Previously on 24, we found out: Red Foreman wouldn’t dare call Jack “dumbass”; Jack likes to threaten people with pens; Air traffic control should never be in a basement; Tony could play a part in the “bring out your dead” portion of Monty Python and the Holy Grail; and we’ve missed 24!
10 am – President Allison is pretty upset about Tony not having the air traffic control module, since she thinks it would be “fun” to control planes, and she wants one too. It turns out the module is with Colonel Dubaku, the butcher of Sangala. This guy is not someone you’d go to for suggestions on which roast to buy, because he’s slaughtered over 300,000 people, and no one told him he shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing. Dubaku got a message to the FBI, which is played to President Allison. She understands the complete thing, despite the really rotten audio recording. Dubaku wants all the troops out of his country by tomorrow, with proof in three hours, and his own Mini-Me.
President Allison asks about the firewall, which, as noted before, took years to build. Agent Tim tells her that they can get the whole thing revamped in six days, which means that engineers at the FBI must be using the Lt. Scott method of engineering estimation. It’s still not fast enough for President Allison, so she tells people the need to start contacting first responders to they have time to get out of the way of the coming trouble.
10:05 – Agent Larry’s helicopter lands with Tony, Agent Walker and Jack. Tony leaves to be questioned, while Agent Larry confronts Agent Walker about why she didn’t go through channels. Jack, who was standing four feet away, walks up to give an explanation, which freaks Larry out. Larry says, “Excuse me! This is private!” Jack looks at him and says, “What? Really? I was standing, like four feet away!” He goes on to ask how The Sniper could have gotten out of the building when there was a full PERIMETER (there’s that word again), around the whole thing. Larry seems perplexed by this, as if he missed the days the talked about perimeters in FBI Manager class.
Jack tells Larry that he needs to tighten the circle around Tony to no more information leaks out or they’ll never get the module back. Larry tells him they’re a lot higher tech at the FBI these days – they use Depends, not circles. Larry finally agrees, saying they’re going to limit access to level 4 clearance and above, and get Janis to run a security check to see if she can track down the lead without trying to suck up to anyone.
Larry gets a phone call from the White House, which he thinks will impress Walker and Jack. Larry tells Walker to keep him “in the loop”; Jack looks like he really does want to keep Larry in a loop, but not in a way Larry would like. Larry leaves, and Jack removes his glasses dramatically.
10:09 – In an interrogation room, Agent Janis tells Tony that she has to lift up his shirt. Not for any good reason; she just wanted to look at his chest. Suddenly she realizes she might be on camera, so she hooks up some iPod ear buds to Tony’s chest. She asks if he’s comfortable, and Tony gives her a “you’re kidding, right?” look.
Walker and Jack arrive in an adjoining room, where they get popcorn and a drink while waiting for the interrogation to start. Walker tells Janis to go check communications, and red tag all information that has to do with Tony, so it can go on sale later. Janis looks really disappointed that she won’t be there to zorch Tony with the ear buds. Walker tells her the next time they’re going to torture someone, Janis will be the first person they think of. Janis leaves. Tony still hasn’t said a thing.
Janis gets back to her workstation. Sean is pretty freaked out he can’t get to half the servers in the building. Janis tells him to quit worrying about servers, that another waitress will be around shortly, and to go back looking through the evidence he can access with his clearance.
10:11 – In the undisclosed secret terrorist hideout, Emerson gives Nichols the news about Tony being captured by the FBI. Emerson wants to use assets to bring get him out, but Nichols says he doesn’t have anyone names “Assets”, and that there’s no way to do that without jeopardizing their mission. Dubaku comes over with the very upsetting news that, shockingly, the US troops haven’t moved away from Sangala, even though the President just heard the news 10 minutes ago. Dubaku wants to give her a demonstration to prove they’re serious. Nichols tells him they don’t have the PowerPoint slides ready, so he’ll have to wait for the White House to respond.
10:13 – Agent Larry comes back to tell Walker that Tony has been working for General Juma, and that Tony wants to blackmail the White House. Jack asks “How”, which Larry misunderstands as some kind of Indian greeting. He also can’t believe that Jack can hear the conversation from literally five feet away, but tells him that Dubaku and Juma want a complete troop withdrawal from Sangala. Jack promises to get the module… all they have to do is let him talk to Tony. Larry makes a big show of acting distraught about the whole thing, but lets Jack in to talk to Tony anyway.
10:15 – Jack asks how Tony preformed the great “I was dead, but now I’m not” trick. Jack tells Tony that he can save time, pain, and a lot of money on his car insurance if he’ll just say where the module is. He assures Tony that being friends with a genocidal maniac won’t look very good on his permanent record either, especially with thousands of American lives at stake.
Tony tells him that Juma’s pretty serious about his threats, and it should make for at least one exciting moment later in the show, but he can’t tell Jack anything about it now. Jack asks why Tony is doing this, and Tony tells him that when the part came up for a “Tony” this season, he thought he’d be perfect for the part. He also says that Juma was willing to pay real cash money for the module, as opposed to Monopoly money. Jack looks disappointed, and says he doesn’t believe him.
Tony starts to go on a diatribe about how the people in the government doing the kinds of jobs they do, don’t really care about what happens to their agents, or their lives. Tony tells jack that his own life has been pretty screwed up this way: His daughter won’t talk to him, Terry’s dead, and Audrey…. As soon as Audrey’s name is mentioned, Jack – and everyone else in America – yells for Tony to shut up. Jack gets really hostile when Tony tells him that its like those people are “spitting on Terry’s grave”. Jack slams Tony against the wall, telling him “So help me God, I’ll kill you, and this time you’ll stay dead”. Tony whispers something that sounds like “Deep sky”, and Jack asks him to repeat it. He says the same thing again. Larry busts in the room, and tells Jack to leave.
10:17 – Jack leaves the room, and dials “1-555-DEEP-SKY”. There’s an answer! The voice on the other end asks who it is, and it turns out to be BILL! Bill’s all dressed in black, so he’s obviously on a covert operation of some kind. Bill is surprised to hear that it’s Jack on the phone, and that he’ll ten minutes to go to commercial and figure out how to call Jack on a secure VPN line. Bill hangs up, and he’s with CHLOE!
Bill tells Chloe that they’re going to need Jack’s help to get Tony back undercover. Chloe responds that Jack doesn’t seem to be in a very helpful frame of mind. Bill says that he plans to say, “Help us Jack Bauer, you’re our only hope”. Chloe refuses to wear Princess Leia hair-buns to ask Jack this.
Commercial
10:22 – Ethan meets First Hubby Henry as Henry arrives back at the White House. Ethan tells Henry that he really just needs to forget about Roger, and that Roger killed himself rather than be on a full season of “24”. Henry doesn’t believe this for a minute. Ethan tells him it’s all probably because Roger was doing some insider trading, and that he was about to be investigated by the SEC. Henry finds this hard to believe because over the last couple of years NOBODY has been investigated by the SEC. Ethan says President Allison knew all about this, and that’s why they’ve been quiet about it. Ethan leaves to talk to the President, and tells Henry not to say anything.
10:24 – Ethan meets with the President who say they’ll have to order the pull back by at least two and half episodes from now. She says that Agent Tim told her that Tony isn’t talking, so her choice is: 1) condemning innocient Americans to death; 2) thousands of Sangalans slaughtered; or 3) let Jack Bauer loose to try and save the day. Ethan only hears options 1 and 2. She asks, “How did this happen, Ethan?” Ethan says, “Hey, I’m stuck in this show too, you know how this happened as well as I do.” Ethan says he votes for #2. The President says she wants to keep working on options so neither of them ends up in #2.
10:29 – Chloe is at her laptop getting a secure line, proving that she doesn’t need a room full of computers to prove her LEET engineering skills. Bill calls Jack back. Jack asks what the hell is going on, because he hasn’t read ahead in the script yet. Bill says that Tony isn’t a terrorist, that he’s been working under “deep cover”. Bill continues, and says that Tony was supposed to be watching the module this whole time, but since he was arrested, they lost track of it. The reason for this is (surprise) the inner circle around the president is corrupt, which in the whole history of 24 has never happened before. They just don’t know who the bad guys are right now.
Jack asks which agency is running the operation. Bill says that there is no agency, because the conspiracy is too widespread, and besides he got REALLY bored after CTU shut down, so he needed something to do for a while. Bill says they need to get Tony back under cover ASAP, and that Chloe says “hi”. Chloe gets on the line, and tells him that she can’t believe Senator Red Foreman talk to Jack that way, that Jack looked good on CSPAN, and that the camera didn’t add 20 pounds to him like it does for most people.
Bill asks Jack for his help to get Tony back out of the FBI, and Jack says he needs Chloe to help them find a way out of the building because someone took down all the exit signs.
Commercial
10:33 – Agent Janis goes to talk to Sean, who is still brooding over his computer. She asks about some files that got downloaded last week, but he’s distracted. She asks if she can help with the solitaire game he’s been playing. She walks away, and we see that what ever Sean has been doing, he keeps getting “access denied”.
10:34 – Henry’s phone rings. It’s Samantha! Henry apologizes, but she stops him and tells Henry that Roger was murdered!
10:35 – Agent Larry asks Tony where the module is by asking him in a very stern voice. Tony doesn’t crack, so Larry raises his voice. That doesn’t work either, despite Larry’s Borg-like Bluetooth implant in his ear. Larry tries whining a bit, and showing Tony some black and white Photoshop-ed pictures, but none of this gets Tony to crack.
Tony tells Larry that unless Juma’s demands are met, planes are going to start falling from the sky, because he has powerful magnets all over the country just ready to go, and that any pictures Larry has will be of dead Americans – and not the Grateful Dead ones either.
Walker calls Larry, and tells him that Tony won’t crack. Walker wants to torture Tony, “just a little bit”. Larry recoils at this idea, and tells her that he wants Jack completely out of the building. I’m sure Jack will love this idea, since that was his plan anyway.
10:37 – Walker goes into the FBI analyst room, and Agent Janis practically yells across the room that she found might have found the leak, but that she has to go into the “mainframe room” to pull some of the vacuum tubes to get the user id. Janis leaves.
Walker asks Agent Teller, who appears to be the FBI bellhop, that Jack is about to check out of Hotel FBI and to go get Jack’s belongings.
10:38 – Janis goes down to the mainframe room, which is smaller than you’d expect and brings up a terminal which is about 3 feet off the ground, just her height. She is shocked to find out that Sean was the one that accessed the computers without authorization. And, of course, what with the lax security around the place, she turns around and sees Sean standing there.
She confronts him with the information about the database access, and he tells her there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation: He’s been stalking his own wife’s plane, and when he couldn’t stalk her without the right clearance, he decided to break federal law so he could keep stalking her. He brings it up on the workstation, and Janis completely believes him. Sean leaves.
10:41 – Chloe, back in form, already has broken into all the security camera at the FBI. She calls Jack to tell him that Agent Walker is on her way, already has film loops that can be installed so Jack can get away, and is writing a UNIX kernel module in her spare time.
Walker enters Jack’s room, and she thanks him for Tony, and that they “wouldn’t have him if it weren’t for you”. Jack gives her a big hug, tells her “don’t fight it” (which is more than a little disturbing) and makes her pass out. He grabs her gun.
Commercial
10:46 – Chloe calls Bill to let him know what Jack’s status is. Jack leaves the room, and confronts Larry and an officer in the interrogation room. Larry looks completely surprised by this, because he was sure Tony was going to crack under the pressure of his stern tone of voice. Larry starts to talk a little too much, and Jack finally elbows him in the face. Tony does the same thing to the officer, who just happens to be just at the right place for this. As they leave, Jack tells Tony that Chloe’s on the job, so getting out of the building should be no problem, just like old times.
They make it past a couple of agents, and Tony and Jack apologize to each other for saying nasty things and nearly killing each other. They continue to try and leave the building.
10:49 – Sean notices there’s a 0.7% performance hit on one of the servers, which greatly alarms Janis. They realize that someone’s hacked into the system, not realizing they’re up against Chloe. Chloe is using a Mac, while the FBI people are using PCs, which could slow them down, but they’re using Windows XP instead of Vista. Janis “pings” the line, knocking Chloe offline. Sean brings up a picture of Agent Larry knocked out in interrogation room 1, saves a picture of it for the next office party, and sends it to Janis. Janis calls security, who sets off an alarm, altering Jack and Tony they’ve been found out. Five officers run down the hall, which hardly seems far, since they’re all against Jack. Jack asks Chloe for some more help, but she says she’s blocked, and…
Oh oh, Chloe says she’s pissed off.
Commercial
10:55 – Tony and Jack are still locked down, even after spending time hiding for the whole commercial. They make a break for the stairwell, which is completely unguarded. Larry and Walker get in the analyst room, where Janis and Sean announce they’ve found Jack and Tony in the stairwell. Larry orders a perimeter around the building. Now, if I were Jack, I’d try and meet with someone in the basement to get a way out that way, since that’s the way Sniper fooled everyone who set up the last building perimeter.
Jack’s got a much better plan – Chloe! She breaks back in, surprising Janis with her LEET SKILLZ. Chloe tells them about a pending ambush, so Jack and Tony go out a window. Walker and Larry are mad now. You can tell because they each use the word “perimeter” within 30 seconds of each other.
Jack and Tony go to a parking garage. Jack provides some cover while Tony jumps off the garage onto a car. Jack jumps into a car, hot-wires it and floors it without looking where he’s going. Jack screams while the car heads for the barricade to the outside, since he realizes at the last moment that he forget his seatbelt. While this is going on, a bright blue, completely inconspicuous van pulls up next to Tony. It’s Bill! Jack and Tony make their getaway! One of the officers uses the word “perimeter” to tell everyone how grave the situation is.
In the van, Jack asks what’s going on, and Bill tells him that they have to go to commercial so he’ll have to tell him next hour!
11:00 am – Time’s up