"24" Season 2 Finale (SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
41

Gee, I must be the only one who didn’t like the episode. I thought it was one cliche after another. The ‘buddy’ who leaves, and then comes back unexpectedly. The bad guy who sees the good guy disabled, and instad of just shooting him slowly walks towards him while making a speech. The helicopter surprise shot just in the nick of time. The bad guy who gives a long description of his dastardly plans and incriminates himself.

And Palmer’s reaction upon re-instatement was totally out of character. I SHOULD have said, “I accept your resignations.” That was the right thing to do - after all, he just lectured them on how seriously they had screwed up.

And that reunion with Kim and her dad was SO non-24. The tinkly piano music and overdone score, the smile crackin on Jack’s face, etc. It’s was just average. I expected better.

And I sure hope that wasn’t special “24 hour poison” the President got, and they have one day to find the antidote…

42

Ok, just finished watching this episode (and haven’t read any of the posts) so I gotta say…WORST ENDING EVER!

It was bad enough that Kingsley failed to kill Jack because he’s too freakin’ deaf to hear a HELICOPTER FLYING OVER HIS ASS. Hell, when a chopper’s that close, you can FEEL it (especially amplified in the bowl of that colisseum-shaped building downtown that’s been condemned since the '94 earthquake…)

But then they set up the cliffhanger sequence. At first, I thought that woman had simply taken a palm-print from Palmer (haha, Palm-Print, get it?) to be used for nefarious purposes by the Evil European Businessman Cabal next seas…err, in the near future. I was especially relieved, because I swore she was about to shoot him John Hinkley-style, and that would have been DUMB, right? Oh no, it IS an assassination attempt! How utterly lame!

Gee, it’s only been eight hours since a nuclear bomb went off in the U.S.A, and the President says, “We are all safe.” God bless the patience and understanding of the American people. Yeah, right.

43

HE should have said, “I accept your resignations.”

I did like the neck snapping.

44

Not bad, but nowhere near as good as last season’s finale.

Kimism of the show"

“Does my father know I’m here?”

“No, Einstein. In the 2 seconds that you’ve been at CTU we haven’t had time to call him.”

Jack can survive a plane crash, cardiac arrest, etc, etc, etc, but he can’t reach over to the glove box to get a knife to free himself from… a SEATBELT!

Kingsley slowly approaches Jack and lets him reach for his gun. He must have counted to the bullets to know that none were left. Was that it…?

Great Jackism:

Sherry: “I’m scared.”
Jack: “You need to go now.” (or something like that)

Nice twist with getting Tony and Michele back into action. Well done. I was surprised that evil-VP turned out be not-so-evil (ie, not in on the plot).

Ensign Ro-- where are you??? We want to know you’re still alive.

I vaguely remember germ-Girl from last year (didn’t watch all the episodes). Had to be acid along with the germs, unless there’s some new 5-second acting germs out there. But how could that be?

45

Palmer keeps the VP?! Shit, you deserve anthrax!

When they were showing the crowd around Palmer, I was expecting Nina’s face to appear, especially when the mysterious dark hair showed up. But plane chick is definitely cool, too.

Awwwwwww, Tony smiled, how keeeeyute!

Kingsley getting shot was kinda cheesy, but oh well. I thought that even though Jack’s first attempted shot was a dud, one of the subsequent chambers would be loaded.

But of course, despite all the nitpicks, I can;t wait for the next season!

46

The only thing that bugged me briefly was that for a brief time they couldn’t get in touch with Jack. Uhm, what happened to knowing his cell phone number on that super duper battery of a phone?

47

Maybe he was temporarily out of range…

Can you hear me now? Gooooooooood. :wink:

48

Here, you decide… a pic of Mandy-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/24/wallpaper/mandy.shtml

49

I wouldn’t be surprised if the new season picks up a few weeks or months later, with both Jack and Palmer just coming out of recovery and some new evidence coming to light concerging the plot.

The scene with Palmer getting poisoned at the end seems reminiscent of the ending of From Russia With Love. In the book:

Rosa Klebb gets Bond with the poisoned blade in her shoe, and the book ends with Bond collapsing, paralyzed, to the floor. It isn’t until about 10 pages into Dr. No that you find out what happened to Bond. It would be interesting to have the show start weeks or months later, but not reveal for an hour or two whether Palmer survived–perhaps with some veiled references that don’t really reveal anything (like the hints dropped about whether Claire Kincaid survived the car wreck on Law and Order).

50

Things would not look good if he lost the VP and more than half of his cabinet. He realized that they wouldn’t be so quick to second guess him in the future. And it made Mike’s sacking that much better.

The gun was a semi-auto, so there’s only one chamber. His only hope would be that there was a round in the chamber that didn’t fire the first (and second and third and …) time. But that was a longshot at best. It looked more like desperation to me, and that doesn’t suit Jack.

51

Ultimately disappointing - no big release, just unsatisfyingly clean resolution and an immediate cliffhanger signalling that the next season may piggyback immediately onto this one.

What would’ve qualified as a big release? I don’t know - someone confronting someone? Carrie getting her comeuppance? Palmer’s facade cracking a little and his demanding the presidency back - and getting it? Bauer taking down Kingsley, putting his foot on Kingsley neck and extracting a bunch of revealing plot resolutions? And finally, Bauer re-connecting with Kim emotionally, and ending with a fleeting eye-contact with Kate with promise of something to come?

I just wanted more of an emotional release.

52

I caught a quick glimpse of Palmer’s hand…it looked like it was blistered. I vote for non-lethal poison.

I thought the “You were mean to me but I forgive you” refusal of the cabinet and VP’s resignations was cheesy, but think about it. He’s got them in his pocket now. They won’t dare challenge him on anything ever again. Mike was dispensible.

So Mandy was from Season 1? I’ve watched the first eight hours thanks to Blockbuster, and I thought I recognized her.

After such a tense 23 hours, I thought the coliseum scene was rather anticlimactic. And a nuclear explosion has gone off in the area, and you can just walk into a huge arena with no guards or police to stop you?

Jack’s ass-kicking scene of the Kingsley Bad Guy was cool, but jeez, just how far can adreneline take you? He was passing out due to heart complications not twenty minutes before, and now he’s doing Matrix moves on the guy?

53

I liked the episode. It wasn’t as good as last year’s but I think last year’s raised the bar so much that we all expected a lot out of this episode.

I’m not sure about whether the next 24 will start immediately. When the screen went to the clock ticking to 8:00:00 it sounded an awful lot like President Palmer took his dying gasp. I’m not sure about it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to kill him off.

54

Wasn’t Palmer’s pardon of Nina a conditional one anyway? Didn’t she have to give the location of Sayed Ali (or something, can’t totally remember what), and it would have to be confirmed? I’m pretty sure she didn’t make her end of the deal. Not that the lack of a pardon would stop her, though.

55

Please check me on the various levels of the plot:

Second Wave just wants to kill Americans. The more innocent, the better. So they get themselves a nuke.

Government plot people (Sherry, Tortured Guy, maybe some Division people, and some CIA and special ops people) discover nuclear weapon plot and decide to let the danger go far enough so they can save the day and discredit Palmer. Or something.

Rich Oil Guys discover nuclear bomb plot, certainly from some Government Plot People. Rich Oil Guys decide to let bomb go off and blame Ethnikistan, Anonymostan and Blamemeestan so oil prices go up. Cha ching.

Sherry is involved with both Government Plot People and Rich Oil Guys, right? Hmmm.

Rich Boat Guy has another agenda, it seems. Killing the president, or creating an epidemic with the president as patient zero won’t really have the same effect as the bomb going off. (Cha ching, that is.)

Is Rich Boat Guy in some higher, non-patsy echelon of Second Wave?

Geez, you could almost feel sorry for the Second Wave people, walking into a nest of power-hungry, evil Americans. You wouldn’t feel sorry for Crazy Sister, though. She’s just nuts.

And did the Rich Boat Guy seem to be subservient to the Evil American guy? Is he one of the oil people?

And how does Crazy Sister know about the plague? She’s just not at that level! Or is she referencing something we don’t know about?

This is getting too complicated.

56

I, for one, hope they don’t kill Pres. Palmer off. He’s the classiest act on the show. But isn’t it interesting that just moments ago the VP had stolen the Presidency from Palmer. . . and now with Palmer really incapacitated (or so it seems), he’ll be stepping in legitimately. Good thing Palmer didn’t accept all those resignations. . . or Tommy Thompson might just be President now!

57

annieclaus I had the same thought.
I think Marie’s cryptic remark about to Kate about being safe out there means she knew about plan B. I am looking for torture scenes next season to get info out of Crazy Marie.
I just don’t get how poisoning/infecting Palmer achieves the same ends as war in Middle East. Unless the real goal was just to get rid of Palmer. Season 2 seems like a pretty roundabout way to do that.
I do not see how Season 3 can piggyback on to the last episode. Nobody has slept or eaten or peed, not to mention the medical recovery time Jack will require. Next season has to continue “sometime later.”

58

The more I think about it, the more I think Palmer has to be dead. For a finding-the-antidote season to work, next season would have to start immediately and Jack is certainly in no shape for action and won’t be for weeks. Next season has to be about Jack and Co. finding the killers.

59

Thing is, as has been said, there were three different conspiracies, each progressively using the others. The Second Wave folks with their bomb, the Sherry/Stanton/probably Prescott people with Coral Snake and Kingsley and his oil interests with Wallace. BUT there is also a FOURTH and highest conspiracy, that led by Max, which was responsible for the assassination attempt last season. Max and Co want Palmer dead. They haven’t said why yet, but that is their goal.

60

I’m expecting that we’ll see a shift in focus next season. if they were to start it right where they left off, a lot of their characters are pretty much incapcitated.

The bring back of the assassin chick from season seems significant. Why bring back a previous character unless they have a reason? I wouldn’t be surprised if the shift in focus goes from the good guys to the baddies for a while. Or maybe that’s just me getting hopeful for more Nina and Mandy.