Monday, April 23, 2007

24 Season 6: Episode 19 Recap
(Hour 12:00 a.m. - 1:00 a.m.)

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

Jack is rogue again! Evil Veep is in power again! We're being led down paths that we don't care about, again. But that doesn't stop the writers, does it? Nooooooo.

24 4, The Search for Jack
Silver Spoon starts us off by flagging down one of many cars driving around at midnight (on the day of a nuclear explosion). He tells the driver that he's a federal agent in persuit and he needs the vehicle. The driver asks, "where's your badge?" Silver Spoon responds by throwing him to the ground and forgets to say, "it's on the ground, right over there."

Silver Spoon calls in and gets Milo – Jack must be the only person that can call exactly who he wants to at CTU. He tells Bill that he screwed up. Luckily, the tracking device is still inside the chip – which explains why it inserted in the first place, to track Jack whenever he turned on the US. Well, Bill tells Silver Spoon to hurry because Jack will disengage the tracking device the first chance he gets... or not, since he's had five minutes to do so already. Bill tells everyone that Jack has gone rogue and that all available resources should help Silver Spoon. Hopefully Morris is done assisting the military transfer of the nukes, otherwise he'll be too busy to help. Bill then tells Chloe that she needs to help again.

Jack pulls over underneath an un-guarded electric line tower to disrupt the tracking signal. It works. Morris has Chloe keeping an eye on things while he goes to explain it to Bill. Milo questions Jack's motives and even though he wasn't around 20 months ago to see the ending of Jack and Audrey's relationship, he just knows that Jack won't let her die. So he says he'll go check the satellites – you know, just in case they restored any coverage in that area. Who is "they?" Isn't CTU in control of the satellites?

Jack contacts Chang and tells him they're going to do it his way. You see, CTU is looking for him and he knows the way around CTU's satellite configuration (which apparently hasn't changed in 20 months). He sets up a meeting at an abandoned motel (which is also still around 20 months later). Chang and his men go on the move.

Silver Spoon finds where Jack turned off and Bill reminds viewers that if the Chinese get a hold of the component, they'll have an international incident on their hands. Silver Spoon then becomes a master tracker and figures out that Jack has gone East. CTU doesn't have satellite coverage because the radiation from fallout has made this particular area hard to cover. Silver Spoon discerns that he's on the highway that has no cameras so he suggests that CTU check the cell towers to see if Jack has made a phone call to Chang... oh, and he also saw Jack pick up a phone from "one of the terrorists at the warehouse, so that should narrow it down."

Chloe gets the order from Nadia to check all the phone calls from some cell tower. In order for her to do that, she has to send stuff to Morris' computer and interrupt his work. Curious, she can PUT anything his computer that she wants, but can't get anything FROM his computer? Then she and Morris argue, because we're all so interested in their story line. Then Milo, who obviously doesn't have shit to do, offers to help Chloe. Which prompts the original love triangle to come back up. In an act of lame anger, Chloe tells Morris that he shouldn't arm nukes for terrorists. She's right, you know. But he gets all sad and walks off... probably to go drink and vomit some more.

Jack shows up at the abandoned motel to rig up the C4. Just then, Nadia calls Silver Spoon and tells him they found the phone call and they're decrypting it now – but It's taking forever because they used a double-length key to slow them down.. Jack calls CTU, and what do you know, he gets right through to Bill's line. He leaves a message that soon Audrey will be safe and the circuit board will be blown to pieces.

Morris goes to see Bill, who is in his office NOT checking voice mail, and requests a transfer. Bill says he'll help out. But after talking to Karen, and getting fired, Bill tells Nadia that he's stepping down and now she's acting director – yes, the gal that was considered a mole and was born in the Middle East. Nadia is upset. The last bit of advice Bill gives her is to inform everyone before it's posted on the internal forums – because everyone has so much spare time to check message boards while hunting down terrorists.

Nadia informs CTU that Bill has stepped down and that she's in charge until a replacement can be sent over. No one is too sure about that. If anything, I'd say they're foreshadowing that she really IS the mole we all thought she was. Then, suddenly, everyone is in the meeting room with their computers waiting to talk with Silver Spoon – he's found Jack's truck and he's going to search around. Nadia suggests they use thermal imaging. But I'm confused how they'll do that, since the satellites in that area are having trouble due to radiation from the fallout.

Chang gets out of a big ol' stretch limo – not quite the car to divert attention from you on a day like this – and goes into the motel. He exchanges words with Jack and then Audrey gets out of the car. Jack removes the gag from her mouth and sends Audrey walking down the road to safety.

Jack tosses the chip to Chang. Silver Spoon, who's hiding in the bushes, gets anxious and shoots the sniper. Then Jack gets shot. Silver Spoon's backup finally shows up and Chang escapes out the back of the motel in the three Hummers that both Jack and Silver Spoon somehow overlooked. A helicopter begins to chase but instantly gets shot down.

Jack gets up, again, not shot and shoots the rest of the chinese guards who are still standing in the motel for whatever reason. Nadia's pissed and orders Jack to be arrested after the smoke clears. Jack tries to put the blame on Silver Spoon and then spots Audrey... but she doesn't even know who Jack is! OH NO!!!

The Young and the White House
The press secretary makes a statement that Evil Veep will make a statement at 9:00 am Eastern time (6:00 am Pacific, which... well wouldn't you know it, is when the season will end). Evil Veep confronts Fish about his evidence. Fish tells him that Brother Palmer was forcing the resignation and now Fish supports Evil Veep. They make the decision to keep Karen around.

Karen tells Evil Veep that CTU is trying everything they can to find Jack. Evil Veep isn't having it since "CTU let him steal the component." Wait... no they didn't. Brother Palmer said it was okay. Fish suggests that other agencies join the search – but no one asks where were these other agencies earlier in the day. Invasion Chick stays around after Fish and Karen leave, and we're treated to another lame love plot.

Karen gets a call, 10 feet from her office, that Peter Hawke (from the Department of Justice) is in there waiting for her... at 3:20 am. He's been interrogating Fish's Chief of Staff, PMRL (Poor Man's Rob Lowe). PMRL is looking at being executed, so he's offering up anything and everything he knows. Hawje shows her a bit of information that concerns Bill – that he had Fayed in custody, let him go and Karen helped him cover it up – she blue-coated the file (which I can't find anything on google as being a real term). Unfortunately, this is the reason that Karen was going to quit 12 hours earlier. Now, it's resurfacing and someone is going to have to take the fall – the further from the President, the better. Meaning, she has to fire Bill.

Karen calls Bill and says they need to talk, but he doesn't have time. Karen tells Fish about Hawke's suggestion that she fire Bill. Fish agrees that Bill has to go. She has to choose who she's loyal to. Bill calls her back. She tells him about Hawke and informs him that she'll have to fire him. Bill gets upset and hangs up on her.

Reader Bryan H. points out:
So right now Karen Hayes is firing her husband. I've never heard that the National Security Adviser has the power to hire and fire the heads of intelligence agencies, but that's a minor point here. The bigger question is this: what kind of pussies are in this palmer administration? Can you imagine anyone in an actual presidential administration volunteering to fire people before the public even knows about the "scandal"? Hell, the Bush administration fires people long after the scandal breaks, if at all.

Here we are with five hours to go. Audrey is nuts. Bill and Karen are on the rocks. Nadia is pissed. Evil Veep is about to get lucky. And Jack is going back to CTU where he'll have to escape from to eventually find Chang. Since Chang shot down a CTU chopper, I'd say everything the military has is out to get him... but don't hold your breath.

11 comments:

Triple-B said...

Hey, discovered your blog a few days ago (around when I started to catch up on season 6 from the beginning) and love it. Now that I arrived at 1AM of this dreadful days, I'd like to add some things.

Why does Jack have to go under some electrical wires to remove the tracking device from the board? CTU knows he's under there anyhow, they saw him drive there on their satellite pictures. Or did he drive underneath the wires after ditching the tracker so he could leave nice tracks for Silver Spoon to follow?

Bill instructing Nadja to inform everyone he's gone before they read it on the bulletin board? What, no one saw the security guards escort him out? I guess it's just too dark in there.

I don't think it can be stressed often enough that everything that is being done for the good of the country is justifiable, because that is said at least once per episode. Maybe more, but my BS filters are picking it up by now. Note the tiny difference to the things that are being done for the good of an individual, which are bad.

Jack picked up a phone that was dropped by a terrorist? Oh good, because CTU asked all the terrorists for their phone numbers so now it's going to be a piece of cake to find Jacks phone.

I'm really glad that Fish gave his word not to use his incriminating evidence against Evil Veep unless he was personally threatened. Or being attracted to Invasion Chick. Or feeling constipated.

Why do I see more Dell and less Apple notebooks? This is a truly disturbing development in the show. With Apple, they had at least something right.

And I was so much hoping for Jack to blow the motel, the Chinese, himself and Audrey into oblivion when he had the chance. Maybe if he had realized earlier in what state of mind she was in, he might have.

P.S.: Maybe I didn't read all posts thoroughly enough, but what's with the Fish reference? The only thing that came to my mind was Richard Fish from Ally MacBeal, but that wasn't Peter MacNicol. Or was it?

Seth Gunderson said...

Thanks for the comments! And, as for Fish, that shows you how many times I watched Ally MacBeal... Stupid me. I still like the nickname, though.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was "blue-coded," not "blue-coated." Kinda like the opposite of "red-flagged."

Anonymous said...

So giving some stupid, and probably out-dated computer chip to the Chinese will cause an 'international incident' but the Chinese kidnapping, torturing and holding hostage the daughter of a former Sec. of Def. gets a pass from the USA? Makes total sense.

Anonymous said...

What sucks the most of this season, is that the first 4 episodes were so damn good.

We were coming off a fantastic 5th season, wondering how they would be able to top it, and they delivered one hell of an explosive season intro.

It looked like season 6 was going to kick major ass.

But then since episode 5 the downward spiral began and hasn't stopped yet.

It's as if the exact same crew of season 5 created the first 4 episodes of season 6 and then some idiot took over, hired new people and gave us the crap we have now.

Jonk said...

I find it odd how they have treated Nadia and her constantly changing position and authority.

When the season first started, she looked like she was a solid No. 2 to Buchanan. She looked like she was running operations or something like that. She's barking out orders and treating Chloe like crap.

A few hours later, Nadia is sitting in a cubicle and appeared to be a computer flunky just like the rest. She was under direct report to Milo. She complained to Milo that she had a restriction on her access because she's Muslim, and he complained about how "one of my people isn't able to do her job."

She gets accused of being a mole and is taken to holding and is tortured. Oops, we were wrong, sorry, no hard feelings. She disappears for a bit and doesn't really say much for about two or three episodes.

Now all of a sudden, she's back to being a forceful No. 2 and is chosen to take over CTU?

How is it exactly that if Nadia was reporting to Milo for a few hours that she is the most senior and most qualified?

Seth Gunderson said...

All good stuff, guys. Someone made the comment elsewhere that why didn't the Chinese just buy the nukes in the first place? Then they could've killed Audrey and not even messed around with Jack. Here's why, it doesn't create compelling story lines! As if this is compelling anyway. I guess the Chinese just had some amazing foresight that everything would fall into place like this. What would they have done had all the nukes been detonated? Screwed.

Say, whatever happened to the Denver story line that no one cared about?

Anonymous said...

Wanger, seriously? We were coming off a fantastic 5th season? There is only one thing worse than season 5, and it is saying season 5 was good.

About the episode: It was particularly stupid, especially the whole "action" at the motel. And bringing up old plot lines (Morris & the nukes, Morris-Chloe-Milo love tringle) is really an example of great writing. especially because those plot lines were so good...

I don't care about Denver that much (I know, nobody does), but I wonder what happened to the bottle Morris threw into the trash in the bathroom. Is it going to be found? Will the bottle be the threat in season 7?

Anonymous said...

Ivan...
If season 5 didn't make a positive impression on you then you need a definite break from this show, because you're just going to hate whatever they dish out.

This said... I did watch all of season 5 within 2 days, so maybe I had a different experience than you, but then again, most fans agree season 5 was the best one.

Seth Gunderson said...

I'm one of those who thought season five sucked, too. I actually thought season five was the worst, until six started. But it won an Emmy, some might argue. My response to that is they won those Emmys based on seasons past. If you watched season five recently, go back and read all of the episode reviews on this site -- then tell me if you honestly think last season was the best one. If you still think so, then I say go rent season one and compare them. It's night and day.

Anonymous said...

Seth,
Amen!

Season 5 winning an Emmy is the most ridiculous thing ever. Also, Kiefer winning for season 5 is pretty lame, since every season his acting deteriorates a little more, and S5 and 6 are his worst.