The 24 episode that aired on March 5 marked the halfway point of Season Six. We were treated to a mostly Jack-centered episode, which is the way it should be, so I liked it despite some of the ridiculous things that occurred. Here’s a closer look at what happened between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM.
Jack/Logan: Jack escorts Logan to the Russian consulate, but Logan insists that he actually has to go into the room alone. Jack reluctantly agrees. Logan cuts right to the chase with the consulate, but the guy doesn’t give up any information — even when Logan threatens to release some incriminating evidence against him. Nevertheless, Logan can tell that the man is lying, so he conveys this info to Jack.
Jack isn’t just going to walk away from the situation. Instead, he decides to have Chloe cut the power to the embassy for about 60 seconds, which was all the time he needed to get into the building. He then storms into the consulate’s office and takes the guy hostage. We soon get to see one of those patented Jack Bauer torture sessions. Jack first tries the standard “Tell me what you know” growl with a gun trained on the detainee’s head. Then he moves in with a cigar cutter and starts working on the consulate’s fingers. One comes off before the guy starts spilling Gredenko’s whereabouts. Apparently, Gredenko is in the Mojave Desert where he’s preparing drones to help detonate the remaining suitcase nukes.
Armed with this valuable information, what does Jack do? Does he immediately call CTU to pass it on? Does he try to use the hostage as a shield in order to get off embassy property and back onto U.S. soil? Does he try to escape through the vents or another more discreet route? No. He brazenly walks towards the door of the consulate’s office, at which point armed agents detonate an explosive that knocks Jack off his feet. He’s then taken into custody — and here we go again with Jack and foreign embassies.
When Jack regains consciousness, he tries to talk his guard into calling CTU and telling Bill Buchanan about Gredenko and the drones. Instead of making the phone call in the relative safety of the room where Jack is being held, the guard goes out into the hallway — where he’s promptly shot by another Russian agent.
White House bunker: President Palmer is in surgery after being injured in Pollack’s bomb plot. The Vice President arrived on the scene and is ready to take over. It seems that the first thing he wants to do is enact Tom Lennox’s plan that calls for heightened security measures and the loss of basic civil liberties for certain groups of people.
Additionally, people keep asking about Lennox, and since no one can find him, the Secret Service is called into action. Pollack hears about this and realizes that he must release Tom or risk being caught. Prior to cutting Tom loose, Pollack urges him to be reasonable for the good of the country. As soon as Tom is released, he remands himself into custody and starts spilling the beans about Pollack’s plot. The veep intervenes with some threats, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens to Tom next.
CTU: Not much happened over at the CTU offices. Chloe disabled the embassy security system for Jack, Bill informed the veep that Jack was on his rogue mission, and then at the end, Bill decided to keep news of Jack’s capture under wraps and send in a black ops unit to try to rescue Bauer. We also get a short scene of Bill talking to Karen. She has apparently been waiting at the airport for the last few hours, but upon hearing the news of President Palmer’s injuries, she decides to go back to the White House.
My Reaction: The first thing I have to say about this episode is that I found it highly unlikely that Jack Bauer would make all those mistakes in yet another foreign embassy. There were so many things he could have done differently to accomplish the same end, yet he took a dumb route that led directly to his own capture. Nothing about his actions made any sense at all, so that just leaves me to think that the writers were simply looking for a ploy to bring in a rescue scene.
Otherwise, I thought this episode was pretty good. There was plenty of Jack, and consequently, plenty of action. That’s what 24 should be about, so I was happy to see that. I liked the fact that we got a break from the petty stuff (Morris’s drinking problem, Walid and Sandra Palmer, etc.) and just focused on the big picture. I still don’t understand why we’re not seeing much of the terrorists, but that should definitely change down the stretch run here.
Looking forward to next week and the arrival of… Rick Schroeder!!
