When I saw him, I said “I bet he’s Chechen”.
However, he didn’t talk long enough for me to notice if he had an accent.
If you had checked…Ow! Dammit, I hurt myself.
My personal opinions:
Lynn’s sister’s boyfriend wasn’t plotting anything clever. I swear you could almost read the “Hmm, I gots me an idear!” look coming over his face as he turned the key card over in his hand. I suspect he’s going to try to sell it and/or blackmail Lynn with it without understanding the true significance. And he’ll probably end up dead for it.
What I don’t get, though, is why Lynn wouldn’t just send a couple of CTU third-string bad-asses over to his sister’s house to get the damn thing back. That makes no sense to me.
I, too, was wondering why Jack didn’t just tell Lynn about the new lead. Seems silly to have everyone running around behind Lynn’s back. Maybe Jack could tell Chloe where his other secret stash of heroin is at CTU and have her shoot Lynn up to get him out of the way. Of course, that could backfire, too…
Just for fun, let’s take a few events that happened recently, and compare the response to what would happen in real life:
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Hobbit gets mugged and loses his double-secret keycard. In real life, he comes back into the building, calls security, and says, “I just got mugged. Perp took my wallet. Cancel my keycard immediately and issue me a new one.” End of plot thread.
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President is told that terrorists are going to release nerve gas in a mall and kill maybe 1000 people. CTU thinks this is a good idea, because maybe after the 1000 people die, they just might get to follow the terrorists somewhere. In real life, the president says, “Are you NUTS? You’re relieved of command. And have that nice Bauer fellow simply arrest the terrorists and torture them for the location. He’s good at that. Get him a hacksaw if he needs it.”
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Jack is asked to come in, but then a call comes in with a great lead on the centox. You know, the kind of lead CTU was willing to kill 1000 civilians over a few minutes earlier. Jack’s judgement call? There’s no way he’ll be allowed to follow up the lead, so he needs to overpower his 230 lb friend who has the same training he does, steal his car, and run off to the rendevous. And all his buddies at CTU think this is a great idea. In real life, as soon as the call comes in, Bauer gets immediate permission to do what he has to do.
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President Logan receives demand to give terrorists the route of the Russian Prime Minister, or they’ll release Centox in the U.S. President says, “At this point, my country has no beef with you. Take your war home. You won’t get the route. And you say you’re doing this for your country? Well guess what? Since we know who you are and who you’re fighting for, if one more American citizen dies as the result of your actions, we will assume it’s an act of war. Won’t it be fun having to fight the Russians AND the United States? I wonder how much better Russia could do against you with American technology and the occasional smart bomb strike on their behalf? Get out of our country NOW. Leave the Centox where we can find it, and if you’re lucky you might get out of the country alive.”
Maybe he treats the help so badly he thinks they would screw him.
Perhaps he’s afraid the President will find out he lost his card.
I have a feeling Audrey’s Daddy is one of the other gov’t types involved in this little caper. Novick acts strange, but its a ‘Jesus Palomino, I work for an absolute moron, and his wife is a freaking loon to boot’ kinda strange. And (one hopes) that he is scripted to still be feeling bad about Palmer’s death.
My wife has decided that FLOTUS is the gov’t baddie. I don’t see it myself but of course I’m willing to blindly accept that Jack can shoot down a chopper w a 9 mm pistol (im assuming he’s using a nine), so my perspective is doubtless skewed.
Someone asked why Jack didn’t let Curtis in on his new intel v. knocking him out. Its to keep Curtis from getting into trouble w SamWise. It also sets up Jack Bauer v Black Bauer - The War on the Shore, 12 Rounds of Pugilistic Excellence, right after they secure the canisters in hour 24.
I don’t have much trouble believing a handgun could bring down a civilian helicopter. There’s no armor, the aluminum skin is about as thin as paper, and they are just full of moving parts, hoses, and linkages.
Well, they’re moving sometimes rather quickly, and the 9mm rounds have a copper jacket and compared to what one usually shoots at helicopters with, are little bitty.
So what do you usually shoot at helicopters with? 
True, but then again, This is *Jack Bauer * we’re talking about here. Jack could be surronded by 15 Apache Helicopters piloted by Elite Crews, in the middle of a featureless field, bound and gagged.
10 minutes later, Jack would be strolling away from a field of burning debris, talking on his cell phone.
Have you guys looked at the skin of a light helicopter? You could shoot through it with a .22. It’s only a little thicker than a Coke can.
It’s really tough to bring an airplane down with a gun, because an airplane is passive. If everything shuts down and the engine ceases up it still wants to glide. Unless you get extremely lucky and sever a control cable, you basically have to hit it hard enough to break something structural.
But a helicopter is just chock full of critical moving parts, controlled by either electric motors or hydraulics. If you unload the clip of a gun into the engine area of helicopter the surprise is if you don’t hit something.
Even military helicopters are vulnerable to small arms fire, and plenty have been shot down by people shooting at them with light arms as they go by. Jack disabling that helicopter is actually one of the more realistic things they’ve done on the show. It didn’t explode in mid-air or anything - he just screwed it up enough that it had to make an emergency landing.
Does anybody have earlier episodes from the day on tape? I swear Logan’s clothes are getting bigger by the hour. By the end of the day, he’s going to be a small president in a suit that would nicely fit a sumo wrestler.
They seem to prefer Surface to Air Missiles and Rocket Propelled Grenades in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I think there must be something else going on here. My guess is that the fact that Lynn has a druggie sister is something he’s been hiding from CTU, and, given his sensitive post, something he’d like to continue to hide. This seems unlikely, but far from preposterously impossible. People do stupid things to protect their family.
The president is going to go on the record ordering torture? And honestly, from a purely practical standpoint this might not be that great a plan, because you not only have to break fanatical terrorists under torture (which will probably eventually happen), you have to break them under torture really really really fast before whatever they know ceases to be relevant. Which, given that the other badguys will realize that something went wrong quite quickly, might not be very long.
I agree that this whole situation was pretty contrived
I think in 24-land these terrorists are (like Al Qaeda) supposed to be some stateless group. And we all know how much good declaring war on Al Qaeda has done.
I think by far the most contrived thing going on right now is the idea that Jack has to keep acting behind Lynn’s back. Because, hey, it’s 24, and Jack has be to acting behind his superior’s back at least 8 hours of every day. It’s in his contract.
Okay, I’m not a tough guy, but it seems like a pretty quick Jack Thing.
Bolt cutters+testicles.
They’ve only got two. Can’t be too tough a choice, right?
(I’m a wimp, I’d make the decision before my pants came down.)
You do them in front of each other to encourage the second guy. 
There are not very many SAMs available in Iraq or Afghanistan. RPGs are used, but many choppers are brought down by small arms fire.
That’s a bit off, in 24 land and in the real world.
In 24Land, the terrorists are not stateless—they are fighting for independence from Russia. Unfortunately for threats of bombing reprisals, their state is INSIDE Russia, and Russia might not take too kindly to us dropping bombs on territory they own.
In the real world, Al Quaeda DID have a state, until Afghanistan ceased being that state.