Sunday, April 01, 2007

Previously on 24: Lightning Strikes Once

The 28-year-old president (hereafter referred to as TEYOP) is apparently the first leading black man spared (thus far) by 24's writers. (We still don't know what has happened to Walid, although I'd put him in the "supporting actor" category. I wouldn't take bets that either of these fine men are off the 24 hit list.)

Improbably, the surprisingly unfettered medical team tending the comatose TEYOP accedes to Karen's plot to have the poor guy awakened. "W"'s fully conscious, looking quite energetic and babe-a-licious. He's totally ready to throw down with the Evil Veep over planned nucular strikes against some unnamed country that has nothing to do with the terrorists who blowed up Valencia, California with a suitcase bomb.

The Evil Veep roars (somehow without moving any of his facial muscles; note to self: Botox really must work) that TEYOP must not be competent...I'm sure we'll be coming back to that this week. Yaaaawn.

Jack has a ludicrous interlude with two guys. Mark works for some unnamed company and can get into some server that gives Fayed and Gradenko information they need to launch the next nuke. Mark's brother Brady is a computer savant who is otherwise a little slow.

I can't remember for the life of me how Jack and his cohorts come to be storming Mark's house, but they do. Instead of medically interrogating Mark, they manage to somehow shoot him and get him to cave and confess...and then to tell his brother to join Jack's team.

After tenderly briefing Brady, Jack and his team wire him for sound and send him off to a meet with Gradenko. Jack is talking into Brady's ear and telling him what to do. (If I may presume to speak for "M" and some of the Friends of The 24 Blog, I think that we would agree that it was tasteless to use this slow gentle savant as a plot point. An oozingly obvious device to assign tenderness points to Jack.)

Jack tells Brady to take a dive, and all heckfire breaks loose as the tac team goes all medieval on the terrorists. There is talk about 3 hostiles.

It looks like Fayed goes down, and Jack has Gradenko in his clutches.

Jack and Doyle have a very Jack and Tony CTU male bonding moment. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

There is some improbable data stripping in the field. ("M" is in IT, she was hysterical about this.)

No sign of the 3rd hostile. I'm sure we'll come back to that this week. (Maybe the Omar Sharif-like guy we saw the other week? Or had Gradenko just found a tube of hair gel? I couldn't tell in the half-light with my eyes on my computer screen/multitasking with the blog.)

Gradenko caves and starts confessing. No medical interrogation. He starts yammering about amnesty, failing to recall that everyone who gets amnesty on 24 pretty much winds up dead. (He must have missed the first few seasons.) Jack threatens him with as only Jack can. Ruthlessly.

"M" and I hope that Brady will be working at CTU next season. (Sigh, we both miss Eggar.)

Central sends some slick guy over -- another alumni of the Denver Starbucks where Ricky and Milo apparently locked lattes back in the day -- to prove that that Nadia isn't evil.

Nadia and Milo smooch. Bored now.


"M", anything else?

(Photo of Evil Willow from Geek Roar.)