hatching but it still looked like a professional ramming to me. And I would think Masheer would have been a bit suspicious, too. But he’s not. Of course, Assad pulls up and acts like a good samaritan and offers Masheer a lift to wherever he’s going. Masheer falls for it because, as we all know, they stick with their own kind. Ha!
Anyway, Assad does indeed play up this angle and he surreptitiously dials Jack cell phone, which amazingly has the same number as Berhrooz’s dead girlfriend from two seasons ago.
Jack loops CTU in and they all work on triangulating where the hell Masheer is going. Along the way, Assad is spouting off their location so that it’s easier for CTU to follow but can’t Chloe just triangulate on the cell phone signal that he’s putting out there? I mean, that’s probably safer than Assad casually reading each exit as they pass it like somebody’s senile grandmother.
Hey, remember Kumar – I mean, Ahmed – from across the street from Joe Family? Well, his leg wound is apparently pretty bad because by my count he took Scott hostage at about 7:45 and it’s now 8:15 as they re-enter the Wallace household, which, remember, is right across the street. Half hour to cross the street? Okay, okay, I’ll let it go. Maybe they had a burger or something. Anyway, Ahmed is so badly injured that he feels he cannot deliver the package of White Castle burgers to Fayed so he orders Ray Wallace to do it. Ray, put in an impossible position, agrees to do it and leaves. The number of times Ahmed leaves himself open to be cold-cocked is astounding and I guess it just demonstrates Ray’s average family’s average averageness.
In the unnecessary plot device portion of the show, Wayne’s useless sister is freed from the “detention center” she was taken to basically because she knows the big boss but her boyfriend Walid is not privy to the same courtesy. Mainly because he’s Islamic. Sandra Palmer and her brother get into an argument about civil rights and whatnot, and I’m not sure if the irony is intentional in a fictional black President sort of justifying a lack of civil rights… on Martin Luther King Day. Whether it’s intended or not, it’s noticeable, at least from my seat. Look what the terrorism has done to Wayne’s perceptions of what’s fair and what’s not. Hell, not just Wayne – look at how mistrustful Walid is by the end of this hour!
Anyway, back on the tracking front, Masheer politely thanks Assad for the lift he just got and exits the vehicle. I thought sure he’d cover his tracks by killing Assad. And, more to the point, how does he not know Assad? I mean, I know Assad said Masheer wouldn’t know him but why not? If Assad is so influential and is so well-known worldwide as a terrorist leader of sorts, then how could Masheer possibly not know who he is? That’s a big hole there, although it made for an entertaining car ride.
CTU quickly hones in on Masheer and realizes he’s in a storage facility, the kind where you store your apartment furniture over the summer during college. Only there aren’t stained sofas and 30-year-old coffee tables in Masheer’s storage unit. No, there are stacks and stacks of ammunition, along with laptops. And grenades, it turns out.
Meanwhile, Curtis is being a bitch about things by continually showing unhidden contempt for Assad, who Jack clearly sees must have a history with Curtis. We’ve definitely never seen Curtis this unhinged and reticent to follow orders. It was about this point when you could tell something bad was in the offing for tonight.
Anyway, one of CTU’s assault team members is spotted by Masheer who opens fire. Before long, he’s pulled a grenade and detonates himself and the ammunition around him. Amazingly, Jack goes into the charred remains and finds that the laptop Masheer was using actually has part of its hard drive salvageable. This is…kind of ridiculous. However, word is that IBM Toughbooks are a major sponsor of the show so I’m kind of surprised Jack didn’t say, “Well, Bill, fortunately it’s an IBM Toughbook so let me jump in my Toyota Corolla, which gets great gas mileage by the way, and head back to you guys.”
Back in unnecessary plot filling land, Ray Wallace gets to where he’s supposed to deliver Ahmed’s package and we learn that there’s cash in the package and not White Castle burgers. But Ray is supposed to get another item in return. Oh, that must be the White Castle burgers. There’s some back and forth between Ray and the seller, Marcus, who wants more money for the item. Isn’t that always the way? Ray ends up bludgeoning Marcus to death to get the item for him at the agreed-upon cost. Perhaps I underestimated Ray. Or at least his bargaining skills.
Meanwhile, from Masheer’s cooked laptop, CTU and Assad have collaborated to determine that Masheer was looking at a schematic of a nuclear device and detonator. Uh-oh. But wait, didn’t the nuclear device storyline already play out on this show? Wasn’t it detonated somewhere in the Mojave Desert, along with George Mason?
Regardless, I guess Fayed’s men don’t mind repeating storylines they weren’t a part of. It turns out that one of the prisoners that Wayne is in the process of releasing from Palmdale is a nuclear physicist or something. His name is Hasan Numair, though I don’t know why we care, and he’s been slipped out of the group of prisoners who are being put on a plane and he’s been freed by a rogue US prison guard. For money, one assumes. Apparently enough money to kill a fellow American, since the guard blows the head off the prison bus driver’s head.
We end the hour with the prisoner release stopped and Numair running out of the bus and on his way to Fayed’s to, presumably, do some bad shit with a nuclear bomb.
Yeah, that’s just the first hour of the night. It gets a lot worse.
Reviewer: J
Holy hell. Excuse me, I’m still recovering from last night. Not the four-hours-in-two-nights thing – really just the last ten minutes of last night. However, this review is for Hour Three so I’ll focus on that as best I can right now and then get on to Hour Four later.
As you’ll recall, there are some significant terrorist attacks going on around the country as we began Day Six. Jack has gotten back from China and formed an uneasy alliance with Assad, a man who has been a known terrorist for something like twenty years. Just how a brutal a terrorist we will soon learn.
We move into Hour Three with Jack somehow finding Assad as he promised to do and jumping into the little Toyota Corolla that the two liberated earlier. The two debate what to do and I must admit, I’m really impressed with Assad’s resolve here. He wants to work with Jack and had every opportunity to disappear but he really does care about enacting a real ceasefire and potential “lasting peace.” There’s no other explanation as to why he’d continue to work with Jack in this episode and in the next one.
Assad, however, does not trust CTU or the U.S. government enough to let Jack pull in their assistance with following the “handler,” whose name is Masheer for purposes of this review. To illustrate this point, we see CTU having a conference call with the White House about the happenings in LA and how they’ve confirmed Jack is working with Assad. Bill acknowledges that Jack’s “been dark” since they didn’t listen to him about Assad. Wayne says, “I didn’t listen.” It’s nice that Wayne wants to take the blame and it’s a very stand-up thing to do. However, he wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe Jack and there was significant compelling evidence to support the attack on Assad. We never got invested in that evidence as it was gathered in previous months by Karen Hayes’ team and others, but still.
About this time, Fayed calls in to speak with the President. I love how Fayed can just call in to speak to the President and actually gets him on the phone. I encourage my readers to try this to see how easy it is. Call 202.456.1414 and ask to speak to the President. See how far you get. For an added challenge, say your name is something Islamic, like, ohhh, say, Fayed. Not only will you probably not get the Prez on the phone, you might get a personal visit from the FBI at your door.
Anyway, Fayed wants to speak to the President and demand the release of prisoners, whom he calls “Freedom Fighters,” yadda yadda. I don’t care, terrorist! There’s no way my man Wayne Palmer is going to give in to your demands! The U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists! Plus you already lied to the government in a so-called “deal” once about an hour ago. Right, Wayne?
Wayne ignores me and goes about sort of agreeing to Fayed’s demand.
Jack of course uses his velvety powers of seduction to convince Assad to let him call CTU and bring them in to help, namely in the form of satellite surveillance of Masheer. CTU can’t get a satellite into position for another 10-15 minutes. Assad, to his credit, does not sneer and say, “See? No good to us.”
Jack then hatches a clever little plan. Since it’s going to be hard to follow Masheer without getting spotted, Jack carjacks some guy’s Jeep Cherokee away from him and then drives like a maniac to head off Masheer and basically slam right into him. I have to say, I knew the plan Jack was hatching but it still looked like a professional ramming to me. And I would think Masheer would have been a bit suspicious, too. But he’s not. Of course, Assad pulls up and acts like a good samaritan and offers Masheer a lift to wherever he’s going. Masheer falls for it because, as we all know, they stick with their own kind. Ha!
Anyway, Assad does indeed play up this angle and he surreptitiously dials Jack cell phone, which amazingly has the same number as Berhrooz’s dead girlfriend from two seasons ago.
Jack loops CTU in and they all work on triangulating where the hell Masheer is going. Along the way, Assad is spouting off their location so that it’s easier for CTU to follow but can’t Chloe just triangulate on the cell phone signal that he’s putting out there? I mean, that’s probably safer than Assad casually reading each exit as they pass it like somebody’s senile grandmother.
Hey, remember Kumar – I mean, Ahmed – from across the street from Joe Family? Well, his leg wound is apparently pretty bad because by my count he took Scott hostage at about 7:45 and it’s now 8:15 as they re-enter the Wallace household, which, remember, is right across the street. Half hour to cross the street? Okay, okay, I’ll let it go. Maybe they had a burger or something. Anyway, Ahmed is so badly injured that he feels he cannot deliver the package of White Castle burgers to Fayed so he orders Ray Wallace to do it. Ray, put in an impossible position, agrees to do it and leaves. The number of times Ahmed leaves himself open to be cold-cocked is astounding and I guess it just demonstrates Ray’s average family’s average averageness.
In the unnecessary plot device portion of the show, Wayne’s useless sister is freed from the “detention center” she was taken to basically because she knows the big boss but her boyfriend Walid is not privy to the same courtesy. Mainly because he’s Islamic. Sandra Palmer and her brother get into an argument about civil rights and whatnot, and I’m not sure if the irony is intentional in a fictional black President sort of justifying a lack of civil rights… on Martin Luther King Day. Whether it’s intended or not, it’s noticeable, at least from my seat. Look what the terrorism has done to Wayne’s perceptions of what’s fair and what’s not. Hell, not just Wayne – look at how mistrustful Walid is by the end of this hour!
Anyway, back on the tracking front, Masheer politely thanks Assad for the lift he just got and exits the vehicle. I thought sure he’d cover his tracks by killing Assad. And, more to the point, how does he not know Assad? I mean, I know Assad said Masheer wouldn’t know him but why not? If Assad is so influential and is so well-known worldwide as a terrorist leader of sorts, then how could Masheer possibly not know who he is? That’s a big hole there, although it made for an entertaining car ride.
CTU quickly hones in on Masheer and realizes he’s in a storage facility, the kind where you store your apartment furniture over the summer during college. Only there aren’t stained sofas and 30-year-old coffee tables in Masheer’s storage unit. No, there are stacks and stacks of ammunition, along with laptops. And grenades, it turns out.
Meanwhile, Curtis is being a bitch about things by continually showing unhidden contempt for Assad, who Jack clearly sees must have a history with Curtis. We’ve definitely never seen Curtis this unhinged and reticent to follow orders. It was about this point when you could tell something bad was in the offing for tonight.
Anyway, one of CTU’s assault team members is spotted by Masheer who opens fire. Before long, he’s pulled a grenade and detonates himself and the ammunition around him. Amazingly, Jack goes into the charred remains and finds that the laptop Masheer was using actually has part of its hard drive salvageable. This is…kind of ridiculous. However, word is that IBM Toughbooks are a major sponsor of the show so I’m kind of surprised Jack didn’t say, “Well, Bill, fortunately it’s an IBM Toughbook so let me jump in my Toyota Corolla, which gets great gas mileage by the way, and head back to you guys.”
Back in unnecessary plot filling land, Ray Wallace gets to where he’s supposed to deliver Ahmed’s package and we learn that there’s cash in the package and not White Castle burgers. But Ray is supposed to get another item in return. Oh, that must be the White Castle burgers. There’s some back and forth between Ray and the seller, Marcus, who wants more money for the item. Isn’t that always the way? Ray ends up bludgeoning Marcus to death to get the item for him at the agreed-upon cost. Perhaps I underestimated Ray. Or at least his bargaining skills.
Meanwhile, from Masheer’s cooked laptop, CTU and Assad have collaborated to determine that Masheer was looking at a schematic of a nuclear device and detonator. Uh-oh. But wait, didn’t the nuclear device storyline already play out on this show? Wasn’t it detonated somewhere in the Mojave Desert, along with George Mason?
Regardless, I guess Fayed’s men don’t mind repeating storylines they weren’t a part of. It turns out that one of the prisoners that Wayne is in the process of releasing from Palmdale is a nuclear physicist or something. His name is Hasan Numair, though I don’t know why we care, and he’s been slipped out of the group of prisoners who are being put on a plane and he’s been freed by a rogue US prison guard. For money, one assumes. Apparently enough money to kill a fellow American, since the guard blows the head off the prison bus driver’s head.
We end the hour with the prisoner release stopped and Numair running out of the bus and on his way to Fayed’s to, presumably, do some bad shit with a nuclear bomb.
Yeah, that’s just the first hour of the night. It gets a lot worse.
Labels: Season Six
posted by J Money at 4:10:00 PM
1 Comments:
Great review, J!
I was so curious about Curtis . . . guess it panned out, huh?
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