24 Season 6: Episode 7 Recap(Hours 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.)

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

After such an un-eventful episode six, it appears that the writers were storing whatever juicy chunks in their chipmunk cheeks for episode seven. Just when you thought Jack was going to die, again, for the 17th time in six years, we enter tonight’s episode.

The Happy Bauer Family
I thought David and Sherry Palmer had a messed up family – then last year’s first family took the cake. Now that we’ve met Daddy Bauer and Graem, I think the Bauer’s are easily the most messed up family ever. First Jack couldn’t save his wife. Then he ostracized his daughter (practically shoving her into the arms of a nerd, who ironically looks like Assad). Now that he’s been reunited with his dad and brother, all hell breaks loose.

How many times have we seen Jack almost die... only to escape? And where exactly did he shoot the dude trying to kill his father? There was maybe 10% of the assailant’s body showing and Jack shot him twice... with both hands handcuffed... and the other assailant’s gun... which was still being held by said assailant. There’s no denying Jack is good, but THAT good?

And what’s up with Marilyn? First off she’s not surprised that Graem is a total creep and had something to do with the nuke. Then, she’s overly adamant about Jack NOT involving Josh in this. Last time I checked, Josh was totally creeped out by Jack’s acid hands. Even though Jack said his favorite quote of season six, "I’ll do everything I can to protect him," that still wasn’t enough for her. Man alive, the sexual tension is hiz-igh.

Then it was time to interrogate Graem, which Jack told Daddy he’d do whatever it took to get the truth. Luckily for Jack, nothing has changed in the dreaded silver suitcase over the past 20 months. After pumping Graem with tons of chemicals, and giving him the perfect chance to be all vampire like Jack, Graem dropped a nuke-sized information bomb on Jack -- he gave the order to kill Palmer, Tony AND Michelle. That son of a bitch! Jack totally wanted to kill Graem then, but all it took was a glare from Daddy Bauer to deter that. Sigh, maybe next time, Jack.

And as if we didn’t see it coming, Daddy Bauer is... wait for it... still involved in the plot to keep America safe! Then, taking advantage of the fact that Graem hadn’t been taken out of the chair and off of the IV and since there was some interrogation sauce still laying around, he killed Graem... biiiiiiig shocker. I think it’s a shame, Graem’s character was good when pitted against Jack. One other thing, in case it wasn’t beaten into your head -- how crazy is it that Jack is super golden boy and his dad/brother aren’t? So ironic, eh? Eh???

The CTU Zoo
While Chloe was all up in arms about Jack not answering his phone for four minutes (and assuming the worst), NSA was "able" to trace a phone call from Fayed to McCarthy – CTU should really get their wire-tapping software checked out, seeing as its been spotty all day. It took Miles no time to confirm that it was McCarthy’s voice, all he had to do was compare it against McCarthy’s voicemail message... which probably goes something like this, "Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail Darren McCarthy, bomb-dealer extroidinaire. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message about which country you’d like to bomb, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can."

When listening to the message, Morris somehow stumbled across a photo that was in the data-stream. The data-stream? Oooookay, sure, why not? According to Bill, "recovering this image may be the only way of stopping those nukes." Unfortunately, it’ll take Morris 10 minutes to write a salvage utility to have a "new code."

Then, as an homage to Edgar and Season 4, Morris is informed that his brother has been hurt. Which sucks, because now Morris wants to leave. But Milo and Chloe can’t let him, because he’s the best they’ve got and they NEED to decode that photo (which, according to Bill, is "badly corrupted," but, according to Milo, is "highly encrypted"). So Chloe does a quick math problem and tells Morris that if they don’t find the other four nukes, then that’s about 1,000,000 dead people. Someone help me out. The first bomb killed 12,000. What’s 12,000 x 4?

So Morris can’t leave, because it’ll take Chloe half an hour to finish what Morris started. That’s no good, because McCarthy promised the new engineer within the hour, and if Morris left now, that would put Chloe finishing the program right around the same time. Lucky for CTU, Morris said it would only take him 10 minutes to do that (see two paragraphs above). Well, he must have hit a snag somewhere, because it took an extra 22 minutes to get it done.

Here’s the kicker... Morris is the new engineer! Ha! Quick on his feet, Bill informs Chloe to set up a satellite perimeter radius of five miles centered on CTU. Little does he know that it easily takes 10+ minutes to do that (see episodes 1-4 for shady satellite response time).

Hail the Chief
Down in the bunker, we learn of more odd White House politics. Apparently, all that’s required to enact a new National Security Measure is one signature from the President and a meeting of his cabinet. Forget the Senate and Congress, they’re so lame. Speaking of cabinet, can anyone tell me why all of the 24 Presidents have evil Vice Presidents?

That’s not too big of an issue for me, though, because Evil Veep (Noah, played by Powers Booth) will hopefully come in and mop the floor with Brother Palmer. And while he’s at it, maybe he’ll mop the rest of the bunker with Sister Palmer and The Spy (Walid).

All in all, I thought this was one of the better paced episodes of the season. And I’m actually thinking that the acting is much better this year. Still not Emmy-warranting, but better. Hang on for next week’s "Valentine’s treat," we’re getting 8 CCs of 24 shoved into our veins... and it’s gonna burn.