OK, right away this season is in better shape because it’s Jack-centric again, which before last week’s episode we had to suffer through several episodes where Jack was a bit player. That said there weren’t many surprises in this episode. The creators dropped into 24 formula mode hardcore by giving us the “rogue” Jack we expect and taking the most obvious route possible to keep the White House drama going.
Cheng, Jack’s torturer in China, tells Jack that an unbreakable man is useless to him but the component in one of the suitcase nukes will benefit him, and he’ll trade Jack’s love Audrey for it. So, initially believing rightly that CTU won’t support his plan to save Audrey, Jack tries to steal the component. His plan gets foiled when Chloe, his partner in crime, wimps out, totally out of character. Jack asks her to get him a schematic of one of the nukes, which she does by hacking Morris’ computer. Morris busts her and tells her he will tell Buchanan if he doesn’t, so she spills her guts. Now, the old Chloe would have gotten in Morris’ face and told him how she protected him when he almost binged out on booze and that he has no choice but to keep his cowardly trap shut. But noooo, not this time, Chloe, for once, is weak when it comes to sticking up for Jack. What the heck happened to her? So, Doyle busts into the holding area and takes Jack into custody. Jack calls the President and with barely more than a gruff “you owe me” the president authorizes Jack to go through with his plan.
Speaking of the President, he confronts Daniels and demands his resignation and says if he refuses a certain tape might come back to haunt the VP. So, Daniels begrudgingly relents and writes his resignation letter. Thing is, Palmer strokes out in the middle of a press conference so Daniels tucks that resignation letter safely away in his jacket. Now, who didn’t see this coming? What makes it OK is primarily Powers Boothe being such a bad ass villain. I knew he wasn’t done with this series and I am happy about that. He’s made a rehashed character on this series a bit more interesting to watch and more importantly I believe his assistant, the hybrid mom from Invasion, has a secret agenda we still don’t know about yet. The first thing Daniels does when he takes control of the White house is resend the President’s order to allow Jack to go through with his plan. So, in response Jack kicks Doyle out of his truck and he continues with his plan solo, in full on rogue Jack mode. We all of course saw this coming too, but this is where we like Jack to be on this series so as predictable as it was to watch at least Jack is center stage and back to doing what he does best.
I’m into this personal story so far, even if the start up this week was predictable. At least, we don’t have more nukes or some kind of gas killing people with those not effected barely acknowledging anything has happened, which has been the situation so far this season. Maybe this more personal vigilante story is what 24 needs to breathe some life into the series. At the end of this episode, I wasn’t really surprised by anything and most of it just felt like set up. It did manage to keep me interested to see where this new story is going and that’s more than I’ve felt about this season in the last several episodes.
LOGIN
REGISTER
RSS
HOME
