The final two hours... and away we go!Aaron Pierce finally makes "Previously On" Box status!
The bad guys flush all the remaining gas out of the sub, so that 1) they can take their masks off and can all get face time in front of the camera; and 2) it will be easier for the un-gas-masked Jack Bauer to get in there and fight them.
This week's opening exposition delivered courtesy of motivational speech by Bierko to his minions.
Audrey has all kinds of important people on her Instant Messenger.
Conveniently, Chloe is able to determine a countdown before the missiles will be launched. Can't not have a ticking-clock-until-crisis-happens on 24.
This Rooney guy had better have some convincing (but brief) exposition explaining why he didn't get killed by nerve gas.
There's something you should know. Rooney is not left-handed.
Suddenly, Jack is "son"-ing the hell out of this Rooney guy. But hey, it's Jack Bauer; he can call you whatever he wants.
Rooney knocks some stuff over to create a diversion. It couldn't have been "Ivan the Klutzy Henchman" making all that racket.
Jack takes the "lethal tracheotomy" count of this episode to two. And we're not even to the first commercial break!
Poor Agent McCullough. Though it's frankly a wonder he even lived that long.
Ah, the classic "face against the open steam pipe" schtick.
Jack dispatches Bierko in a way that suggests he's seen Goldeneye.
Bravo to Jack for not giving Henderson a loaded gun. But major boo to Henderson for not checking to see if it was loaded in the first place. In fact, I'm fairly sure that when Henderson got a gun last episode, he immediately checked its ammunition.
Well, I guess Henderson isn't going to be a "return villain responsible for killing people close to Jack, a la Nina" next season.
Logan and Novick share one of 24's patented "'then it's over' when it's not" moments.
Oh brother, not another phone call from Logan to Bald Mastermind again.
Jack's looking for Aaron Pierce. Boy, did he call the right person!
Morris has gone from working for the government to selling womens' shoes in Beverly Hills. I've seen the way the government operates on 24. I can believe this transition.
Wh-wh-HUH?! Chloe's ex-husband?! And within five seconds, we can totally see how those two ended up together. And how they ended up apart.
Martha goes in to distract her husband. I think we can all guess how she's going to do it -- an "act of congress." (Ha!)
The President calls to say he'll be running late... "Oh, five min--- uh, I mean hell, 45 minutes! Maybe hours!!"
Why are we seeing dead Henderson in the boxes at the end of this hour? That happened over half an hour ago. In 24-land, that's so "old news" they might as well cut in shots of Edgar, Tony, and Palmer, in their respective resting places.
Hour two begins with a recap that's odd on many levels. One, that we're even having a recap, when we were all right here for the last hour. Second, that it features so many dead characters. It starts with Bierko. Dead. Then Henderson. Dead. Then the Counter Terrorist Unit. Kinda also dead, considering it was absorbed by Homeland Security.
Chloe needs Morris to do one more thing. I doubt very much this could be good for Morris.
Jack's phony security documents are coming through. Have you ever been stuck waiting on a really important fax?
Hot taser action. It's not just for Chloe O'Brian anymore.
It would be so much better for Morris if he just didn't look over to where the President is handcuffed to... oops, too late.
Okay, we have now officially had so much red-flagged dialogue setting up this "specialized communications equipment," anybody who doesn't figure out that Jack is going to plant a bug on Logan really doesn't pay enough attention.
Logan thinks he would go down with Lincoln and Kennedy if he was assassinated. He'd be lucky to be remembered even as well as Garfield or McKinley.
Jack gives up without a fight, giving everyone their second chance to figure out Logan's been bugged.
Logan slaps around Martha, just in case you all weren't sold yet that he's a bad, bad man.
Okay, third chance, everyone: Martha now leads her husband in an orderly confession from dead Palmer to the big cover-up to the syntox gas plot in a fashion so quick and neat, you'd have to asleep not to figure out he's been bugged. Or, you know, President Logan himself.
Chloe had better start playing that recording before the Attorney General sticks his fingers in his ears and starts going "la-la-la-la-la!!!"
Charles Logan is brought down. Martha reveals her role in the scheme with a perfect smug smirk. Mike Novick is behind her a close second.
Say, you think Mike will get to be chief of staff for a third president next season?
I know it's tradition and all, but somehow a 21-gun salute seems like three too few for President David Palmer.
Okay, Kim wants to talk with Jack on a landline??? When we've seen the crazy shit cell phones can do all throughout this season? Yeah, major trap.
We come back from commercial with only 6:30 or so left on the clock. This doesn't make our chances of a non-cliffhangery ending look very good.
Back at CTU, Bill Buchanan and Karen Hayes share a big time "kiss me you fool" moment.
Curtis Manning is totally MIA.
Now we're seeing Chloe's wrap up. We've chewed up over three minutes of that 6:30. Yeah, no freaking way. This is no season three, folks. We're going out big time cliffhanger this year.
And we're not going to get any resolution on Bald Mastermind either. Okay, now I'm just pissed off. Seriously, I didn't give a crap about this bad guy. But why the hell go to all the trouble of even introducing him to the plot when you're not going to pay him off in any way? Why couldn't they have just left Logan at the top of the whole scheme?
Jack saved the country, and all he got was beaten and kidnapped by the Chinese.
Angry Chinese man from season four is back, and he's pissed.
Who do you figure Jack would have called, had he been given the chance?
Jack is literally on a slow boat to China, headed overseas for some prison camp, it would seem. How will he get back to LA in time for day six?
Find out in seven-and-a-half months.
As for this season... here's how it ranks for me, from best to worst, now that it's all said and done:
1) Season Two
2) Season One
3) Season Three
4) Season Five
5) Season Four
Got other opinions? Do tell.
8 comments:
Henderson could be rebuilt with a bitchin blue robot body. Or he could be Fucking Buckaroo Banzai, who can Never Be Killed. Anyway, pretty jazzy finale there, but Alias was better. (I admit that it's cheating to compare a season-ender to a series-ender.)
The fact that you believe season 2 (panthers chasing Kim?!) > season 1 is heresy, otherwise you are dead on.
Season One will always be the best, as long as you ignore the whole Nina thing.
I'm sorry, I call bulls**t on the whole Chinese ending already! Come on, unless we're going with the plot having yet ANOTHER mole in the White House or CTU next season, how in the bloody HELL did the Chinese know that Jack was gonna be where he was? Come on, half the people Jack was working with didn't even know where he was!
Lame. Just lame.
And now we're back with the Crazy Chinese instead of the Killer Kanisters (to paraphrase Dave Barry.) Great. Argh...
Roland,
I can buy the Chinese thing. In fact, I knew this was going to happen. They ignore the whole Chinese incident by name until like three weeks ago, then mention it a couple of times over the past three episodes. It was pretty clear what was going to happen.
As to how they knew where he'd be, remember that it was Logan's people who picked him up and took him to where he was. In the last call that Logan made to "bald boy" he said "Bauer will be taken care of". This was the setup with the Chinese.
I don't anticipate them in the story for long though. My prediction is that when the Chinese guy said that "Bauer was too valuable to kill" he was referring to the impending trade to ... the Germans!
Bet me...
I got a big kick outta the "you're too valuable to kill" dialogue. that was obviously a Fox executive telling Keifer about his contract ; )
I agree that Henderson woulda checked his ammo. and the "distraction" was um, probably disappointingly rushed for poor Martha. they also time-warped Jack onto that boat. but I was most upset about removing the "lonely computer geek" Chloe by giving her an ex-husband?? they played off eachother well enough I guess, but I thought the Edgar loss had more impact before... (the picture scene was still the most touching moment of the finale)
although this season had sped things up for the sake of audience attention spans, there was still lots of good stuff. and a friend at work pointed out that there was really no glaring lame moment (cougars?) all day.
I think next season has almost too much set-up. Chinese? evil xindi council? Buchannan-Hayes? Chloe has an ex? what hole did Wayne and Curtis fall down? (they even teased some where's-Wayne dialogue into the finale) and more... should be fun!
the mole
I suppose I have to defend my choice of S2 over S1.
First, I agree -- the cougar sucked. Clearly the worst moment in all of 24, and I think the creators know it too. But if I had to pick a second place "prize", it would go to the ill-conceived amnesia plot for Teri in season one. And that lasted three episodes, not 5 minutes. So S1 wasn't squeaky clean either.
I rank S2 over S1 because there were just so many things that were so brutally effective in S2. George Mason's terminal case of radiation poisoning, and his heroic exit from the show. Kim and Jack's goodbye when they both think he's not coming back. Jack actually getting tortured TO DEATH by the bad guys, who then have to revive him. Awesome plot lines with Nina and Sherry Palmer, both now in full-on villain mode, as they never fully were in season 1.
Just brilliant. The show will be hard pressed to ever be that good again, I think. The bar is too high.
Maybe they can subtitle season 6 like this..
24: Big Trouble in Little China
I bet next season will be the twenty-four hours of Jack's escape as he tries to (a) get out of China and (b) stop the Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Just a guess there.
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