24 Recap: 1/29/07

Well, this wasn't my favorite episode. It's what I like to refer to as a bridging episode. Sort of getting us from the shocking twist of last week and building towards what looks to be a drama-filled episode next week.

Recapping 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM...
Graem (corrected spelling, according to the show opening tonight) pretends to confess all to keep Jack from ripping out his fingernails and toenails and making a necklace out of them. He says they got involved unknowingly with the nukes, and now are just trying to cover their tracks. He tells Jack their father went to see some guy named Darren McCarthy. Jack unties Graem (that's gonna be trouble) and they head for McCarthy's office.

At CTU, Nadia has been "flagged" because she is of middle eastern descent, and she complains to Bill. He says he's doing what he can and makes a call to Karen asking her to talk to the President.

Morris and Milo want to know what's going on, because it's taking Nadia so long to complete her tasks. (Apparently, if you're thought to have terrorist connections, they give you a really crappy computer with like a 1GHz Intel Celeron processor and very little RAM.) Bill finally tells Milo what's going on, and Milo logs Nadia in under his ID.

Out at Detainee Central, Walid steals a cell phone from one of the detainees. The FBI agent then has Chloe track all calls that have been made from the phone. She says there doesn't appear to be any connection with Fayed. Meanwhile, the detainee discovers his cell phone missing, and they beat Walid to a pulp, playground-style. I still don't think Walid lives to see suppertime.

Meanwhile, back in DC, Tom asks for Karen's resignation, "within the hour." (I love how everything on this show is "within the hour.") His smug little sidekick gets enough people to agree to testify against Karen, and say that she mishandled a case involving Bill Buchanan, who apparently sometime between last season and this season became her husband. When confronted with this, Karen resigns.

At first, I thought she might be leaving the show. Then I remembered, no one resigns from 24. There's only one way off this show. It's like the Hotel California, babee! So Karen asks the President to be reassigned to CTU.

Once they reach McCarthy's office, Jack chains Graem to a pole and goes to look for McCarthy. (At some point, we learn McCarthy is the guy driving around in the Maserati who Fayed keeps calling.) Someone attacks Jack from behind and puts a gun to his head. Jack's father shows up and tells one of the other men to go get Graem.

Just as Jack is about to call CTU, Graem turns on his father and commands the men to take Jack and his father into custody and "take care of them." And by take care, I don't think he means set up a nice 401K plan for them.

They're led outside where they see that Graem's men have killed a CTU field team Jack had called in for backup. Jack's father is stunned, and says, "My God, Graem, what have you done?"

The good:
Any and all scenes involving Jack, his brother, and his father. And Jack's father not knowing the depth of Graem's involvement in everything.

Milo sticking up for Nadia. And everyone at CTU pulling together. I hope there's no "mole" at CTU this year. Been there, done that.

Karen transferring to CTU. The Karen & Tom faceoffs were getting old.

The bad:
Sandra Palmer. Seriously, she's so irritating. She's like the Paula Abdul of 24. She'll be a permanent fixture in this section until she meets an unfortunate demise.

Very little Chloe. We need more Chloe. I need more Chloe!

Not letting us see Graem's men shoot the CTU field team. All we see is the aftermath, SUV's with bullet holes in the windows. What, is 24 going G-rated on us?

Best scene:
After Jack is jumped in McCarthy's office and some guy has a gun to his head:
"Stop."
"You know him?"
"Yeah. He's my son."

But this scene would have been so much better had they not shown it in the previews at the end of last week's episode!

Did you know:
Apparently, being a registered Republican is not enough to keep you from being "flagged" for possible terrorist activity.

Did you know II:
Rena Sofer, who plays Graem's wife, Marilyn, has also been on Seinfeld, General Hospital, and Saved By The Bell. That means she's been on four of my favorite shows of all-time. That's gotta mean something. But what?

Questions:
Where is Audrey? According to information I found when I googled her, she will first appear in the 6:00 PM hour. And now that I've posted that, she'll probably turn up next week.

Do we even have a Vice President?

Where is the guard who helped the prisoner escape from the bus a couple of weeks ago?

Chloe finds the detainee had pulled up a terrorist website on his cell phone and somehow that leads her to think he's not involved with Fayed?

I miss:
Former first lady Martha Logan.

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality. Open your eyes. Look up to the skies and see..."