24 Season 6 – Episode 5 – 10 am to 11 am Synopsis

PREVIOUSLY ON 24: We found out that:

When Jack throws up, nuclear weapons go off; When Jack fires someone, he really fires someone; If you EVER see someone that’s about to set off a nuclear weapon, rush them – yelling at them won’t stop them; Fayed is going to need some more bad guys to hang out with.

The following summary takes place between 10 am and 11 am

10:00 am – The unthinkable has happened: They positioned the TV in the Oval office so that everyone has to stand to be able to see it. On that TV, we learn that Valencia oranges are going to be a lot more scarce, mainly because of a nuclear weapon special effect we’ve already seen at least three times. The announcer on the TV they’re watching is stretching for time and giving everyone interesting, but completely useless facts about what happens when a nuclear bomb goes off.

10:01 am – Lennox tells Wayne that at least twelve thousand voters expired in the blast. Haig tells Wayne that her husband from CTU Bill just called to let her know that there are four other bombs available to the terrorists, so we could be seeing that same special effect again really soon. Wayne asks Lennox for the Joint Chiefs to bring one, until Lennox explains what the “Joint Chiefs” really are. Haig said that keeping people from taking airline flights will NOT be a problem. They also find the video of the explosion on YouTube already. Wayne is told he has to go to the bunker, and is pretty excited about it, since they keep some pretty cool food down there.

10:02 – At CTU, everyone’s watching on TV, and they’re all standing up too. The guy talking on the TV say there’s a nuclear physics expert who will talk about some scary things to more panic. Bill asks Nadia if they’ve heard from anyone (“No”), and Milo tells Bill that all their field teams were too close to the blast, and they’re dead too.

10:03 – A guy with a wire in his head is briefing Wayne about all the cool stuff in the bunker. The Vice President has been alerted and at first was very excited, until he found out that Wayne was still OK. He goes back to his VP duties of sitting around for something to happen to Wayne, and continues to follow protocol. Large silver cardboard doors behind them slam shut with a satisfying special effect noise.

10:04 – Haig calls Bill. She asks if the heavily armed teams they sent after the terrorists might have something to do with that nuclear weapon going off. Bill says he’s not sure. It could have been one of the California garage bands trying to play “Louie, Louie” when something went horribly, horribly wrong. Bill tells her they’re still looking for Fayed, and Assad is on the way to CTU. Haig asks Bill to be careful. Bill assures her that he’s NOT going to go outside for the next two or three hundred years.

10:05 – Chloe and Morris talk about what happened in the nuclear blast to “all those people, and Curtis”. She asks Morris why all the people she knows keep dying, and Morris asks her if she really knew twelve thousand people, obviously impressed. Then Chloe said that she’s having “packet loss” and wants to know if Morris wants to “boot her router”, and he agrees. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Chloe, she means exactly what she said.

10:06 – Many fire engines all over the place in California, dodging people that are trying to drop suitcases on other people on the street below, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

10:07 – Fayed’s car nearly misses a little girl in the street, and he hits the driver in the back of the head for missing her. Fayed continues the conversation with the person that sold him the bomb, McCarthy, telling him that the bomb wasn’t supposed to go off yet, that something must have happened. Fayed is particularly upset because he lost his engineer in the blast, and that it was going to be IMPOSSIBLE to find another one, because most of them have already been hired by Google. Fayed also says when the device to program the nuclear triggers blew up, they realized they forgot to do backups and don’t have a way to program the other triggers. McCarthy sympathizes, saying it’s hard to find a good backup program for Windows. Fayed offers to double McCarthy’s price for the previous transaction. Fayed says he needs them within the next couple of hours or the plot is going to drag on too long and they’ll lose viewers. McCarthy says he has to look up some things on web, and that he’ll call Fayed back. Fayed’s car continues on, and we see a helicopter parked by a student driver that won’t be getting his pilot license soon.

10:09 – It turns out that the student pilot is already on the street looking around for someone to help him, and of course he meets Jack. Jack, as usual is more than willing to help, but the student is a little freaked out when Jack tells him that the reason the helicopter crashed was a shockwave from a nuclear bomb. The guy says that there was definitely nothing about that in ANY of the manuals he has read. Jack climbs to the top of the roof like a spider monkey. The people inside are OK. Jack pulls a McGyver by grabbing a television antenna and pries open the helicopter door just in time to grab the guy inside. The helicopter sparks on the way down, and blows up a Porsche on the street, leading most of the Porsche owner’s neighbors to start clapping, since they didn’t like that guy very much anyway.

10:10 – Still on the roof, Jack calls Bill at CTU and tells him he’s getting AMAZING reception from up there. Jack says he’s “back in”. Bill says “I thought you were out”. Jack says this isn’t the hokey-pokey, and he wants someone to come pick him up. Bill says that’ll take a while since everyone’s already heard what Jack did to his last driver, but says he’ll send a car.

Commercial

10:16 – Down in the bunker, everyone is sitting down because the televisions there are in a much better position than they were in the Oval office. Wayne is Skype-ing with a military officer. Wayne wants to know if Fayed was state-sponsored, and if so, who it was. The officer tells Wayne that the CIA is going through photos to see if Fayed had ever driven for NASCAR which would make it a lot easier to see who the sponsor might have been.

10:17 – A guy dressed as Captain Kangaroo tells Wayne that he’s not sure which country sponsored the bombing, but he’s willing to take the chance to blow up a lot of things because he has some ships he wants to use. He says, “We’ve been playing games with these terrorists for 11 weeks now”, and Wayne says that they should have been trying to catch the terrorists instead. Captain Kangaroo continues, “The only language they understand is force”. Lennox starts to make a lame Star Wars joke, but Wayne stops him. Captain Kangaroo wants to send them “back to the Stone Age”. Wayne says he seriously doubts that Hollywood would even consider making “The Flintstones 3”, let alone hire terrorists. Haig says that Captain Kangaroo seems to be speaking in clichés, and they need a translator right away before everything goes to the dogs.

10:17 – Wayne starts to tell Captain Kangaroo that sending a lot of nuclear weapons all over the place probably isn’t the best tactical nuclear weapon option at this point. Captain Kangaroo starts to argue with him. When Lennox speaks up to tell Captain Kangaroo that he HATES it when people interrupt during meetings, and we also find out it is not Captain Kangaroo… it is Admiral Kangaroo. Wayne says he’s going to retaliate, with “our sights locked on our enemy”. Haig looks worried that Wayne might have caught the cliché virus that Kangaroo has.

10:18 – Wayne asks Haig what CTU has learned in the last 20 minutes about the remaining nuclear weapons. Haig says they’re loud and that people don’t want to be around them when they go off. Wayne says he’s not talking about Trump and Rosie, he wants to know about the remaining nuclear weapons! Haig says that CTU has been watching satellite TV, but don’t know where the bomb was meant to be set off, and that just like she told everyone just twenty minutes ago, Fayed may or may not be alive, and that if he’s alive that would be “bad”. Like “tell him about the Twinkie” bad.

10:18 – Fayed tells his driver to make a phone call to someone, to let them know that the nuclear weapons in the back of the car (which they almost had an accident in nearly hitting a little girl) are “safe”, which I think the caller could have assumed because there wasn’t a second nuclear explosion recently.
10:19 – At CTU, Assad arrives and starts to give Bill a speech about not being his enemy. Assad tries to shake hands with Bill, but Bill spots the joy buzzer in Assad’s hand, so he doesn’t shake it.

10:19 – Morris and Chloe are setting up mineral water and laptops (always a good combination to have right next to each other) in the CTU boardroom. Morris makes various wisecracks while doing this, showing us why Chloe probably started going out with the guy in the first place.

10:20 – In the boardroom, Bill tells Assad that Fayed has four more nuclear weapons, and Assad seems to be a bit surprised by this. Assad tells Bill that he came to the US to stop Fayed and to take a tour of “star’s homes”, if there was any time left over. Bill and Assad recap the whole “I’m here to stop Fayed, and to broker a peace deal” story just in case we didn’t remember them pounding that into our heads last week.

10:21 – Assad says that the source of the nuclear weapons is General Dmitri Gredenko. Chloe immediately starts to open up a Russian database, because she just happens to have one lying around.

Commercial

10:25 – Milo tries to get all technical with Chloe by pointing to the file name “Gredenko” on the screen and Chloe tells him that it’s a yellow sticky note, not a file name. Morris comes over and just happens to have a list of everyone that Gredenko ever met during business meetings, and Chloe goes to tell Bill about number 17 on the list: “Philip Bauer”. Bill says, “Bauer…. Bauer… Doesn’t ring a bell”. Chloe smacks him on the back of the head and Bill says, “Oh, THAT Bauer. Jack’s Dad!”

10:26 – Bill calls Jack about the “Gredenko”, and asks if he recognizes that name. When Jack says “no”, Bill gets all snotty and says, “Well, your dad does!” (Classy, Bill). Jack hasn’t talked to his dad in nine years, but wants to have a really awkward conversation, so Jack volunteers to talk to him. Bill tells Jack to leave the driver on any old street corner, and that Jack can have the car. The driver mumbles something like “Curtis said there would be days like this”.

10:28 – At the detention facility, there are prisoners standing in the courtyard standing really still and trying to pretend that a nuclear weapon didn’t go off today. Sandra’s on the phone and she recognizes the FBI as they walk in because of the white iPod wire coming out of the agent’s shirt and into his ear. The agent says that his friend, Agent Jennings, wants to give Walid an iPod that can record conversations, so he can find out if there’s an active terror cell in the dentition facility. Sandra asks why all the cells aren’t already all wired up for sound, but everyone ignores her. Then she asks how they’re going to put a wire on him, and they tell him that they use a very small staple gun and that the nervous twitches will go away about a week or two after they get the staples back out.

10:29 – In the courtyard, the men being held there are standing around in a circle talking, not letting Walid join in their terrorist games. Walid tries to join in the conversation, but the men don’t really seem to take to him.

10:30 – The FBI agents go walking across the courtyard, yelling out Walid’s name, right in front of the group of men, who I’m sure would never in a million years suspect that Walid might eventually try something with the FBI. Walid, for his part, acts like he has no idea what’s going on, mainly because he really has no idea what’s going on. They make a HUGE deal out of roughing up Walid, so much that Walid almost starts to confess. That’s when one of the agents whispers to Walid that they’re wiring him up. They throw in a few extra punches to make it look real. Sandra’s in the other room listening to all this and freaks out, telling everyone she’s the one with the lawyer, err acting training, not Walid. She tries to go help him, but the FBI hold her back.

10:31 – Out in the courtyard, all the men are watching while Walid is pretending to get beaten up with very realistic punches from the FBI. The FBI guys show Walid a Windows Mobile PDA with Fayed’s name in huge letters on it. Walid starts to ask how they got Fayed’s PDA, when the agent punches him again and tells Walid that he’s supposed to drop Fayed’s name to the guy’s in the courtyard. Walid seems pretty confused about this whole situation, not to mention the audience. The agents leave. The guys in the courtyard seem very impressed that Walid can take that kind of beating, and Walid tells him it’s because of his days as a mime and walks away.

10:32 – Jack makes a phone call, and someone named Sam answers. Sam tells Jack that he doesn’t know where Jack’s father is, because he left in a mysterious plot point we’ll learn about later. He also casually drops the fact that Jack has a brother named Gray. Jack asks for the phone number, since Jack hasn’t talked to him in a while either. It also turns out that the entire conversation from Sam’s end is being broadcast in HD TV to a guy named Liddy who’s video taping Same for some reason.

10:33 – Liddy calls someone, and WHOA! Gray is “Hollywood Looking Terrorist Guy” from last season! And he still has the Borg implant in his head! Gray is pretty surprised that Jack is alive, and doesn’t seem all that happy that Jack is back. I’m guessing that Gray and Jack didn’t exactly see eye to eye about things, mainly because Gray tells Liddy they should have killed Jack when they had a chance.

That’s just a guess though.

Anyway, Gray caught the cliché virus too, because he tells Liddy that “My brother has a way of digging things up that need to stay buried”. I bet Gray is still mad at Jack for digging up a pet from the backyard when they were kids.

Commercial

10:38 – Gray gets a call from Jack, and they make ironic small talk. Jack tries to find out where his Dad is, but Gray is of no help. Gray says he’ll try and find out where their father is. Gray almost asks if he can get Jack’s exact GPS coordinates, so he can send a squad of commandos right over to help Jack out, but stops himself just in time. It doesn’t appear that Jack suspects a thing… yet.

10:39 – Jack calls Chloe to see if she can find “Graem Bauer’s” address, but questions why someone would give a kid a first name with a spelling like that. She asks Jack if Gray got beat up a lot as a kid, and Jack hints that’s why Gray might have turned out the way he did. She gives Jack the address, knowing that Jack just got off the phone with Graem. I think Chloe is pretty sure that Jack surprise visit to Graem won’t be that great for Graem.

10:40 – Back at Graem, err Gray’s house, we find out that he has a wife and son, which is kind of weird because we never saw them last season when he was locked in that room giving orders. Must have been another part of the house. Anyway, the wife and son are watching TV, and the wife is standing and the son is sitting. It looks like they almost got the TV in the right place, but not quite. when Gray walks in. Gray tells his son that now that a bomb went off in LA, he’s SURE that the next one will be somewhere else, and says under his breath that “I oughta know”, but no one else hears this.

10:41 – Gray tells Mrs. Gray that Jack is back from his Chinese takeout, and Mrs. Gray seems surprised. They start to have a little “inside baseball” conversation that only they understand until it comes out that Jack had a thing for Mrs. Gray, and Gray still doesn’t like that. That’s even when Mrs. Gray didn’t take Jack, and went after a small, balding ticked off guy with a piece of metal in his ear.

10:43 – The White House speech writing staff is hard at work trying to think of a political correct term for devastating nuclear explosion, and have come up with “high energy physics event”, which doesn’t go over with Lennox at all. He wants to call it “a big bang boom”. Wayne is more worried about how he appears on TV than anything else, and Lennox takes the opportunity to point out that if everyone had just listened to him and they had bombed the living tar out of anyone that even thought the word “terrorist” everything would be just peachy. Lennox and Haig start to argue, with Wayne jumping in to help give a nice little speech about trying to get everything back to where it was before: Safe streets…. Except in LA where Jack Bauer is shooting everything in sight.

10:44 – McCarthy picks up a blonde woman on the street who has been waiting for him. She’s really mad because the wind might change and put “nuclear thingies” into her hair.

10:44 – McCarthy calls Fayed and says, “Things are looking up”. Fayed says that’s a really bad pun, considering what happened today, and wants to know what McCarthy has found. McCarthy tells him that he thinks he’ll have some good news for Fayed soon. Fayed tells his men that the rest of the bombs are going to go off today, and to get ready. One of the guys does an imitation of SpongeBob saying, “I’m Ready! I’m Ready!” but Fayed ignores him and walks into a building. Then he backs up and walks through a door into a building.

Commercial

10:49 – At CTU, Nadia tells Bill that she just got done talking to Assad, who gave them a few more names. Bill tells them that since they’ve known each other for less than an hour now, and that they’ve known that he wants peace for everyone, it seems completely appropriate to put him on a plane where he, as a top terrorist leader, can go meet face to face with the President, since there’s no way anything bad could happen to the president if they meet fact to face. Bill puts out his hand to shake Assad’s hand, and after checking to make sure that Bill didn’t spit in his palm or anything like that, Assad shakes it.

10:50 – Milo tells Bill that the FBI put one of those special iPods on someone at the detention center, and that a podcast is being broadcast over the internet right now. Bill tells Chloe to start streaming the audio right away.

10:50 – Back at detention courtyard, the men argue back and forth about Walid, and whether or not they should talk to him. Somehow, the FBI got an undercover cameraman to show off what’s going on in the courtyard too, because Sandra is watching Walid over closed-circuit TV. Sandra is pretty upset by all this, and tells one of the FBI agents that he shouldn’t be giving speeches. The agent reminds her of the speeches she gave last episode.

10:52 – Out in the courtyard, one of the men from the group goes to talk to Walid about getting beaten up by the FBI. Walid drops the name “Abu Fayed” after the man prods him for information, but the guy says he doesn’t recognize it, but it’s good enough to join the clique with the other guys in the courtyard.

10:55 – Over at Gray’s place, Jack arrives and tells Gray they need to talk. Gray hugs Jack, and checks Jack for a wire. Gray’s son, Josh, comes downstairs and Jack shakes hands with him, showing off the cool hand makeup he’s wearing. Gray takes Jack to his special office, and tries to make small talk about Chavez, but Jack just wants to find out where their dad is.

10:56 – Gray tells Jack to relax, which Jack does by punching Gray in the face! Jack locks the door to the room, gets a lamp which Jack renders useless by pulling the cord out of it. Jack ties up Gray, and tells him that he wants information.

10:57 – Back at the White House, Lennox tells the president that they’ve adding a few more clichés to the speech, and that it’s in the teleprompter ready to read. Wayne makes his speech to the American public.

10:59 – Jack REALLY wants to know where his father is, because he doesn’t even as “paper or plastic”…. He goes straight for the handy plastic bag that Gray just happens to have, and wraps Gray’s head with it! Jack better hope Gray doesn’t think to just bite into that bag!

11:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME: JACK PULLS A KNIFE ON HIS BROTHER! GRAY DISSES JACK’S DEAD WIFE! LENNOX PLOTS AGAINST HAIG! ZEFRAM COCHRANE IS JACK’S DAD! WAIT UNTIL JULIAN FINDS OUT!

Be sure and catch all of Steve’s summaries of Season 6 of “24”!