Oh, how the mighty have fallen. For all of you folks unfairly slamming LOST, you should take a close look at 24. I have loved this series for years, which is why I keep giving it chances, but last night offered very little improvement over the previous hour.
From the spoilerific previews for the series, we knew that President Palmer’s sister would agree to Karen Hayes’s request to pull her brother out of the induced coma to stop the Vice President from launching nukes against this mysterious nameless Middle Eastern country. Powers Boothe as the Vice President, casts a long shadow in any scene he’s in and he’s entertaining to watch. Also, his assistant, you know the mother from Invasion, is a bit mysterious and I feel that she has some ulterior motive to helping the Vice President. I actually hope the Vice President himself has some other reason for attacking the Middle East than the ones we are given. Something’s gotta happen to give this season some depth.
At the same time, Chloe discovered a phone call Gradenko, the Russian who provided Fayed with the nukes in the first place, to security specialist. It turns out that this specialist is selling vital security information to Gradenko into a nuclear facility which is Fayed’s next target. The guy’s brother is the one who gets the information from the network because he’s autistic and instead of counting cards like Rain Man he hacks computer networks. So, Jack is dispatched to the home of the security specialist where Jack promptly shoots him. The guy does convince his brother to help Jack catch Gradenko who is on his way to their home to pick up the information. Jack is put in a funny spot here because when they initially take the house he can’t or won’t simply torture Brady, the autistic brother to get the information he needs. So, Jack must be calm and persuasive, something he doesn’t do well and that’s apparent in their scenes together. Brady does agree to help though, with a little coaxing from his wounded brother. There was definitely some opportunity here to do something interesting with Bauer, where everything that happened to him, his conflict about all the torture he’s given and received, and all the other emotional events he’s been through could have come into play with Brady but instead we get like two minutes of patronizing and it’s over. I’m not saying I need to see Jack Bauer cry because no one wants to see that, but come on, do something with his character other than just taking him through the motions. In the end, that’s what this whole episode felt like, just going through the motions.
The other subplot involved Nadia Yassir’s name getting cleared at CTU as a double agent. I didn’t necessarily believe she was a turncoat but I didn’t think the story would get cleared up so quickly. The only interesting ripple from this sequence is a bizarre interaction between Doyle and another agent he worked with in Denver. At first the guy gave Doyle the evidence he found clearing Nadia and said he owed him from their time back in Denver because Nadia getting cleared would tarnish Doyle’s reputation as the leader of the witch hunt against Nadia. But apparently Doyle decided to do the right thing and turn the evidence in. He told his fellow agent from Denver that he screwed with the wrong man. Here’s the only problem, I could care less about Doyle or this other guy so for me the screen time used to develop this story in future episodes will feel wasted. Who knows, I might change my mind.
So, Palmer get woken up and he’s extremely lucid for a man who just came out of a coma, in fact he’s more commanding here than he has been all season. He stops the nuclear attack and then he calls the VP and tells him the decision is his and he’s returning to his duties as the President. In a final twist Vice President Daniels determines that Palmer is still suffering from the effects of the attack and he’s in no condition to do his job. Now, if Palmer can come out of a coma this lucid then I can totally believe that Daniels can find a way to put him out of power. It’s all a little ridiculous but hey if it’s entertaining I’ll roll with it. These last few minutes were really the only entertaining moments of this episode though. It feels like 24 is in a real rut that someone behind the scenes needs to do something about. Maybe the series has run its course, if so that doesn’t bode well for the upcoming feature film. One thing I’m missing is Martha. Where the hell is Martha and her stabbed hubby? and Aaron? Their scenes a few weeks ago were great fun and maybe they’d reinject some energy into the series. I’m gonna stay with it and hope for the best. If I could suffer through the last season of Smallville and stay with that then this is a cakewalk. If Smallville can make a comeback from the rut it was in (not counting the most recent bad episode by the way) then any series can do it.
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