"24" Season 2 Finale (SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
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Jack and Sherry carjacked the passerby’s SUV when they crawled out of Thunder Road (from “Grease”) to go to the Coliseum. But somehow the other guy magically had all that CTU equipment in it!

Good thing Sherry remembered she’d been stabbed, and Tony remembered to limp, this hour. They’d forgotten last week.

The VP’s resignation is not subject to anyone’s approval, even the President’s, since he’s elected. It’s odd that the only person the President wanted gone from the White House was the only one who had helped him, too.

Nice bit with the Secret Service looking all around for somebody who had shaken his hand, while letting him lie there dying on the ground.

But I got a few votes in for Ruben, though.

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It seems like Jack now conveniently forgets how to be a badass when it suits the plot. Even if there wasn’t a knife within reach in the glove box, you can always pull down on the seatbelt to give it some slack and then slip out. It’s not like the car was on fire and about to explode. It reminded me of Kim being caught in the snare trap.

Where the hell is this Hannibal Lecter room at CTU? Why is Marie considered so dangerous that they have to put her in it? It seemed totally ridiculous to me.

I’m disappointed in the cliffhanger ending. I always hated when shows did that, and I hate it even more when 24 does it. Season 3 should have started with the deathpalm. Rich Boat Guy just making the call would have been better, we could guess all summer what was going to happen.

Overall, I’d say the season ended on a much lower note than it began.

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Unless it locks in the back position, which mine does every time I stop short.

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Jack took the equipment from the wrecked SUV. You could see him carrying a briefcase out of the wreck.

When Palmer “refused” the resignation of the VP, I think it showed the VP that Palmer didn’t want him gone so the VP simply stayed on. I didn’t see it as a legal or constitutional issue as much as a kind of vote of confidence.

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Not as good as last season, but I enjoyed it. :slight_smile:

The split-split-split-split screen stuff during the sting was cool.

If you’re a bad guy, and Jack Bauer has a sniper rifle nearby, book it.

If I had to nitpick on this season (not that anyone here enjoys nitpicking :P), it’d be on the big-picture view of the plot:

Plan A was to utilize a terrorist cell, an elite commando unit, a genius hacker, and the presidents ex-wife to sneak a nuclear bomb into the country, detonate it in Los Angeles, fabricate evidence implicating three countries in the middle east, and con the president into starting WWIII… to raise gas prices a few cents.

Plan B was to shake the president’s hand.

I still enjoyed the episode and the season a lot though. Yeah there were a few cheesy action cliches, but it’s an action show. It happens. :smiley:

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As for cliches, didn’t Shakespere say “nothing new under the sun,” about fiction? And that was quite a few hundred years ago.

The situation has not improved. That doesn’t mean good fiction can’t be written. 24 is entertaining, and we were surprised.

Slacker, see my earlier post and RikWriter’s. The plots were glommed onto each other, each of which was fairly simple in concept, if not in execution. It wasn’t all one big plot.

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Sure, when you’re stopping it locks. Or maybe if you pull the belt too fast. See here. But after the crash, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to get some slack in the belt and wiggle out at least.

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What kind of accent does rich-boat-guy have? Sounds vaguely German, but I didn’t even notice an accent until last night.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I think that germ-girl has to be acid-poison-girl instead. There is no way a biological agent could act that fast (seconds). Palmer acted as though he had somehow gotten some very powerful muscle relaxing poison (like snake venom) in his system that made it hard to breathe. And the acid would be to break the skin and get the stuff into his bloodstream.

I was a bit disapointed that Sherry didn’t have to make the “ultimate sacrifice”, but the scene of Jack taking up the sniper’s position was classic 24. If she sticks around next season, she has to be a full blown baddie. If Palmer accepts her back into his confidence he deserves to be dethroned. She was willing to risk setting off a nuclear explosion inside the US.

I’d say Palmer had to keep his VP and cabinet, but might want to do some pruning over time.

Why didn’t they have to re-vote to instate him back into the office of the President? I really wanted to see that handy-dandy vote tabulating software again.:slight_smile:

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Going on the assumption that plane bomber Mandy did reappear as presidential assassin, I wonder if it wasn’t a fluke that the camera lingered on the sorta Mandy-like Eve (Kingsley’s personal assistant) last week to get us ready for Mandy’s reintroduction this week. If so, bravo to the minds behind 24!

Just to tease us more… there is no listing for the lady assassin character on the the guest star list at imdb.com for episode 2.24.

The seat belt thing was rather silly. Okay, maybe you can forgive Jack because he was in the middle of an hour long heart attack, but a seat belt isn’t a straightjacket!

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I didn’t realize that was Mandy from Season one. How did you guys even remember her? I thought she was just another terrorist.
And I agree with Slacker, Plan A is this convoluted plan with the bomb, the Coral Snake guys, and should it go off or not, the Cypress recording, Sayed Ali, Marie, etc. and Plan B is Mandy shaking hands with the President with poison on her hand.
:rolleyes:

I thought she was getting his fingerprints for something, to plant on some sort of evidence to use later… but when Palmer got to the car and turned around, I knew he’d been poisoned. I think next season he’ll be dead or in a coma. Anyone know if he’s signed on for Season 3?

I like Palmer, but that end was very cool. Jack and Kim were reunited, Tony and Michelle were justified for what they did, Sherry was led away in handcuffs, Palmer gave a unifying-the-country speech, all seemed to be well, then BAM! they leave us hanging.

There’s got to be another mole somewhere… otherwise, how did the Rich Oil Guy know Kinglsey was dead, five minutes after the Helicopter Guys shot him? And did we ever find out who he was, along with the Young Rich European Boat Guy? Young Rich European Boat Guy’s name was Max.
And how did Mandy know there would be a press conference, and where it would be? And how did she get there so fast? If that bomb was supposed to go off, why was she still hanging around LA?

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Here’s something else that didn’t make sense to me. I know an avid viewer will explain it. All the suspense hinged on the President being totally convinced that the Cypress audio was fake, so he could turn the planes around minutes before they started bombing, right? So Jack sets it up to get Kingsley to say that the Cypress audio is fake. Elaborate systems are put in place to verify that it is Kingsley’s voice making the statements.

Why would statements by some guy named Kingsley, who nobody has ever heard of, be the ultimate proof that the audio was fake?

Jack, being personally convinced the audio was faked, could have phoned CTU and said something like, “I’m going to meet a guy named, uh, ‘Jacksley’, yeah that’s the ticket. And this ‘Jacksley’, well, he’s behind it all and here’s a recording of his voice and when you hear him admiting he’s the villian at the Coliseum, you can match it up to that voice and, boy howdy, there’s undeniable proof!” Then Jack and Sherry sit in the van and do a little playlet similar to what was said between Kingsley and Sherry. (Okay, the guys at CTU would know it’s Jack’s voice, but would the President? Wouldn’t Tony believe in Jack enough to let the deception slide to prevent an unnecessary war?)

What I’m saying is, the writers bestowed final credibilty on what Kingsley said, without establishing effectively that this previously unheard of character’s statements would hold any weight in the decision making process of a President who was determined to go to war.

Thoughts?

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I thought it was a pretty good, but not great episode. The big challenge with the finale was all the loose ends they needed to tie up, and, considering how many different directions everything was going for the past several episodes, they did a pretty good job ending it as cleanly as they did.

Some problems:
I agree with whoever noted that Palmer decided to keep his cabinet because it was a good move politically: they’ll all be eating out of his hand for the rest of his term. However, I think it would have been more realistic if he had accepted the vice-president’s resignation. Then, like Nixon, he would get to appoint whoever he wanted to complete the term. Talk about an opportunity to install a 100% yes-man into the office! So he blew it by rejecting that resignation.
Palmer’s reaction to the infected handshake was amazingly quick. Are there really any diseases out there that work that quickly, to the whole body, and can be transmitted by mere skin to skin contact? That seemed like a real stretch to me.
Jack trapped by a seatbelt? Give me a break.
And Kingsley’s slow stroll–and FAILURE TO DUCK!–when Jack was stretching to get the gun and then point it at him. That struck a totally wrong note. No-one would just hang back and let Jack try to reach for a gun. That scene just didn’t work for me. Not to mention Kingsley’s relative absence of reaction, considering his whole plan had just been fouled.
The boat-guy’s ‘back-up plan’, of assassinating Palmer, just doesn’t seem like it could have much overlap with his original plan to crash the oil market through a war with the middle-east. And even if a presidential assassination did meet with his needs, and even if it could be carried out so quickly after the failure of the detonation, well, it seemed like a plan that would have a relatively low-likelihood of success. I mean, it’s damned hard to get anywhere close to a President, and counting on that press appearance and a scant crowd and clueless secret service agents, well, it seems like that would be a poor plan to count on being executed.

Questions:
I missed seeing Sherry after the coliseum event. Was she taken into custody? Seems like she just disappeared. She’s got a lot to answer for–having participated in a plan whose success would have meant the total destruction of L.A., among other things.
Is Tony’s new boss, Chappelle, likely to receive any real flak for his actions and decision to abandon the inquiry into the likelihood of the tapes having been faked? I mean, that decision almost caused a war. Surely there’ll be some backlash. The show ended with him looking like he wouldn’t have to answer for any mistakes.
What about ensign roe? Sounds like she’s not coming back for a third season: since Mike has been fired, there wouldn’t be much point in developing a plotline in which she regains consciousness and implicates Mike for having her shut in the closet.
What role is Kate going to have in the next season? Marie’s comments seemed to be setting up a significant sub-plot in which revenge will be carried out against everyone who helped to stop Sayed Ali.

Predictions:
Palmer will almost die but will be mostly healed by the start of the next season. A couple of weeks, at least, will have to have passed, so that everyone can sleep, go to the bathroom, and recover from their life-threatening illnesses (heart-attack, anthrax).
The boat-guy will be killed in next season’s finale.
Tony will get to do some field-work.
Jack will not seem to have suffered ANY long-term effects from his bad-day and will experience more of the same: some torture, near-death events that require incredible stamina and cool-headedness, and lots of use of his service revolver. (duh).
Nina will cause some more trouble.
Marie will cause some more trouble.
Kim will get into some more trouble.

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Also, I forgot to add that I TOTALLY got it wrong last week when I predicted that Kim and Kate would be rescuing Jack and Sherry from their wreck. Didn’t happen that way at all, did it?, though maybe it would have been better than Jack’s getting caught by his seatbelt.

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Palmer’s lawyer gave Novick information showing that Kingsley had called a Coral Snake member within the past few hours. So they knew that Kingsley was involved with the plot at some level.

They showed Sherry being led away in handcuffs.

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OK, so Mandy was involved in a plot last year to assassinate the President. She’s involved this year in the same deal. Who wants the president dead so badly? Who could Mandy be working for in the long run? Who ever could it be…Hmmmm…Could it beeeeeeeee…

DRAZEN (razen…azen…zen…en…n)???

I really wanna see the return of the Drazen clan, can you tell?

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I want no such thing!!!

So Coral Snake was working to keep the bomb from going off, so they were working for the Govt. conspiracy to get Palmer ousted. That means Payback/7th Soldier was working for Big Oil Conspiracy to start a war, right?

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She’s very, very good. She was able to assasinate the President of the United State (maybe, maybe he’s just poisoned), on what, 3 minutes prior notice? She must just follow him around with a poison fake hand thing, on the off chance that her “kill the president” directive comes through at the exact moment he plans an impromtu press conference.

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Yep. Assassinating the President on 3 minutes notice. Especially impressive when you note that a group she was involved with attempted (and failed) to kill Palmer with an incredibly elaborate scheme in the first season.

While it still remains to be seen whether the President is dead or not, I think it’s rather funny that in a period of time no longer than a few minutes Palmer is closer to being killed than the whole first 24 hours where the plot was JUST to kill him.

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Okay, I’ll justify this plot hole you can fly Air Force One through:

Mandy has been tracking the pres all along, and that phone call was just a final confirmation to do the deed, rather than just waving to the president from the crowd.

Obviously, she didn’t invent the poison/super-fast acting virus handshake in those three minutes. Neither did she get to the president from a great distance. She was ready for any public appearance he would have made.

What doesn’t make sense is how the president got outside where he could have a press conference with reporters, onlookers and all in the time the show gave him. I think they broke format in the last few minutes of the season.

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Question on the hand poison thing: Does this mean that everyone Palmer shook hands with AFTER Mandy is now infected and gonna die? Or is the plot for next year going to invlove the spread of this “disease” to all Americans, starting with the President. That seems to be a better plan B than merely “kill the Pres by shaking his hand”