The two things that really bothered the snot out of me were nitpicks about Jack and guns. Jack used the rifle to take out the bad guys at the arena. Okay. Good. At least he wasn’t making quick 25-50 yard shots with a pistol.
Only once that I noticed, however, did he bother to use the scope. D-oh! Kinda hard to shoot people when you don’t sight on them.
When he grabbed the pistol as Kingsley was coming toward him, he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He pulled the trigger again, and nothing happened. By that point, and more realistically after the FIRST attempt, anyone with weapons training, and certainly someone with Jack’s level of training, would have slapped the underside of the magazine with his palm, racked back the slide and (if the slide didn’t lock back on an empty chamber) then pulled the trigger again.
I’d expect better realism even from Kim, for Pete’s sake.
Overall, I think I liked this season a hair better than last season, though I thought last season’s finale was much stronger than this one. Some thoughts:
I’m extremely happy to see the return of Hottie Lesbian Assassin. I was bummed when she disappeared last season, and I can’t wait to see what they do with her next season.
My only real problem with this episode was the “Indiana Jack and the Seatbelt of Doom” moment. Fer Chrissakes, Jack, lean over and open the damned glove box yourself!
The hand-to-hand scene was awesome. I wanna be Jack Bauer when I grow up.
I think that was almost certainly some sort of poison, not a disease. Diseases don’t dissolve your hand and knock you out in 30 seconds, last I checked. Of course, neither do any poisons I know of, so who can say? But wouldn’t Palmer have noticed something amiss before he collapsed? Like, “Gee, I wonder why my hand is bubbling”?
Okay, wild speculation time… I’m going to assume, here, that whatever substance got to Palmer was intended to kill him, or at least knock him out of commission for an extended period. What’s the most immediate effect of that? Prescott becomes president. Who would want that? Well, Prescott is an obvious answer. But the Evil Mystery Man is apparently the one calling the shots, so he must want Prescott to be President, as well. Why? What does he care? Perhaps Prescott is in his pocket, and will perform some executive action that is in EMM’s interests. What? Got me. Sign some legislation Palmer would’ve vetoed? Pardon someone? Assign military action somewhere? Who knows? But I do predict that Prescott is a nasty, nasty man.
Jeff
I wonder how Mike Novick will fit into the next season? The character and actor are just too good to write him out of the plot.
And you could go any way with him. He’s been rejected by the President, so he could be on a revenge mission. Or, he could be a good guy trying to get back into the President’s good graces. Or they could play him in a way that makes it unclear, like they did with Sheri this year.
What annoys me most about this season is just the number of huge plot holes. Not very good writing, I’m afraid. Why can’t hollywood writers come up with better stuff than this? I think if you started a ‘plot next year’s 24’ thread, we as a group here could come up with an exciting, absolutely airtight plot with plenty of twists in it. Why can’t they? It’s their job. They’re supposed to have talent. And they obviously do - when it comes to dialog, 24 is superb. It’s just the plotting that’s getting weak.
The thing that keeps coming back to me is this: for the last couple of weeks it became obvious that quite a few people, cabinet members, Chapple, etc. were in on the conspiracy. The finale, and those persons reactions to the events in the finale, make it seem as though none of the people were in on it except Sherry.
Odd, that.
Kingsley was reporting to evil boat guy, who obviously has ties to whoever was behind last years schtuff, what with using the same hot-chick bomber girl. Nina knew who was up the food chain in that little organization, so I see her as having a huge role next season, if only for a few eps.
I don’t think plan B was only the assissination attempt on the prez, or else I would have to agree that it’s a weak Plan B. I think there’s more to it than that, which we have yet to see.
Okay, this gets my vote for best line in the thread.
The seatbelt thing: whether or not Jack was stuck, the whole mission would have failed without Sherry’s help, so I don’t think it was just a “physically stuck” problem.
As I already said, I’m pretty sure that that was poison with an applicant of some sort.
I don’t think the assassination thing was the only part of plan B, although it doesn’t seem very believable after season 1. The reason I believe this is the rich boat man said it starts today, as in not just one act.
As pointed out, if it does indeed start right after, it’s going to be a problem since everyone would need some sleep.
I wouldn’t be surprised either if Palmer won’t be returning – it really did seem like his dying breath during the silent clock.
Regarding the importance of this random man named Kingsley, it was already determined by the president’s lawyer that Kingsley is an oil tycoon. However, I still think that the whole thing went too much like clockwork.
I would also be disappointed if Mike didn’t come back for season 3.
I don’t think Prescott is a Very Very Bad Man ™, since he was willing to listen to evidence that the Cyrpus recordings were false – same with Chappelle.
I agree that it’s fairly unrealistic that Mandy would be able to get to the press conference with the needed equipment since it was only 10 minutes from the attack being called off to her shaking hands with the prez. I’m really not complaining about her appearance, though ;).
I also agree that the last few minutes did not really match up with the rest of the season, since they were in some underground bunker outside of the city limits and 10 minutes later Palmer is in front of a sky scraper.
Oh, and by the way, Sarah Wynter (Kate Warner) really so different off the show. She was very cool on Craig Kilborn and has a cute aussie accent.
The blistering on the hand is just a Hollywood touch, I think. Most lethal contact poisons would do nothing of the sort at the point of contact; also, it would take more than a few moments to fell the victim. I’d post a link, but contact poisons are a rather effective way to do wet work and in this day and age, nobody needs any terrorism hints.
Jack’s ass-kicking scene was soooo UN-Matrix like! (which is nice because the Matrix sucked) Instead of being full of bullshit 60’s king fu crap, the two really scrapped and struggled–at times looking like two high school kids in a clinch–you know, the way people REALLY fight. He did walk along the wall for a moment, but it was totally believable because he was just using it as leverage to get around the bad dude-- as opposed to using it as lame CGI eye-candy that only exists to prop up the career of our generations worst actor (Keanu Reeves).
I thought the seat-belt entrapment was great! Here is this badass dealer-of-death (Jack), who can survive torture and plane crashes, and yet what finally almost does him in? A jammed seat-belt! Perfect! (Although, one assumes he possibly could have reached the glove box, but those monster SUVs ARE kinda wide.)
In the grand scheme of 24 things, I don’t think this is too unrealistic. They obviously had a Plan B on the drawing board. There was also somebody giving inside information because the bad guys knew a lot of things they couldn’t have known without a mole.
So they know the pres is at location X and Mandy is probably hanging out nearby since her only two jobs are to (1) look hot, and (2) use the Hand of Doom on the president if necessary. The insider would tell them where the speech will be and she could skedaddle on over in no time flat.
I think we’ll see a lot more of Tony next season. His line of, “Fire me or get out of my seat” was very telling, at least to me.
Mason made him head of CTU, and I think since he was right all along about Jack, and Chapelle was wrong, I think we’ll find out next year that Chapelle has resigned and Tony has stepped up and really made a name for himself in whatever time has elapsed.
I wish I could take the credit, but it was inspired by something on Television Without Pity, which might have been inspired by the Onion story about Ethniklashistan.
I agree that this episode was a huge disappointment. Many of my complaints have already been mentioned… but I have a big one that many people seem to be glossing over.
So as of the end of the previous episode, no one but Palmer gives even the slightest credence to Jack’s story. In fact, there is very strong evidence that Prescott, Mike, etc., are somehow involved in the conspiracy. How else would they have gotten ahold of Roger Stanton, gotten ahold of the torture tape before Stanton confessed, etc.? For that matter, how could Prescott have possibly organized the coup so quickly? These did not seem like people with an honest difference of opinion. These seemed like people who had been planning out this scheme for quite some time.
So then in the final episode, the lawyer guy alerts Mike about one piece of fairly circumstantial evidence, suddenly Mike does a 180, he calls Chapelle, who immediately accepts that 180 and adopts it has his own and gives Jack his full support, and Prescott is suddenly so reasonable that he’s willing to listen to the phone conversation, etc. So every single one of those people is really just a good honest American who was doing what he thought was right? Even Mike, who basically killed Lynne?
And then Palmer pardons them? And refuses to accept their resignation. There’s no way that happens. Not necessarily because Palmer would want revenge, but how could he possibly continue to work with, and trust, people who had betrayed him in an enormous and crucial fashion mere hours before? I just don’t buy it.
So, overall, a weak ending (and honestly, a weak final several episodes) to an otherwise great season.
Oh, and by the way, fox.com confirms that the terrorist at the end is indeed Mandy (Mia Kirshner), who I’ve had a huge crush on ever since I saw her in the disturbingly sexy Exotica.
Max, isn’t that what I said a coupl’a posts back? I mean, sure, you spelled it out a bit more, but yeah, I find it interesitng that people that almost certainly had to have been in on everything now seem like “Oh, well I was just doing what seemed right at the time and I had no foreknowledge of these events whatsoever.”
There is no way that the major players in the Presidential takeover weren’t either involved in setting things up or informed of the events to come.
Well I just finished watching season one, and how can you guys say the Drazens are still involved? All of them are dead; however, we never did find out who Nina really worked for. It’s a shame Nina wasn’t involved in the last couple episodes.
I really wanted Palmer to say to Mike, “I’ll have to ask for your resignation, Mike, but you’ll have to leave your balls. They’re going in a jar on my desk.”
Mike is a pawn. Chappelle is going to jump on any wagon he thinks will carry him to glory.
Prescott, though, is a bad man. He didn’t want to reveal his utter badness, counting on Mike not believing anything Jack might come up with. But when Mike turns, Prescott hopes they won’t get evidence. He has to go ahead with everything because it would look strange not to and he knows there’s a second half to the plot–assassinating Palmer directly.
That isn’t anyone’s first choice because it will lead to too much investigation. But the real goal all along has been to get Prescott into power.
And I think Palmer is toast.
My guesses are worth precisely what you paid for them.
