Previously on “24”: We learned that: Mike Doyle needs to work on his people skills when meeting new people; Jack can do some pretty cool kung-fu moves with his belt; VP Noah likes to threaten people; The Russian consulate is going to need a lot of new windows, and employees; Slicing up kiwi fruit makes Martha Logan homicidal, but it might get her a Ginsu knife endorsement.
The following summary occurred between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm:
7:00 pm – Outside the Russian consulate, which you can tell is the Russian consulate because of all the flags, they’re having a body bag display, with many styles to choose from. Mike goes to see Jack, who is refusing the nonsensical “medical treatment”, since he’s Jack Bauer and it might slow him down from shooting more bad guys. Mike tells him that it’s in “CTU’s hands”, and that Jack shouldn’t be involved. Mike has apparently not been briefed about Jack.
7:01 pm – Bill’s on the phone with VP Noah, telling him about the drones that Gredenko has. Bill says that they’re repositioning satellites. Noah says that getting better TV reception is not going to make the plot any clearer, and that what Bill really needs to do is find out what’s going on where Gredenko is. Bill tells Noah that he has no idea how close Gredenko and Fayed are to launching the drones.
7:02 pm – Fayed is in a staring contest with the people trying to get the drones ready, as if he can command them with his mind alone, which he saw someone do on TV once. Gredenko wants to know how many of the drones have been armed. Fayed tells him that drones have wings, not arms, and that one is ready to fly. Gredenko isn’t very happy about this, because everyone knows where they are. Fayed starts to play the “Nah, Nah! It’s your fault!” game with Gredenko, which doesn’t go over very well. They start packing up. Gredenko makes a phone call to someone that’s adjusting the sensitivity of some big black packing crates. He tells the man to launch drone 0-7-0-9. This guy has been a pretty big slacker, because he didn’t have time to set the evasion vectors. He does seem pretty impressed with himself that he remembers how to use a gaming joystick from the 1990s.
7:05 pm – Nadia tells someone on the phone that they have people pushing satellites into position and that their real-time feeds will be ready soon. Milo, who doesn’t seem to have ANY work to do since he’s been shot, goes over to bother Nadia. Chloe comes over just in time to see Milo touching Nadia, and announces that Nadia has been using Milo’s security code. Milo tries to blow some technical mumbo jumbo by Chloe which (as expected) doesn’t even come CLOSE to working. Nadia explains the directive that came down from Homeland Security, and Chloe STILL isn’t buying it, but won’t tell on them and says to be careful.
7:06 pm – Bill calls Nadia to tell her that Morris has used his mad skillz to find out that Gredenko has released the hounds, only it’s not a hound it’s more like drones. And actually, only one drone.
7:07 pm – Bill goes into a conference call with General Walsh, and Morris relays the information about the drones to Walsh. Instead of just acting on it, Walsh starts reading the manual over the phone, describing to everyone at CTU what the drone is capable of.
7:08 pm – Morris suddenly announces that the drone is no longer on the screen that he’s watching. Bill immediately looks on the screen right next to it, but it didn’t fly over there either, so he’s stumped. Morris runs off to “readjust some vectors”. Walsh says that he’s going to have his F-16s in a holding pattern, because apparently all of the army’s satellites don’t work anymore and they have to rely entirely on CTU to find the drone.
7:09 pm – The terrorist guy with the joystick has accessed CTU’s computers! From there, he can readjust their screens to prevent them from seeing the drone. He also says that he’s going to play some KFed videos on all their screens to try and induce vomiting.
7:10 pm – Lennox gets off the phone with Bill, and has the pleasant task of telling Noah that CTU has lost the drone. Noah, not having been briefed about important things (since he’s only the VP), doesn’t understand why the military can’t find the drone using the satellites just like everyone else that’s watching. Lennox says they’re still positioned for the NCAA tournament from last weekend, and that the drone just slipped through. As he’s explaining this, Noah says something to his sidekick, the evil “Lisa”, to get the joint chiefs together. Lennox says he doesn’t understand what smoking and Indians have anything to do with what they’re talking about. Noah tells him that he’s warned the ambassador (from the still unnamed country) that there would be a lot of things smoking in his country soon. Lennox tries to argue with Noah, until he realizes that Noah REALLY REALLY wants to drop a nuclear bomb, and he’s not all that particular where he does it.
Commercial
7:15 pm – Chloe uses her amazing computer skills to determine that since they haven’t been blown up yet, the drone must be headed elsewhere. Bill does the manager thing and agrees with the obvious.
7:16 pm – Jack arrives at CTU, and no one seems to be the slightest bit surprised that every time they’ve seen him today his clothes are getting better and better. At this rate he’ll be dressed in a tuxedo by the end of the show, and no one will notice. Bill tells Jack all about the drone and the part about not getting blasted to smithereens, and gets Jack to go to medical. Bill tells Mike to go watch Milo, because there hasn’t been any real conflict inside CTU for a while now, and they really need some.
7:17 pm – Jack heads off the medical, and sees Marilyn who says she regrets everything that happened between them. She goes to kiss him and completely misses his face. Marilyn then drops a bomb of her own that AUDREY IS DEAD! (Note: If you had stepped outside at that exact moment, you would have heard the entire nation yell “YES!” in one voice. It was pretty impressive.) Audrey was killed in a Chinese car accident, which probably means she was really kidnapped in China, just to have leverage on Jack for later in the show. Jack doesn’t realize this, and goes to ask Chloe why no one told him about Audrey. Chloe nearly says that they were STILL having parties about the news, but decides instead to tell him that Bill thought it would be nicer if Jack went to his death at Fayed’s hands thinking that Audrey was still alive… and they forgot to tell him once he wasn’t going to his death at Fayed’s hands. Chloe explains that there’s a file on all this. Jack wants to see it NOW, and actually yells at Chloe. Under different circumstances, I think Chloe would have gone into the computers and wrecked his credit rating, but she says she’ll help Jack get the file. Jack sees Bill and Mike from across the room and puts on his “I’m Mad You Didn’t Tell Me About My Annoying Girlfriend’s Death” face and stalks off.
7:19 pm – Evil Lisa tells Noah that all the right people are going to attend the nuclear bomb meeting, and one wrong person: Karen Hayes (Madam Haig, for you long time “24” fans). Noah says that he doesn’t want to underestimate her. Or overestimate her. Or estimate her at all.
7:20 pm – Karen goes walking down the hall, sees Lennox and the cuts on his face, and asks if someone pushed him down the stairs. He says he tripped over her ineptitude. She says that wasn’t really a question, she just wanted to be the first in line to do it, if the need arose. That out of the way, she tells Lennox she intends to stay to represent President Wayne. They both go into the meeting.
7:21 pm – VP Noah runs a VERY strict meeting, since it appears that no one can sit down before he tells them to. When they finally all sit, Noah announces that there are efforts to find the drone, and that he’s just itching to drop a bomb on someone as soon as he can. Noah uses the logic that since there are a bunch of terrorists in that country, exploding a bomb there will just make them stop all their terrorist antics. Karen disagrees and thinks this could start another World War. Noah quickly says, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”, to the alarm of Karen. Karen says that stakes are just too high. Noah says that they’re not vampire slayers so that won’t be a problem, but someone should get them down in case they need them later. Noah declares the debate over, which is pretty weird since no one else said a thing about Noah’s plan.
Commercial
7:28 pm – Milo asks for some SIM files from Nadia, which she says she gave to Morris. She leaves, so Milo goes over to bug Chloe. Chloe is annoyed by this and Milo’s sudden interest in Morris. Milo asks Chloe to go check Morris’ breath, so she goes to do it by kissing him, which explains why Milo didn’t do it.
7:29 pm – Karen talks to Lennox about the nuclear bomb thing, thinking that Lennox might be a little bit iffy about the whole nuclear bomb idea. Karen says that Wayne wouldn’t like this decision. Lennox points out that every decision Wayne made today was wrong: rejecting his security proposals, believing Assad, and being president on a show like “24”, which has a really bad track record for presidents.
7:31 pm – Chloe comes in and announces that one of their computers is leaking information. Bill immediately looks down at the floor, so he doesn’t step in any and get it all over his shoes. Chloe explains that the information they’re using at CTU is being intercepted by someone on the outside, and they are using that to make sure CTU doesn’t find the drone. Mike tells Chloe to check Nadia’s workstation. Milo doesn’t like this one bit because he thinks that Mike is doing it just because Nadia is Muslim, and Mike admits that yes, that’s why he’s doing it.
Chloe does a quick check, and what do you know, it is Nadia’s workstation alright. Only problem is they’re using REALLY old computers that don’t run parallel FSK, so it’ll take 20 minutes to reboot the mainframe. Mike goes out and arrests Nadia, which is a huge surprise to her. Milo looks at what’s happening, and acts suspicious.
7:33 pm – Gredenko calls to find out where the drone is, and Fayed says that it’s still up in the air the last time he saw it. And that it’s 130 miles away from its target, which is San Francisco. Gredenko says that no one will be able to use that Mark Twain quote ever again after this.
Commercial
7:39 pm – Karen watches Wayne through a window, who’s being cared for by doctors and his Borg feeding tubes. Karen asks the doctor whether Wayne can be woken up for national security reasons, and he says no, but his family can wake him up for whatever reason they want. Wayne might suffer brain damage if they do that though.
7:40 pm – Back at CTU, everyone’s watching closed circuit TV for Nadia’s audition on “America’s Funniest Interrogations”.
7:41 pm – Morris explains some completely bizarre computer lingo, and says that they can trace the source to back to a building that just happens to be nearby.
7:42 pm – Mike asks Nadia to cooperate, but she won’t say anything. He tries an incorrectly placed Vulcan Nerve Pinch on her, which doesn’t help either. Mike really seems to be trying to be Jack, but he’s just not the same since his Silver Spoons days. Milo interrupts some particularly vicious hair-pulling, and tells Mike about the location of the signal. Mike leaves the room.
7:44 pm – In the CTU medical center, Jack has changed clothes again, and is now wearing a white halter-top which just isn’t his style. He reads a scary picture book, which turns out to be the file on Audrey. There are pictures of her body. Jack looks at it pretty carefully to make sure it’s not staged, and to be sure Audrey might not turn up as a zombie soon. A passing tactical guy tells Jack that they’ve found the signal location, and that he’s all excited there will be “shooting and stuff”.
7:45 pm – In the main CTU room, Bill’s having another meeting. That makes about 57 meetings Bill has had in the last 14 hours or so. He orders a perimeter from some new person we’ve never seen, and you can tell Bill knows it won’t be nearly as good a perimeter as Curtis used to do.
7:46 pm – Jack goes to Chloe to get a spare JackPhone, and tells Bill that he’s going out with the tactical unit because he hasn’t shot anyone in over an hour. He also says that when everything is over, he’s going to take a trip to China, NOT BY BOAT, and that he’s going to track down the people that killed Audrey, and thank them. Then shoot them. So he has some closure on all this. (I’m not sure about the “thank them” part). I see another illegal embassy intrusion in Jack’s future.
Commercial
7:50 pm – The terrorist drone controller guy is still working on flying the drone using that vintage joystick, when Gredenko calls for a full report. The guy gives him a full report and says it’ll be about three minutes until detonation. Gredenko tells him to concentrate on the task at hand. This must be some kind of Russian test they give people, where people ask you questions, and you’re supposed to ignore what they ask and keep doing whatever you’re doing.
7:52 pm – After receiving instructions from Chloe, the tactical team (and Jack) start moving in. Someone walks around the corner, and Jack is giving the honor of shooting this guy first, since he’s the lead agent in charge. One of the terrorists goes to check the source of the noise and receives several bullets, which answers that question. Joystick terrorist hides behind the flimsy computer stand he’s been working at and starts taking shots at the first shadow he sees. Unfortunately for him, Jack throws a couple of bullets his way. He tries to get a grenade, but can’t. Jack gets to the computer, and they know it’s headed to San Francisco, which coincidently was having a protest march in support of the terrorists that evening. (Those kooky people!) Jack turns the plane just in time to miss the perimeter and lands it in an industrial park area, where it bursts into flames making this a nearly picture perfect Russian plane landing. Jack tells Mike to get the Joystick terrorist awake.
7:56 pm – At the crash site, one of the guy’s pacemakers starts to make weird noises, so he asks for a Geiger counter. Since they don’t have anyone that can count Geigers, one of the firemen brings him another type of radiation detector. Woops…. There’s radioactive material in the area, so they all back off.
7:57 pm – Evil Lisa tells Noah that Bill is on the phone, and he seems really disappointed that the bomb didn’t go off in San Francisco. When Bill tells him there’s a small leak when the plane landed, Noah twists this into it being a dirty bomb. Karen points out that it did land in an industrial area, so of course it got a little dirty. Noah ignores this, and asks if there are casualties. Bill says the first responders are going to glow for a very long time, but HAZMAT will get it cleaned up. Bill hangs up.
7:59 pm -Noah decides that never mind what he said before, he REALLY REALLY wants to drop a bomb. He makes all kinds of justifications to himself, and tells Secretary Kanin to move the submarine in position and go blow some things up.
8:00 pm – Time’s up!
NEXT TIME: FAYED AND GREDENKO FIGHT! SANDRA IS BACK! NOAH IS MAD THAT NOTHING HAS BLOWN UP YET! JACK STORMS SOMETHING AND SHOOTS SOMETHING ELSE!
. The Amazon.com description of that says that some of the themes are the struggle of good and evil, and the strength of the individual. “The strength of the individual” is particularly interesting in light of why Mikhail said Kate, Sayid and John were not on the list. Mikhail said, “You’re not on the list because you are flawed, angry, weak and frightened.”