There’s something remarkable about this show… it can have these ridiculous implausibilities (in this case, the idea that a complaint from the marine captain can get up the chain of command, over to a different chain of command, back down to the CIA station chief, and leave him with no choice but to take Kim off the case again… all in about 5 minutes… during a MASSIVE TERRORIST CRISIS, which is just insanely implausible) but for whatever reason it just kind of leaves me chuckling, while I continue to enjoy the show. And this was definitely an enjoyable episode.
Of course they could still totally blow it, but the mom is already shooting up the ranks of best all-time 24 villains, IMO. I mean, #1 I’d say was probably Charles Logan, but it wouldn’t be real hard for her to end up 2?
Habib Marwan was pretty damn memorable, if only because of his insanely overcomplicated plot. (As I recall, he had stolen a device to hijack nuclear reactors over the internet, but he needed there to be a lot of 'net traffic so no one would notice what was going on, so in order to generate all that extra 'net traffic, he decided to… kidnap the secretary of defense and his daughter and broadcast it over the internet. And then his fallback plan was… to shoot down Air Force One. That’s right, he was so bad-ass that shooting down Air Force One was his FALLBACK.)
One of the hilarious elements of 24 is the timeline compression. Remember that the drone pilot was, within the hour, both railroaded with an implausibly airtight case and about to illegally be turned over to a foreign government. In the 24-verse, Dominos must show up in 30 seconds or less.
Another favorite of mine about the show is the lack of short-term memory in the 24-verse. Strahovski’s character should be listed in the credits as “Kate-didn’t-notice-her-husband-was-a-spy-for-the-Chinese Morgan.” No one says her name without mentioning that anyway. Back in season 7, Jack was infected with a virus and given injections to be taken every hour, but to remind us Jack was sick we saw him shooting up every commercial break.
And they haven’t mentioned Simone’s married name, but surely Naveed’s surname is Dumsonuvabich.
My head is still spinning over how fast Jack was able to take an unpaid gang of hackers and bully them into his backend support team for his field ops within a couple hours.
Even when head hacker guy folds him arms and says no, Chloe just glares at him with her weird eyeliner and he folds like napkin.
Hey, my boy Jack only has 12 hours to do the work that would normally be done in 24 hours. So quit complaining about his T.A.R.D.I.S. You try saving the world (or millions will die) in only 12 hours.
I’ll give you the messenger bag and the Never-Empty® pistol (with which to go up against never-ending teams of automatic weapon wielding goons, thugs and terrorists). I’ll even give you Chloe, who can task a satellite to get IR imaging through a concrete embassy, and even enable her to tell which floor the targets are on. All she needs is a socket.
It’s awesomely bad in the best possible way. Having only watched one previous season (Day 5) I’m enjoying this one immensely.
My favorite so far this season is how the Mother had her daughter’s finger brutally chopped off for a reason that totally went away within the next 40 minutes. Sorry honey; I know that seemed like pointless cruelty, but you still have nine fingers left and you gave us a really great hour-ending scene!
That really is a staple of the show. The terrorists have some elaborate scheme where to get a component they hijack a bus full of school kids and kill one every hour until they get a rare component; Jack foils their plan but they escape.
“Curse you, Jack Bauer!”
“Sayeed, what’ll we do now? The device will not work without that component!”
“Eh, Declan Googled it on his iPhone - we can pick one up at Radio Shack.”
“The one in the Galleria? Can we stop for a funnel cake as well?”
I like the “catchphrase drinking game”. I had a friend who went through the entire series (to that point) and just focused on every time someone dropped a version of “I give you my word”. And of course there’s YouTube compilation of dammits.
You’re claiming to have seen Jack eat or drink? The closest I recall is him sitting down to breakfast with Connie Britton early one season, and then Chloe (pre-Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) called. He didn’t even eat after a year in a Chinese prison, and you’d think he’d be hungry an hour later…
Wasn’t he shot in the shoulder in the third episode this season? The drug cartel kingpin dude from across the yard while Kate and her replacement had the drop on Jack?
