Last week we had one of our first, “oh no, we just missed getting the bad guys and the big bad bomb” moments of the season. There have been little ones, but the disappearance of the nuclear fuel rods moments before CTU got them is a hallmark of the 24 series. And then, as if riding the high in the writers’ room of turning CTU upside down, they throw another one in the first 5 minutes when Josef is shot by the Arabs who steal the rods back in a game of nuclear hot potato. Then Fahrad realizes that the guys he’s working with are crazier than he imagined. They want to get the nukes working on American soil. Hell its already happened once on 24, what’s another littler mushroom cloud? Yikes.
Renee Walker is having one of those up and down kind of days. Up: she gets to come back and work for CTU after being out of the loop. Down: she’s kind of forced to go back undercover. Up: She actually doesn’t get killed when reestablishing cover. Down: She has to bang the guy she hates the most in order to maintain said cover. Up: She gets to stab the guy to death. Down: The Government wants her to take the blame for CTU’s mistakes. Up: Jack sort of asks her to be his girlfriend. Down: Their first date is probably going to get put on hold because Jack beat up half of CTU.
Now Agent Cole (Sir Frederick Prinze II) is trying to track down his fiance Dana Walsh. My plan for this story arc is basically my plan for when I am in bed and need to piss: ignore it until it hopefully goes away. Like this storyline, it usually doesn’t so here goes: Dana tracks the two scumbags to some remote part of, I guess, New Jersey and is about to kill them until Cole somehow finds her. To be honest, I came very close to fast-forwarding through this whole part except that Freddie P. started developing that weird accent again so I stuck it out. Dana spills the goods to Cole, Freddie Prinze does his best acting class impression of “I’m from New York and I’m mad,” Dana, not be left out, develops a Southern accent of her own and then Cole, takes care of business. Thank god, hopefully that puts an end to that.
In classic CTU fashion, the entire team wastes tons of time just talking about saving Fahrad from the terrorists. Jack leverages his knowledge and expertise in order to get Renee out of hot water. So now he is back on board and they are off to get the fuel rods (which are for sure long gone by now).
24 is back to its old tricks. Lots of just misses and needless conversations. It’s like being with an old friend. Next week they’ll lose the bomb a couple more times and get some random agents killed. I can’t wait.
Other thoughts:
- What do you think Jack and Renee’s first date would have been like? I am picturing a little Pinot Noir while they fire off their Glocks at the shooting range. They’d follow that up with a light dinner where the discussion would most definitely turn to optimal torture escape methods. I can’t wait for next week’s lovefest between these two battle hardened agents.
- I think I wrote about this last year but I’ll give it another go. Is Mary Lynn Rajskub the best actress ever or the worst? I honestly can’t tell. I am not sure if Chloe’s character is super grating and annoying or just actually moderately realistic for a nerdy, socially awkward computer tech.
