Magic Lamp

I post these on Dave Barry’s Blog right after I get done writing them, which is usually about an hour to an hour and a half after the show is over. I say “usually”, because tonight the software bot from Typepad didn’t like the word “chat”, and it took me quite a while to find it, so I posted late after making a lot of edits to the text to try and figure out what was wrong.

Anyway, here’s the full version, without all the edits I did in the one I posted on Dave’s blog. Hope you like it!

Previously on “24”: We found out that: Audrey can’t converse; Things between Chloe and Morris got worse; Mark Bishop searched Evil Lisa’s purse; President Wayne still needs a nurse; Jack is under a curse; The whole cast hopes to find a new plot to rehearse.

The following summary occurred between 2 am and 3 am:

2:00 am – Jack is in a room alone having a staring contest against himself, when Nadia comes in and tells him that Heller is filing a restraining order against Jack so that Audrey won’t have to be seen on the show anymore. Nadia tells Jack that they’ve found copper particles on Audrey, which either means they’ve been throwing pennies at her, or they’ve been keeping her in an old abandoned copper mine, which Los Angeles is so well known for. Jack really wants to go get Cheng, but Nadia won’t let him. It sure looks like Jack thinks he can take the guards out (and not for lunch). Nadia informs Jack that’s it’s nearly been two hours since she’s been put in charge, so it’s time for a new replacement, who will arrive shortly.

2:04 am – Milo goes to find out about the Bloomfield mine, and Morris makes the astute observation that the place is “big”, not one of those small copper mining companies that they use to make American Girl doll accessories. Milo asks Chloe a question and she snaps at him, which isn’t really unusual Chloe behavior, but she won’t say what’s wrong. Morris tells Milo he should just stay out of it, probably sensing that Chloe was just about to go for her taser.

2:05 am – Mike and a bunch of CTU tactical guys, who haven’t been named because they’re going to be the professional bullet catchers this episode, are getting dressed all in black to go to a formal shootout. Nadia comes in and tells everyone exactly what they probably know already: They’re going to get some Chinese, and that doesn’t mean they’re headed for some dim sum; they’re going to try and get the chip back, without the assistance of Jack Bauer (you can tell this makes some of them very nervous). Nadia tells them, “There is no room for error”, since they’re not allowed to use horseshoes or hand grenades. Mike points out they’re going to put every available agent out in the field, and that there’s no way this could ever possibly be a problem. Nadia tells him it would be better to go get Cheng.

2:08 am – Cheng arrives at his secret hideout. He tells his tech support guy to upload the data to his men, using USB ports that Cheng previously installed in them. Cheng and his tech support guy’s captions on the bottom of the screen make it look like they’re arguing about whether the men they’re going to use for this mission are capable or not. A quick check with Babelfish tells us they’re just arguing about what’s going to happen in the season finale of Lost. The guys Cheng picked bought expensive Bluetooth headsets and now they can’t afford shirt sleeves, and they look pretty mad about it. Cheng tells them they have to attack “the target” in 15 minutes.

Commercial

2:13 am – Marilyn and Josh talk about how Graem was part of the whole plot that ended up with a nuke going off, and Josh says he wishes he never signed up to be on the show, but corrects himself and says “to be part of this sick family”.

2:15 am – Chloe goes to see Marilyn, and tells her that Audrey is still alive. Marilyn seems completely surprised, as if she hatched the whole plot to get Audrey to go to China after Jack, but that would be a plot twist too silly even for “24”.

2:16 am – Evil Mark gets a call from Evil Lisa, and they make small talk while everyone in the White House, including some of the cleaning staff listen in, in hopes of Mark and Lisa saying something naughty to each other, but it doesn’t happen. Lisa does casually mention that the Chinese “crisis” has been averted, and Mark seems to take that well, and doesn’t blurt out any swear words in Russian.

2:17 am – Lennox hands Lisa her PDA and tells her to go back to Mark. She’s supposed to act completely casual, and immediately excuse herself to go to the bathroom to throw up so Mark can access some fake files that say: “The Chinese guy who was headed out of the country was killed and the Russian chip was destroyed. The Russian chip is definitely NOT still in Chinese hands and they’re NOT still trying to get it back. Nope. Nuh-uh”. They’re hoping that will convince the Russians. Lisa is nervous about this whole “acting” thing in front of Mark, and everyone else in the cast can sympathize because “acting is hard”.

2:18 am – Jack is either trying to have a staring contest with the table, or he’s trying to use his heat vision to burn a whole in it, when Chloe comes in with Marilyn. Jack says he’ll be fine and shooting in no time, but Marilyn just wants to talk about Audrey. Jack just doesn’t want to talk about it. (THANK YOU, JACK!) Marilyn tells Jack that after all this is over, she’s up for dating Jack. She leaves. Chloe tells Jack that Mike is going after Cheng.

2:19 am – Back at Cheng’s headquarters, one of his men brings over a PDA with a maze game that he can’t quite figure out without Cheng’s help. Cheng says they’re going to be in optimal position for a surgical strike! They’re going to attack an operating room!

2:20 am – Mike arrives at the front entrance to Bloomfield, throwing everyone off because no one EVER goes in the front entrance. That’s executive thinking.

The guy Cheng has been talking to is slowly catching on to what Cheng is planning, and realizes that people “are going to die, and stuff”. This guy must be from the Valley.

CTU outside cuts through the high security chain link fence with some Jack Bauer toe tail clippers (that’s a bolt cutter, to you and me).

Cheng tells his nervous Valley guy that their objective is to “get the package”.

Finally! One of the CTU tactical guys puts a bomb on the door to the entrance! It goes off…. Like a sparkler! Pfft! Jack would have used something that would have taken out the whole wall. Mike and the CTU guys rush in! They’re doing a great job securing a completely empty warehouse so far, and they continue.

It looks like Cheng is not going to get back his rental deposit on this secret hideout, because there’s huge hole in the floor straight with a rope going into it down to the sewers . This is NOT the kind of thing you can cover up with a nice Chinese rug either. The guys plan on heading 180 meters to the target. Cheng says, “Don’t let me down”, so I don’t think Cheng intends to go down the hole with them.

2:22 am – CTU tactical tells Mike that the empty building put up a struggle, but now it’s completely secured. The guy takes Mike over to a large pile of empty weapons boxes, and it’s either Jack’s pile of recyclables, or they just found that the Chinese have a lot of weapons right now. There still seems to be a complete absence of any Chinese guys there. Mike calls Nadia and tells her to be on the look out for a couple of guys carrying a LOT of weapons, or a bunch of guys carrying a few weapons each. Since this is Los Angeles, that might be a tall order. Neither of them have any idea what the Chinese are planning.

2:23 am – The Chinese guys are all in the sewers now, some of them rethinking their career choices. The head commando guy calls Cheng, and asks for directions because GPS units don’t work very well underground. Cheng tells them where to go, and when they get there, they’ll be all set to break into CTU!

Commercial

2:28 am – Morris asks Chloe for some help on some images, and then they launch into a whole discussion of why they broke up. I expect to see Dr. Phil walk in at any moment.

2:30 am – Lennox is outside of the building with Lisa. Lisa says she’s frightened about doing this. Lennox tries to reassure her by telling her that she should be frightened because she could be facing treason charges. (He was never really good a reassuring people). They give Lisa a HUGE purse with a non-descript camera lens in the side to film the whole thing, and she heads into the secret apartment. Lennox calls to tell Noah what is going on.

2:31 am – Just as Evil Lisa comes to the door, Mark opens it. They kiss, but Mark thinks that something is wrong because Lisa doesn’t taste as Evil as she usually is. Lisa tries to leave, but Mark won’t let her. Lennox and the surveillance crew watch this from the camera in the bag. Lennox forgets that he didn’t give Lisa an earpiece but continues to try and give her instructions anyway. Lisa tries to go “freshen up again”, but Mark convinces her that they need to debrief each other some more.

Commercial

2:39 am – The Chinese commandos arrive at a grate with a light above it just under CTU, and it gives them access to the security system! You would think that something like that would have been looked into after last year’s attack on CTU. They’ll have everything shut down in two minutes! CTU’s first clue will probably be when the computers stop working.

2:40 am – Milo goes to talk to Nadia with information, but she’s a lot more interested in letting him know that she and Mike are “just friends” and not “shooting buddies”. Chloe interrupts to tell them both she’s figured out that the Chinese guys did in fact get into cars and drive away from where Mike is, sometime before Mike got there. Glad someone cleared THAT up.

2:41 am – One of the Chinese commandos gets mad at the grate, and decides he’s going to cut through it. He warns everyone.

2:42 am – Nadia tries to call Doyle, but can’t get a hold of him because she has her cell phone on CTU cell towers, and not on roaming (because of the high charges)! No one can get an outside line, but strangely they can call each other on the inside, because Milo gets a phone call.

Chinese commando are on their way up through where the grate used to be, but they’re going to have a hard time sneaking around upstairs without smelling their sewer water drenched clothes from a mile away.

Morris can’t figure out why his computer can’t reach any of the servers, yet Milo got a phone call just a minute before. Chloe, meanwhile doesn’t seem to have a problem with her computer (well, this is Chloe we’re talking about, after all), and says she knows where Cheng was headed. Milo proves why he’s not in charge when he tells Nadia that he thinks it is kinda weird that all the cameras are out all over CTU. Nadia realizes that what’s going on isn’t going to look very good on her resume as she tells Chloe to do a “Code Red Emergency Lockdown”.

2:43 am – Just in case someone can’t hear the emergency buzzer going off all over CTU, they put a large red circle over the big displays in the room just to make them harder to read. The Chinese commandos are in CTU, and they start shooting random security guys. Nadia tells everyone to go to their happy places, and everyone scatters. Marilyn and Josh hear all this going on, and don’t know what to make of it. Jack hears it too, and looks mad that he doesn’t have a gun to join in on the fun, when the guard won’t let him out.

2:44 am – The head commando is really mad at the ceiling because he shoots it without even looking at it as he enters the main CTU control area and tells everyone to get down. A couple of people start dancing disco until they realize he meant to drop to the floor. The guard at Jack’s door finally opens it up, gets some instructions from Jack, and promptly gets shot before he can do anything. Jack makes a face like “this ALWAYS happens”. Fortunately the guy who shot the guard isn’t too bright because he decides to kick in another door, and completely ignore who the guard was talking to.

Jack dives for a gun and shoots a couple of bad guys and some bad looking CTU glass.

The head commando asks to have everyone’s cell phones, because he’s trying to pick a new one and needs to look at the latest and greatest. He tells one of his men to filter all communication and to turn off the alarm because it’s annoying and no one outside of CTU can hear it anyway.

Jack makes up for not shooting anyone for a while by shooting a couple of more people, some more glass, and upgrades to a submachine gun when his pistol runs out of bullets.

2:45 am – Head Commando asks who’s in command, and just as Nadia starts to get up, Milo gets up instead. Head Commando fires Milo, making that the briefest CTU command in history.

Commercial

2:50 am – Jack is up on the second level of CTU and can see that everyone else is being rushed off into another room, reminding themselves to never volunteer that they’re in charge of CTU if anyone ever asks that question.

Marilyn is still in another room and can’t figure out why, even with alarms and guns going off, that the phone is dead. She sees two guys with guns down the hallway! Marilyn gets Josh to help her move a couch in front of the glass door, because using her powerful reasoning skills she can just tell that there would be no way that two grown men could figure out how to get around THAT. Or even get through the solid glass walls surrounding the room. That plan is foiled when the two guys push their way in, and tell Head Commando and Cheng they found Josh! It was Josh they were after! They start to leave, but Uncle Jack arrives and gives each of the Chinese commandos a couple of bullets a piece, as a gift. They don’t take them very well, and hit the ground. Marilyn seems pretty freaked out that they wanted Josh, as she tells Jack. Jack seems pretty impressed because he was 18 before any commandos wanted to take him hostage. Jack, Marilyn and Josh sneak through CTU while some more Chinese Commandos sneak around after them.

2:52 am – They all enter the Fizzy Lifting Drink room. Jack jams his gun into the fan, and tells Josh to go up the air duct, which doesn’t thrill him very much because he knows Mr. Wonka won’t like him messing up his air duct. Josh climbs up the air duct. Marilyn starts to as well, and the Chinese commandos break in, taking both Jack and Marilyn hostage. One of them calls Head Commando and explains the situation. Head Commando wants to see Jack and Marilyn

2:53 am – They have cameras everywhere at CTU…. Even the air ducts, because we can see Josh crawling around in them.

Head Commando tells Cheng, who isn’t too happy because he really wanted a young white American kid to take hostage.

One of the tech support commandos tells Head Commando that Mike is calling in to chat with Nadia. Head Commando says “Nadia Yassir, stand up!” Morris briefly looks like he’s going to stand up to take her place, but realizes at the last second he probably couldn’t pull off a Nadia impersonation. Nadia stands up, but looks a little freaked out because she remembers the last time Head Commando said “Come here”. Head Commando figured out that Nadia is really in charge because he used technology called “a roster”. He warns Nadia to not let Mike know what’s going on. She talks to Mike to let him know everything is just peachy at CTU.

2:57 am – Jack and Marilyn arrive. Head Commando uses the PA system, which is even installed in the air ducts at CTU (they think of everything), and tries to convince Josh to come down or Marilyn is going to die. Head Commando starts counting, and they get Josh out just before Marilyn is shot. Head Commando tells Cheng they have Josh.

2:59 am – Cheng calls Grampa Bauer to let him know they have Josh, and to thank him for providing the security codes to CTU. Now, how in the heck does Jack’s father know the security codes to CTU? You know how? Internet. You can find anything there. Jack’s dad also has a guy that can read Russian service manuals and work on Russian chips, and Cheng will exchange Josh for the chip.

3:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME ON “24”: BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY! HEAD SLAMS! JACK’S DAD WANTS TO GO TO CHINA WITH JOSH! SLIDING AROUND AND SHOOTING! EVIL MARK MAKES A MAD FACE! NOAH GETS EXCITED! MAYBE WAR!