Tag: Television

Previously on 24, we learned: Yellow vans are completely inconspicuous in large metropolitan areas; Agent Janis may in fact be Joy Turner disguised as Phyllis Rosensteen; All Federal agencies use the same ringtones on their landlines; seeing a secret service agent put on rubber gloves is never, EVER a good thing; Neuromuscular drugs make it really hard to act; Bad guys are extremely talkative about what they’re going to do when they think you have no chance of escaping; If someone ever fakes killing you, puts a big piece of Saran Wrap over you, and then returns to cover you with dirt, don’t count on Allen Funt to jump out of the bushes – you better hold your breath.

1:00 pm – Agent Larry FINALLY has a full office meeting. He wants to do synchronized satellite sweeps, because he’s always wanted to try that after seeing that event in the Olympics. Agent Janis starts to complain, and makes herself look foolish in front of everyone. Shaun listens to “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” on his headphones while Agent Larry tells everyone that Agent Renee has been abducted. Larry gets pretty upset when Shaun calls Renee an “ex-agent”, and Larry tells her that she’s not dead yet, she’s probably just pining for the fjords.

1:02 pm – A blue van drives into the abandoned construction site, and Bill and Chloe stop at the EXACT spot Renee was buried. She’s not breathing for two reasons: 1) You can’t breath when you’re buried under plastic and dirt, and 2) Lack of oxygen forced her to. Chloe pulls out the adrenaline syringe she always keeps in her purse, and they save Renee. They let her know that they’re with Jack, and that she lost her bid to get the world’s record for holding her breath.

1:03 pm – In the inconspicuous yellow UPS van, Matobo and his wife look worried. Emerson tells Jack and Tony that Nichols is on his way with the diamonds and Happy Meals for everyone. Now that everything is going well, Emerson does what bad guys traditionally do, which is give long speeches about things everyone in the audience is curious about. This week’s speech is “Why Tony Is Not Dead”.

Turns out that Christopher Anderson, unknown to everyone, including Tony, himself, and the writer’s for “24”, didn’t really kill Tony. If he had, Tony would be trying to eat everyone’s brains like a Zombie.

No, what happened was Anderson MISSED killing Tony, and only slowed down his heart. Then Emerson came and got Tony and saved him, and was planning on using Tony against Jack. They continue to talk about Tony like he’s not there, even though he’s sitting right there next to them! Tony finally speaks up and starts talking about how they’re like brothers, and just before everyone starts singing Kumbiya, the van gets to where it’s going – An abandoned air strip, another one of the many abandoned places in the greater Washington area.

1:09 – Emerson sees Tony and Jack whispering to each other as the van pulls into the air hanger. Emerson tells Tony to go help Litvak with the door. Emerson pulls off something astounding: He gets Jack’s gun away from him, and gets him into a headlock! This is just too much for Tony, who shoots Litvak out of complete surprise. There’s a standoff between Emerson and Tony, while Emerson holds the gun on Jack. They tell each other to drop their guns a couple of times. When it’s clear that their “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock” game is deadlocked on “Spock”, Tony finally just shoots Emerson. Emerson’s pretty surprised, so surprised he makes a big exaggerated movement to shoot Tony. By this time Jack gets a gun and shoots Emerson, who says, and I quote: “Gurgle”.

1:10 – Bill and Chloe tell Agent Renee that they’ve been running their own little conspiracy nut outfit, but it turns out that much to even their surprise, they might actually have a real conspiracy on their hands: Dubaku and Juma have infiltrated the government! Chloe works on Renee’s neck to stitch up the bullet wound that Jack gave her so it won’t look like a giant hickey and arouse suspicion. Renee wants to phone home to the FBI, but Bill tells her to get a Clue: He’s Sorry but she can’t call because it’ll put their Operation in Jeopardy, put Jack’s Life in danger, and other assorted board game references. Renee has to pretend to act dead, so she starts getting back under the plastic wrap, but they stop her and tell her she just can’t contact the FBI until they figure out how badly things have been infiltrated.

1:11 – Bill gets a call from Jack, who informs him of all the fun he’s been having shooting people. Bill tells Jack that he has to get Matobo to agree to their “plan”. Jack explains to Matobo that they have a “plan”, but doesn’t explain what it is.

1:12 – Meanwhile, back at the bad guy’s headquarters, no one has figured out how to turn on the lights yet. Dubaku tells Nichols to go get Matobo, and then get rid of everyone else. Nichols tries to convince him that Emerson’s team might be useful later, and that it’s considered “unfriendly” to shoot people in this country. Dubaku thinks it would be better to keep his diamonds, which he hasn’t shown anyone anyway. Dubaku then asks about the White House’s response to all of this, and can’t believe that after decades of a “Don’t negotiate with terrorists” policy, they haven’t changed their minds. Dubaku decides that Mrs. President will only respond to dead Americans, which is weird because most dead people have problems communicating, except to 10 year old boys. Dubaku decides to target planes in Washington, DC.

Commercial

1:18 – At the Oval office, Mrs. President gets off the phone with Bob over at the NSA. She tells Ethan (who just walked into the room) she just realized that every single person that she’s ever spoken to over at the NSA is named Bob. In any event, another firewall is about to be breached, and no one has any idea where the off switch is on the thing, so things are looking grim and that Dubaku is behind it all. Her plan: To speak with all first responders across the country, which should take a minimum of the next six months.

Ethan suggests giving Dubaku a gesture. Mrs. President shows him one, and he was thinking more of something along the lines of pulling the troops back. Mrs. President doesn’t go along with it.

1:20 – Tony checks on Emerson, and tells him he’s “sorry” for the whole shooting thing. He tells Tony to “Go to Hell” and “Gurgle”.

Over in a non-gurgle portion of the airplane hanger, Matobo has caught on to the fact that Jack wants to use Matobo as bait for Dubaku. Mrs. Matobo seems to want to go along with it for the good of Sangala. (She knows that Sangala is a fictional country, and has been making eyes at Jack, so it’s hard to tell what she’s up to).

Matobo wants to go alone. Jack tells him that his wife needs to go to, in case they want to torture her for information about Sangala. Jack swears that it’ll only be a little bit of torture, and they’re going to follow them, so everything’s going to be OK. Matobo won’t do it, but is finally convinced by his wife, saying “Hey! It’ll be fun!”

Jack goes to Tony to get him to come along. Tony looks pretty upset about Emerson, but decides to help Jack hide the bodies, because bodies out in the middle of the hanger just might give their positions away.

1:22 – Dubaku still hasn’t done anything with the lights. It looks like he’s standing on the bridge of a Klingon Bird of Prey while he gets flight information from one of his henchmen. Henchmen starts rerouting planes.

1:24 – Ethan tells Mrs. President that the NSA has NFI where the firewall breach will be, and expects Dubaku to attack ASAP, and they might all be SOL. Meanwhile, Agent Tim gets a call, and they want to forward a call from Dubaku so Mrs. President can talk to him. This phone technology is completely baffling to them, and they don’t realize they can trace the phones.

Dubaku tells Mrs. President he’s disappointed, and that she should look out the window. She does and sees a really bad firework off in the distance – either that or the aftermath of a plane explosion. Unless his demands are met, 10,000 people will die. This upsets her greatly, and she can’t talk for several moments.

When she finally speaks, she asks “Is the Cabinet still assembled?” Ethan says, “This is no time to ask about furniture! Oh! You mean… never mind!” She goes off to meet with them.

Commercial

1:31 – Mrs. President is getting briefed by Tim giving what sounds like a very gruesome mathematical story problem. The answer: 271 people are dead in the air, and probably more on the ground from the debris. Tim says that a congressman and his wife were also killed on the plane. Everyone is shocked by this – a congressman was actually with his wife – but it’s true. Everyone, including Tim, thinks Mrs. President should withdraw the troops. Tim says they’re just not prepared to show that kind of special effects on the budget the program has, so to get around that, she should comply with Dubaku’s demands.

She finally decides that there will be a chance that Matobo will be recovered, and not like a piece of furniture – they could get him back. She tells everyone that she won’t negotiate with people that give her ultimatums. Joe the Secretary of State gets really upset, starts yelling, and finally leaves after threatening her with the fact she might be impeached. She tells him that he can either sit down, or leave. He finally leaves. She looks at everyone else as if to say, “Didn’t I JUST get done saying I won’t negotiate with people that give me ultimatums?” She gives a nice little preachy speech. This is quite boring, because she doesn’t shoot anyone or scream or anything. She leaves the room and gets a Laura Roslin look on her face while she leans against a wall.

Commercial

1:41 – Jack waves for the camera inside the approaching blue van as it arrives at the hanger, and runs inside, realizing they must have just started the show again. It’s Bill and Chloe! Jack tells Chloe to put a wire on Matobo as fast as she can, which sounds like a challenge to Chloe, so she runs off to do it.

Renee gets out of the van and is still upset at Jack for that whole “shooting and burying alive” thing. Jack tells her that if he’d told her what was going on back at the FBI, it would have shortened the plot of the show by a couple of hours, and the show’s called “24”, not “22”.

Now Chloe is putting on rubber gloves, which, as noted previously, is NOT a good sign. She tells him that she has a special dental transmitter. He asks if she’s an FBI dentist, and she says, “No, I’m a stay at home mom”. Mrs. Matobo is clearly impressed with the skills that American stay at home mom’s have. Chloe gets the transmitter put onto one of Matobo’s teeth.

Bill tells Jack about the plane collision and goes off to check on Chloe. Renee comes over to Jack to pout some more. They go over the whole “Renee can’t believe the government has been infiltrated” and “Jack tells her, ‘well, it has'” yet again.

1:44 – At the White House, Tim pulls Ethan aside telling him that a lot of Americans are going to die of boredom soon, if something doesn’t happen on the show soon. Ethan says he knows someone that might be able to talk some “sense” into Mrs. President.

1:45 – That person is Henry, Mrs. President’s husband. Unfortunately, Henry can only give people dirty looks right now because of his neuromuscular relaxant. Downstairs, the guy who took Samantha back home sure took his old sweet time about it, because it took over 45 minutes to get her here! On “24”, that’s at least 90 trips around the entire metro-Washington area, if Jack were driving. Anyway, Agent Gedge is upstairs redecorating the place, pulling all kinds of wires, and generally acting in a way that he’s NOT going to be getting a good merit report from Henry at the end of the year.

Samantha goes into her apartment and sees Henry sitting there. He tries to give her a warning grunt, but she doesn’t hear him. She tries to makes small talk with him, which you’d think he could do, but it doesn’t work. Agent Gedge comes up behind her and kills her. During the middle of Gedge’s attack, Ethan calls. Gedge gives Henry a “Isn’t that always the way?” look, and takes the call. Gedge tells Ethan that Henry is meeting with Samantha right now, and he has NO idea what’s going on up there. Ethan tells Gedge to get Henry to call him as soon as he can, and hangs up. Henry looks like he would LOVE to do that, because it’s a lot better than watching Gedge be a psychopathic killer. Gedge puts the knife into Henry’s hand to get fingerprints. Henry realizes that the neuromuscular relaxant is wearing off, and starts remembering as much of the Karate Kid movie as he can.

Commercial

1:54 – Nichols’ SUV gets to the hanger, and he is surprised to find out that Tony is there alone! Tony tells him that he didn’t like the time he spent with the FBI, so he killed everybody he was with. Nichols wants to see Matobo and his wife, and Tony insists on seeing the diamonds first, and he’s not talking about almonds. Tony must have taken a jewelry correspondence course while he was away, because he looks at the diamonds and is satisfied. The thugs check in the yellow van, and viola! Two Matobos!

Nichols tells Tony that they might need him again, and then a split second later changes his mind. Fortunately for Tony, Nichols is pretty new at this, and nods his head at someone BEHIND Tony, which Tony clearly sees. But before Tony can do anything, Jack and Bill shoot darn near everyone, except one Thug and Nichols.

Tony tells Nichols to forget the whole “you almost killed me” thing, and tells him to take the Matobos, which he promptly does. Nichols and company leave in the SUV.

1:57 – Gedge drags Henry to chair near a balcony for a more gruesome view of what’s about to happen. Gedge hangs a rope over a beam to hang Henry, while Henry balls his fists up. Gedge ignores him, which is a real shame for Gedge because Henry has just enough strength to choke him. They BOTH go over the balcony, and land on a table. Gedge is dead! Henry looks like he does NOT want to try that again.

1:59 – Dubaku is on the phone with Nichols, telling him that he thinks that Mrs. President is insane. Before Nichols can say, “it takes one to know one”, Dubaku hangs up on him. They target Kidron, Ohio for their next attack. Dubaku says, “Begin” just as the show ends.

2:00 pm – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME ON 24: CHEMICAL PLANTS! ATMOSPHERIC RELEASE! MISSING HENRY! EXPLOSIVE DUBAKU HIDEOUT! SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!