Monday, March 19, 2007

24 Season 6: Episode 14 Recap
(Hour 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.)

WARNING: The following post may, and probably will, contain spoilers.

Wow-o-we-wow, what an action-packed episode. And by action-packed, I mean bs-packed. When we left last week, Grizzly Logan was crashing in the ambulance (since the helicopter was, uh, broken?) en route to the hospital. Did he recover? Did he die? No one cares, especially the writers, since he didn't show up in tonight's hour. And really, that's fine. But someone from Jack's past did show up.

The Audrey Files
Grimacing Jack has returned to CTU and while he's heading to the medical wing, he stops in to see Marilyn – who's been doing nothing but standing around for the past several hours. After she confirms that there WAS something between her and Jack way back in the day, she tries to get some... because nothing helps you get over a dead husband and a kidnapping father-in-law better than some Jack-smooching. Too bad Jack denies her. But it's heroic, because he did so out of love.

That's when Marilyn drops the bomb on Jack – Audrey's dead (which is why we never had confirmation of her coming back to the show during the off-season). She died trying to find Jack in China. How romantic. How sweet. How did Marilyn know?

Jack. Is. Pissed. So he runs over to interrupt Chloe and demands that she stops whatever she's doing to go get Audrey's file out of archive. Never you mind the nuclear-armed drone in the air, Jack, just glare at Bill and grimace as you head back to the medical wing. After pouring over her file, he just knows that she was killed and vows to make "them" pay.

You DO Know What an RQ-(d)2 is, Right?
This week the writers decided to use a real-life thing in the show, the RQ-2 aerial drone. In case just saying the name several times during the show wasn't enough, we are also relayed the following information:

  • Bill tells Evil Veep that the RQ-2 is an unmanned stealth aircraft that can be remotly piloted anywhere in the world.
  • When General Walsh talks about the drone, he mentions that it has a low-profile design which makes it hard to detect – some people refer to that as stealth. Say, how exactly did CTU find the stealthy drone on satellite?
  • Then Morris loses the drone (we know this because his satellite screen read "Satellite Streams Protocol - Searching All Vectors - Lost C"), only because CTU has been compromised (yes, another mole). And when Gredenko calls Missile Commander to find out how things are going, he is told that CTU's tracking capabilities had been disabled – which Gredenko clarified for us idiots, "they cannot track the drone." NO ONE CAN! IT'S STEALTH!

The 24 Convenience Store
24 has long been built on conveniences, but it's becoming like Prison Break in all of the "ironic twists" that pop up.

  • Sun sets fast on the sunset strip – Tonight we open the episode in near total darkness. Remember when just ten minutes ago, it was complete daylight outside? I sure do. Maybe the siege of the Russian Consulate took longer than we thought. But why was it important to be so dark? So that when the RQ-2 aerial drone is in flight, the only way to find it (aside from CTU just happening across it on satellite) is by eyesight... and that's really hard to do at night.
  • Karen needs help! – Now that Evil Veep is in power, Karen has decided to return to work so that she can take him, Fish and Invasion Chick until Brother Palmer can come in at the last second and save the day. That could be a while, though, since he's in a coma that was induced by the doctor. Karen really needs his help and asks the doctor to wake him up. Sadly, he cannot without consent from his family. Well what do you know, Sister Palmer is standing right there!
  • Missile Commander – If Morris isn't the best at everything, I don't know who is, but thank God he found out who was piloting the drone... and what do you know, he's just THREE BLOCKS AWAY FROM CTU! Hoooo-rah! The reason he was so close to CTU? So Jack and Silver Spoon could get there during a commercial break. Good thing that they didn't kill the Missile Commander, they'll need to torture him next week.

The 24 In-Convenience Store
24 also has it's fair share of things that they simply cannot do, only to draw out time and "add to the drama" of the story.

  • Chloe Determined – Even though Chloe has been interrupted so many times today, she figures out that there's a leak inside of CTU! It's from a workstation inside the office, but she can't isolate it -- because it's being masked through a sub-circuit. Morris is working on it, but there are over 50 workstations inside of CTU and it could take an hour to find it. Or... how about you go check every computer in the place -- you could walk by each of them in a total of 5 minutes.
  • Re-Boot Wackiness – Silver Spoon wants to check Nadia's computer, because she's totally muslim and Milo gets all up in arms. Apparently, it IS Nadia and the only way to shut down her workstation is to cut the power and re-boot CTU's mainframe. But if they do that, they'll be without system power for 20 minutes. Or... couldn't you just unplug her computer?

Kitchen Sink
Other fun/nonsensical things from tonight.

  • The silly Chloe-Milo-Morris love triangle just got dumber. Nadia is now in on the mix.
  • Evil Veep is the only voice of reason on this show. He, like everyone else should be doing, questions how on Earth can CTU lose a drone with the world's best satellites. Some of the writers MUST have a sense of humor.
  • Milo interrupts Chloe from setting up a reverse stattostream on the drone satellite intel and wants her to check on Morris' breath, so she kisses him. The only humor of the year... but why now?
  • Jack continues to amaze me. Tonight he takes out the pilot, tells CTU that the target is San Fran, figures out that it's set on a perimeter circuit... and then figures out how to fly the drone out of the perimeter. Then in another re-used story-line, he needs to find a place to land the drone, but needs 500 feet of runway. Good thing they found one so quickly in the industrial part of the city.

Next week promises to be even better... we have Evil Veep ready to nuke up the Middle East and Brother Palmer will be the second President in three weeks to crash. Will he die? Will Evil Veep kill all Muslims? Good thing it'll take one hour to position the submarine!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some additional fun things in this episode:

>Did we really need to see Jack in a tube top while he was at the CTU infirmary? Dude looked totally gay.

>When Karen Hayes was trying to convince the doctor to bring "President" Palmer out of his coma, the doctor brushed her off and had to leave. Why? Does he have other patients?

>Nadia is way too hot to be a terrorist.

Anonymous said...

You really sure that Audrey is dead. After all they had to do a DNA test on her remains. In China.

So maybe she will return, and become the new president in the next Season? (For I don't expect the VicePresident to be around next time...)

Anonymous said...

I need help on something. Can the president (or acting president) really order a nuclear strike without any approval? This is news to me but it would seem like there would be some safeguard to avoid a situation like this.
And also, did anybody else notice the complete lack of guards near "president" Palmer's room?? His bunker security sucks.

Seth Gunderson said...

I think the President can make a military strike like that, he is Commander in Chief, after all. But, to declare war on someone, I think that requires House approval.

Don't worry, though, Brother Palmer will nearly die in the first 15 minutes next week, only to come back right when the submarine is positioned (since it takes a whole hour, they wouldn't just be ready and waiting to fire) and nix the launching of the nukes.

Anonymous said...

So on the stealthing issue. I believe in the episode the pilot informed Gren that he had not programmed it yet and it would be shot down. Gren told him to get it in the air and get the stealth program working in route to the target.

Nadia is really hot but not too hot to be a terrorist. Think back to the earlier seasons where the chick banged the guy on the plane then blew it up and parachuted and stripped by the fire. I think she was definitely hot making Nadia available to be a terrorist. It would be cool if it's the dude from Denver but I doubt it.

Did anyone think it was strange that they decided to leave the nuke on fire? Will that not cause it to explode? I mean the fire truck was right there and they are already exposed so shouldn't they have put it out?

Please let season 7 be in China...or did Audrey killers move to LA 3 blocks from CTU. I did love that the pilot that can fly from anywhere in the world...including not in LA picked what was it 3 or 5 blocks from ctu...kick ass!

bh said...

Anonymous,

As far as I'm aware, the president really can order an individual strike without consulting anyone, even if the strike is nuclear. So, it's possible, it's just not likely. To my mind, one of this seasons myriad implausibilities (even more so than Marilyn just happening to remember hearing about Audrey on the news) is that the president would be making any of these plans without a single member of congress (especially now that there is no vice-president).
Even though Congress has no formal role in deploying troops or bombing things, something of such scope, in response to an attack on the US, would certainly involve at least the Congressional leadership.

Anonymous said...

hehe, nice take so far.. well, the

milo/nadja: situation also leaves the question: might milo be the mole, since nadja was working with his login?

audrey: poor audrey, well, either the next episode plays in china (without CTU that would be), the guys who killed audrey move to LA (i heard it's nice over there), or she isn't dead at all (they haven't talked a lot about the file yet) and jack can go over there and rescue her from a chinese prison.. off-screen.

nuke: i don't think a nuke can go off because of fire. it needs a LOT of pressure to get the chain-reaction needed for the detonation.

palmer: dies for a good cause. well, i'm sure he's fine with that.

jack: indestructable as always, and i'm really impressed of his "finding all important information in 20 seconds" skill.. nice job with the drone. omg.

ps: the mole thing really starts to get boring.

Anonymous said...

hehe, nice take so far.. well, the

milo/nadja: situation also leaves the question: might milo be the mole, since nadja was working with his login?

audrey: poor audrey, well, either the next episode plays in china (without CTU that would be), the guys who killed audrey move to LA (i heard it's nice over there), or she isn't dead at all (they haven't talked a lot about the file yet) and jack can go over there and rescue her from a chinese prison.. off-screen.

nuke: i don't think a nuke can go off because of fire. it needs a LOT of pressure to get the chain-reaction needed for the detonation.

palmer: dies for a good cause. well, i'm sure he's fine with that.

jack: indestructable as always, and i'm really impressed of his "finding all important information in 20 seconds" skill.. nice job with the drone. omg.

ps: the mole thing really starts to get boring.

Anonymous said...

sorry for the double-post.

by the way,
the RQ-2 drone from the show somehow looks like a mini-version of the RQ-4 and not at all like an RQ-2.. but hey, software on CTU computers looks like game-GUIs too, so who cares..

Anonymous said...

The RQ-2 drone is said to be stealth to radar.

Radar and satellite are two different things, it's a bit harder stealth from a picture than a radar.

Finding the drone via satellite should not be too hard since they can display thermal images and the RQ-2 drone must emit heat.

Anonymous said...

"Good thing it'll take one hour to position the submarine!"

And you would have thought that CTU would be used to magnanimous events occurring every hour, ON the hour by now. I think they should vary the format a little, start at half past or even quarter to. Hell, nine past seven would do.