General epsiode thoughts:
Add me to the “Jack was going to kill the kid but couldn’t bring himself to disobey the CINC directly” crowd. Jack telling Ali, “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love right before your eyes and I despise you for making me do this,” was just too damn genuine.
Even though it would have been evil, I was still a little disappointed in a tactical sense that Palmer backed down over Jack’s plan. I admired Jack, though, for keeping his loyalties in place (and, thereby, his good guy status) and improvising a backup plan.
I did like how the security forces on the ground kicked the chair over BEHIND the family’s line of sight. A small but convincing touch.
Cougars rarely attack humans, even when they’re prone. Likely it just wandered off. Interestingly, according to my old high school science teacher, that’s because predators with a highly defined sense of smell find the human odor particularly unpleasant in many cases. I’m sure Kim wouldn’t be smelling her freshest at this point.
I, too, though Sherri looked like a bit player in The Jeffersons tonight. I’m thinking some credit like “Lionel’s girlfriend” or something like that for one episode in the credits.
Jack let Kate see the feed for herself because he may well still need her and couldn’t have her filled with loathing for him, particularly when she’s in 900 different kinds of denial about Marie. Speaking of Marie, anyone else wish there would have been a few seconds footage of her in the foreman’s office last week? That wig looks gooooooood, and at least no one can gripe about misc. blonde number 3 anymore.
Jack’s 30 second chat with the imam didn’t strike me as contrived at all. What ELSE would you expect the priest of an honorable religion to say, particularly when that religion is normally villified and stereotyped as being innundated by exactly the type of lunatic currently sitting in his church basement. I liked the imam’s discussion with Ali and his acceptance that there was no way to overcome his indoctrination with a few words’ discussion. Jack also got more points when he told the imam, “You can’t be part of what I have to do next.”
Yes, human bites are particularly prone to infection, but it’s not like instant gangrene or anything. Also, tetanus shots take care of a lot of the infection risks. As we discussed earlier, I’m pretty sure Jack’s shots are up to date. I would really like to see that his leg is stiffening up a bit from the earlier injury, though. There’s a lot of believeable material in this show, and it galls me a bit that such an obvious detail has been overlooked.
Lastly, it’s my understanding that Atomic Demolition Munitions such as we see here can be detonated either via timers or by remote control. I can’t imagine the plane would fly around for six or however many hours and that the bomb would be set with something like a one hour timer to make sure the plane had time to get into the correct position once the device was armed.
ADMs are also notoriously stable, as they are planned to be carried to their detonation site by small crews of special warfare operatives (they are single-person transportable), placed, set and timed to, theoretically, allow the teams time to extract. As a result, I will be very disappointed if the “It went off” scene from Kim and Deliverance Boy happens because it gets hit by a bullet when CTU takes down the hangar.
