Jack botched the entire operation when he decided to rescue people at the mall. He believes so fanatically in his own judgement that he can’t accept anything else, and some of the people at CTU (especially Chloe) fall in line with whatever he wants to do. The problem is that he’s been right so many times that now nobody recognizes it when he’s wrong.
McGill has done the right thing the whole time he’s been there, except for the incident with his junkie sister.
Is there no one at CTU who doesn’t have a relative who screws them up in the middle of a bad day? In Seasons 1 and 2, Kim filled that role. In Season 3, there was Kim working at CTU (bad enough), but also a mystery baby under Chloe’s desk, Kim and Chase’s secret affair, and Adam the Computer Guy’s sister who happened to be at the hotel that was hit with the virus. Season 4 had Audrey’s stoner brother, Driscoll’s suicidal daughter and Edgar’s mom who happened to be in the nuclear meltdown zone. And now we have Junkie Sister and the threat of more Kim on the horizon.
Logan is a hilariously awful president. He will go along with the opinions or harebrained schemes of whomever has spoken to him most recently, but he’ll still yell at people when things go wrong. He obviously isn’t brght enough to realize that going to war with both China and Russia in the same day is a bad idea, and will kill way more people than the Centox gas.
There was a moment last night when I seriously thought Martha was going to shoot him dead for the good of the country. Whoever the VP is, he can’t be worse than Logan, can he? And I see no reason to believe Martha couldn’t get her hands on a gun somewhere at the Minimum Security Presidential Retreat. Now that she and Aaron are in the Russian president’s limo, the competence factor at Not Camp David is nearly zero.
I really feel that the writers have abandoned all reason and logic and are siply driven by a need to have something exciting happen every 15 minutes, and to produce enough of those exciting moments to fill 24 hours.
Yeah, I know. And I realize they have to keep up a lot of excitement for a long time, but I feel they could do it better. At least this season we have some sense of WHY the bad guys are doing what they do. They never would say what was going on in Season 4 beyond some vague “we don’t like America’s policies” statements.
I don’t think it was ‘an honest mistake’. The guy got all pissy and decided to use the gas on the US but his boss is just worried about Moscow. He freelanced and his boss can’t have an underling taking matters into his own hands without thinking of the overall picture. It’s not like he can really fire the guy and make him go home.
Meh, maybe, although I got the impression that his fatal mistake was believing that Jack was who he said he was. The attack on the mall seemed pretty planned.
Still, when you’re in the middle of an operation and need all the trained operatives you can get, knifing one of them isn’t exactly going to inspire the troops:
Boss: Henchman – go get me some coffee!
Henchman (at the 7-11): Does the Boss like cream in his coffee? Decaf or regular? Sugar or sweet-and-lo? Screw it – I’m not going to get a shiv in the brisket because I don’t know how he likes his coffee.
Looks like everyone has already hit on most of the roll-eyes moments in last night’s episode, so I’ll just point out the classic “be there in 10 minutes” 24 line from the terrified terrorist. Good thing no place in LA is ever more than 10 minutes away.
What I’d like to see is for Jack to show up at CTU and have Hobbit-boy come out yelling “Arrest that man! Arrest that man!” Then Jack turns to him, caps him in the forehead, then says to the rest of CTU: “OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get these terrorists berfore MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIE!”
Say some of the CTU personnel want to moonlight. They go to a 7-11 or comparable stop-n-rob to get on whatever shift lets them work both jobs. There’s a notice by that color-coded measuring device by the door “Must be this tall to work here.”
They get a form asking for other work experience, and if they mess up and put CTU the person on duty says, “sorry can’t use you here, try McDonald’s.”
That’s one of the great things about 24. The bad guys always know that watching any one group of baddies for 24 episodes would get monotonous, so they know well enough to just cycle them in and out to keep it interesting. I also agree with you in that it would probably be more effective to just sit there and let the main bad guy wipe out his own team instead of following a crapload of leads. Then by the end, you have a bunch of rested guys ready to just go after the big bad guy.
It IS the One Keycard, forged in the offices of I.T., in the very heart of Division. And Lynn is seeking it, all his thought is bent on it. With it, he woudl have command of all the other keycards of all the other CTU offices, and force them to do his bidding…
Well, I don’t think Lynn would have reacted favorably, because Lynn already has his panties in a wad over other things. But I was also surprised that he didn’t entrust Curtis with the information, choosing the sucker punch route instead. Curtis is a field operative, and knows more about the reality of what Jack does than Lynn would – and while I think Jack would have had a tough time selling Lynn on it (and remember, Nathanson wasn’t about to meet with him if it wasn’t just Jack – a whole team of backups, at least close enough for Nathanson to know about, would have been right out).
But Curtis… I think Jack could have convinced Curtis and gotten a little Black Bauer assistance, covertly enough to not alarm Nathanson.
I’m concerned about Tony. He has been out of it for nine hours now. In the 24-verse, shouldn’t he be out and about, helping Jack fighting terorists by now?
Some spoilers were mentioned earlier, and I don’t want to post them here, but I’d like to know where I can read them myself. I’m starting to not care if I’m spoiled for this show or not.
What I want to know is if Lynn’s junkie sister’s rough trade boyfriend has been cozying up to her because he knew her connection to a patsy from Division and knew that he was going to make a surprise visit to CTU today – or if it’s going to turn out that a loser street-level dope fiend just happens to be able to work out a way to contact international terrorists to offer it for sale within a couple of hours.
“I know – we’ll take it to Jimmy Fish – he deals dime-bags, acts as a fence for car stereos, and is totally hooked up with Chechen terrorists.”
