This is my first time posting in a 24 thread. I’ve gotta second dalovindj’s post. I can’t give Palmer flack for that decision, though I agree he’s made some horrible decisions. Just off the top of my head, when his benefactor wanted his brother gone, he’d have ben out the door so fast there would have been a whoosh sound. Not just because the other guy asked him, but because he’s the voice of the evil side of his conscience. Everytime a questionable decision needs to be made, I keep expecting him to pop up on Palmers shoulder dressed in a devil suit.
I too was half expecting them to have pulled some “magic death pill” stunt, but will be satisfied with the story line if they don’t for the same reasons dalovin pointed out. Man I love this show.
And in that time Jack and CTU may be able to find and stop Saunders. It was either millions of people die for sure or one man dies and they still have a chance to stop the outbreak.
Chapelle lives: No chance. Millions of people die.
Chapelle dies: A chance that those deaths can be averted. Granted, it may not work, but it just might. A small chance is better than no chance. And when millions of lives hang in the balance one is forced to take whatever chances they can get.
What I’m really wondering about is what Saunders ultimately wants. So far his demands have been little side missions. I’m waiting for the real demand. What will it take for him to decide not to release the virus any further? Is he planning on doing it no matter what? Nobody knows yet, so they have to take some casualties to buy some time.
One more thing I forgot to mention. I really doubt that Michelle will get away with being one of the 10%. That would be kind of a cop out, and it’s not 24’s style. However, I think they might let her live after all. When Saunder’s lackey expressed concern about the virus moving beyond the Americas and Saunder’s replied “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”, that pretty much confirms to me that he has an antidote. I mean, he is in LA, he is in America. If he releases the virus he is toast as well. I’m thinking they may track him down, find his personal stash of antidote, and get one to Michelle in time. Or she’s toast. I predict they won’t go with the 10% bullshit.
[nitpick] Chapelle is a civilian. The agents of CTU have all been civilians, so far. However, I agree with your point that the President had better be willing to kill any gov’t employee, military or civilian, if said death will buy him the time to maybe stop millions from being killed. I will go so far as to say the President should be will willing to kill any person - not just gov’t employee - if said death will again buy the time to maybe stop the killing of millions. [/nitpick]
Wrong. Chapelle was District Director of CTU. He was a ranking officer in a miltary organization. Not to mention that Wayne specifically said to Palmer “Chapelle isn’t a civillian.”
You are correct. In my former office you could tell the military from the civilians by who wore a uniform and who wore a suit . Chapelle wore a suit, so in my head, he always got pegged as civilian.
I felt so bad for the security guard when he was asking Michelle to make a call to his wife. Just 5 minutes, Michelle! Come’on, he knows he’s dying! Oh well…
That security guard has been consistently and unwaveringly a stand-up guy all through this. He’s a hotel security guard, surely he never took on the job anticipating that such an event would occur. Yet he’s been cool-headed and steadfastly brave all the way through this. I hated that Michelle didn’t let him call his wife.
In the back of my mind I’m wondering—are they going to have him crack in some way? He’s the last person we’d expect to do that—he’s been so great all this time. But what if he pops a cork and demands to talk to his wife, or something? I am hoping he stays brave and steady to the last, but part of me has been waiting for another side to him to come out. (I don’t expect that he’ll be a weasel or a coward, however—I think if he were to be that, it would have happened by now.)
I felt bad for Michelle. You know she has empathy for the guy, and it’s breaking her heart. But she clearly can’t let him call out. Sure, he says he “just wants to hear her voice,” but can she really expect him to be able to talk to his wife without letting her know that he was a doomed man? Just tell her he loves her and keep the fatality out of his voice? Could you? Hell no!
It’s hard, though-- especially since she was able to tell Tony what she needed to. What a guilt-trip.
I also agree with Palmer’s decision in this case. Not negotiating with terrorists is a good principle and all, but millions of deaths are millions of deaths. He needs to stall for as long as possible to give CTU as much of a chance to find Saunders as possible. And maybe, in the end, whatever Saunders ultimately demands will be a price that is worth paying. Obviously, if Saunders says “start a nuclear war”, Palmer won’t do it. But there are other relatively serious demands that Saunders could make that would be worth acceding to.
Also, as for why Saunders had Chapelle killed instead of Jack, Saunders is having too much fun playing with Jack, and probably has evil plans of which Jack is a specific part.
Oh, and you all did a terrible job of not mentioning stuff in the next-episode spoilers. If someone comments about it and then you want to make a joke in response, you’d better either (a) spoiler-box your joke, or (b) make it so hilariously obscure that no one could possibly decrypt it. Oh well, only 30 or so hours to go…
Did anyone notice that it took “Bill” (the one-night-stand-and-gonna-die-for-it guy) over two hours to drive home from the hotel?
Since it seems to take everyone else five minutes to drive across L.A., the guy must live in Colorado. Either that, or he stopped off for a quickie somewhere else before heading home to the wife. :eek:
I loved last night’s episode. I can’t believe I was thisclose to crying. Like most people, I never cared much for Ryan until last night’s episode. I guess we should thank the writers for pulling another Mason.
But man, can you imagine Jack’s therapy after he gets through the day? Heh.
Yeah, I figured that, since Jack is one of the main reasons that Saunders went all evil, he is central to Saunders’ plan for revenge. He’s got something up his sleeve, that’s for sure. And it’s probably something pretty huge.
I do what I can. I guess I’ll pick up on these threads for now, Look for them around 1:30pm Pacific, 4:30 Eastern… that’s when I leave work, and I have class Tuesday nights (I know, I know, horrible planning).
I was thinking the same thing. It’s about time they got some use out of that 24 theme they’ve had all along during the credits. Was it just me, or did they score much more of this episode than any other?
I have to say I wasn’t particularly surprised that Bauer killed Chapelle. If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that Jack will do Whatever It Takes.
I still don’t agree with the decision to kill Chapelle. As someone else said, not only was the killing pointless, since they got nothing in return, but it was actually counterproductive because Chapelle was closing in on him. They even mentioned that in the story line: “Why does he want you? What do you know? You must be getting somewhere in your investigation…” Oh well. Kill him just because the guy asks.
And anyway, you have to take a calculated risk that the guy is NOT going to release the virus full-scale, because then he has no bargaining chips left.
Some better solutions:
Make it really credible. How about the terrorist saying, “I’ve ALREADY released the virus in a private home. The people there are sleeping. If I tell you who they are, you can quarantine the house before they wake up. Kill Chapelle, and I’ll tell you. If he’s not dead by seven, those people will wake up, go to work, and spread the virus through the city.”
At least that has a benefit in exchange for Chapelle’s life.
Palmer: “Look, I’m willing to work with you. I’ll do what you want, within reason. However, I will not kill an innocent man. End of story. You decide whether this negotiation ends here, or whether we can reach an agreement.” Then PALMER hangs up on him. That would be the moral thing to do, and it would also offer the best chance of setting up a situation in which you can at least deal with the person. Just capitulating to his every demand is worse than useless - this terrorist could simply be pushing Palmer to see how far he’ll go. Perhaps if Palmer had stood firm, the final demand might have been something like, “Put 500 million in my account, and release XXX hostages”. But if Palmer is weak and will do whatever he wants, the demand could include launching a war, or killing government officials, or something else hideous.
NEVER give in to terrorists. You just get more terror in return.
Palmer is not only immoral and power hungry, he’s also stupid.
Oh, one other thing - this virus isn’t particularly dangerous to the population at large. Apparently it’s only contageous once your symptoms show. That, coupled with the high mortality rate and the fast rate of onset and death, means the CDC would be able to contain it very quickly. All you’d have to do is alert the population and have them stay inside for a couple of days while all the carriers died.
The really dangerous viruses are the ones where people are contagious for days or weeks before showing any symptoms, and where some people carry it without showing symptoms at all. Plus, it has to be airborne. We know the powder causes the virus when you inhale it, but how do people transmit it to one another? I didn’t see a lot of coughing.
Nonsense… he has 11 (I think) vials of the virus in different areas of the country. He can release them one by one. If he releases one, he hasn’t doomed the entire US population to death (yet) and he still has plenty of leverage…
(Although you do appear to be right that a virus that fast-acting wouldn’t be as uncontainable as a slower-acting one) (or is it possible that the other 11 vials have the non-chemically-modified virus, and they made the super-fast virus just for the hotel demonstration?)
Don’t sweat it. He didn’t want to risk waking up the on-the-side by taking a shower in the room, and couldn’t very well risk his wife getting a whiff of her, so he stopped at drive-through fried chicken place and used a handful of moist towelettes to improvise a whore-bath.
