Remember last week when I mentioned how surprising a near Bauer free episode could be? Well, this week we get to see just how bad a Bauer free episode can be. Jack is hurt, some nonsense about rib fragments and such; he’s fought under worse circumstances. The only thing Jack gets to do this episode is discover from his dead brothers’ slutty wife that his one time love Audrey (from last season) died in a car accident in China while she was trying to rescue him. When he learns this he interrupts Chloe, who is diligently working to find a drone plane carrying a nuke, and tells her to stop what she’s doing and go to the archives and find Audrey’s file. Jack’s willing to sacrifice his friends, his family, and himself for his country but he’ll sure let a nuke blow up in San Fran just to see some pictures of his dead girlfriend. This is some poorly written melodrama, way out of character for Jack Bauer. This episode felt way off balance, leaving so much of what came before waiting in the wings. What happened to Martha, boy toy Aaron, and her near dead ex-husband ex-President Logan? They were what made the last episode so much fun and now they are nowhere to be found. The creators of the series have had a lot of trouble balancing all of the characters this season, something that wasn’t an issue in previous seasons.
This episode focuses on the dealings with Vice President Daniels who has taken over for comatose President Palmer. Daniels is dead set on retaliating against….well who knows, they never actually say the name of the country. Why is that? They have no problem naming Russia and plenty of cities in the U.S., why not name the innocent country that Daniels has in his crosshairs? Anyway, even after Jack and the really boring Doyle bring down the drone plane before the nuke goes off Daniels still gives the order to get the subs in place and launch a nuclear strike when ready. Karen Hayes, reneging on her resignation, and Daniels’ pawn Lennox even registers complaints about this action to no avail. Again, this just seems heavy handed and way to easy. This will lead to Karen Hayes to convincing President Palmer’s sister to give the go ahead to revive the President even if it might kill him in order to prevent the nuclear attack. This process was hinted at during the final minutes of the episode and confirmed in the previews for next week.
Oh yeah, back at CTU, Nadia Yassir was taken into custody because it was discovered that her workstation was utilized to help the terrorist mask the location of the drone plane when it took flight. She gets tortured a bit by Doyle who just doesn’t make it much fun. If somebody’s gonna do some torturing it has to be Jack, or he at least has to be pulling the strings. I’m surprised he wasn’t brought in for this since he was at CTU already. It feels like the creators are really trying to push this Doyle character and even with the hints to his past in Denver I just could care less about him.
7:00 to 8:00 pm was mostly just a borefest. I know defenders will say things are familiar because it’s part of the 24 formula and that’s just a poor defense. The 24 formula is Jack kicks ass against terrorists and he does it all in 24 hours. Other than that we’ve had some fantastic and unique storylines over the past several seasons. This season, even though I’ve enjoyed much of it, is mostly just a rehash of things the series has done before, and done better. The next big sequence of having a doctor wake someone who is in critical condition even though it might kill them? Been done on this series before. What are the writers doing, saving the good stuff for the feature film that’s on the way? I may have made that argument before too. At any rate, the writers better get Jack back into action next week and start doing something that surprises the audience again because way too much of this season has been predictable and been there done that. There is potential, the whole family arc for Jack was quite interesting but we haven’t seen Jack’s father in way too long. I also believe Jack’s brother was killed off way to quickly. I was really enjoying seeing the architect of Jack’s woes from last season being his brother. How much of that was his father truly involved in? We might see Jack’s father come back into the fold because he or Jack’s brother had something to do with Audrey’s death. Now if Gray was still alive and Jack learned that his brother was responsible wouldn’t that make a cat and mouse game between them interesting? Anyway, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that the writers are planning something really exciting for us!
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