Previously on 24, we found out that: Wearing a really bad wig makes it easier for people to remember you; Olivia can show a second emotion: completely freaked out; Janice proved that if you stab enough keys on a keyboard, you might do something useful; Kim really needs to learn to pick better people to talk to at the airport.
6 am – Olivia takes a phone call on the quickest “How Soon After The Beginning Of The Show Can We Do A Product Placement” ever. Seems that unlike in the real world, the deputy attorney general wants to debrief Olivia, which puts him at the end of a long line.
Her mother, Mrs. President, wants her in another briefing, and goes into detail on what happened during the last show. Things are happening pretty fast, but they appear to have had enough time to do a pretty amazing multimedia presentation behind her. She tells everyone in the room that Tony is the key to finding out about everything.
6:02 am – Jack continues to get information through his earpiece, and is told he’s going to need to take over the van. They’re pretty much watching Jack’s every move, which would be great idea for a plot, if it hadn’t already been done in the movie “Eagle Eye”.
6:05 am – At the airport, a lady and her son want to sit down, so Bob, the “I’m just going to the bathroom to kill someone” guy, has to move the spy camera briefcase he’s had open this whole time. It’s been taking pictures of Kim, and uploading them to YouTube. When he moves the briefcase, Kim notices that Bob’s got blood on his neck. He just blames the vampires he met in Sunnyvale, and goes to find something to clean it up with.
6:07 am – Evil woman finally has taken off her wig, and pulls over to take a phone call from Bob. Bob’s worried about the body he left behind in the restroom, and that he’s not going to be able to stuff it in his overhead bin without putting it into a plastic baggie first. Evil woman tells Bob that it won’t take long for Jack to deliver Tony.
6:08 am – In the FBI van, Jack asks for Renee’s iPhone, disables the “Your Friends At the FBI” app, and pulls a gun on Renee. To prove that he’s serious he FINALLY shoots someone in the thigh. Janice gets hysterical, and thinks that repeating Jack’s name over and over will somehow help.
Renee wants to know why Jack is doing this. He says it’d be pretty boring for the next two hours if all he did was take Tony prisoner, and besides, they have his daughter. Tony doesn’t want Jack to reveal any more plot points, and tells him to shut up as Janice and Chloe frantically try to help find where the van is headed.
6:10 am – The van arrives at the place Evil Woman is waiting, in a tunnel. As Tony is uncuffed, Jack handcuffs Renee, but whispers to her that she needs to help Kim, no matter what. Tony takes Jack from the van.
Evil woman’s name turns out to be Cara, which isn’t particularly evil unless it’s short for “Caramba”, but probably not even then. Cara wants to know why Tony hasn’t shot Jack yet, and he tells her that they can use all his vital organs for their evil plans. She tells Tony that she’s pretty sure turning Jack into hot dogs won’t serve their purposes. Tony explains that since Jack was exposed to the gas, they can use his blood to make more toxic gas. He tells her to get a biochemist ready back at The Secret Hideout.
Commercial
6:16 am – Ethan’s back in the White House, trying to figure out why Aaron called him. Aaron’s pretty much right on target with what happened to Jonas – and explains the meeting with Martin. Ethan’s not sure about the whole “breaking in” thing, but finally decides he will because if he didn’t it would break a long tradition of crazy recording devices in the White House.
6:18 am – Olivia finally gets out of her “meeting”, after being questioned about the phone records over and over. She looks like her normal, very very upset self.
Ethan just has enough time to get the recording device from his hiding place. Aaron tries to distract her with some shiny keys, but it doesn’t work. She walks into her office to find Ethan there. Ethan makes an excuse that he was missing some old comic books that had some sentimental value. After Olivia looks them over and doesn’t find any Archies, she lets him go.
She doesn’t let Aaron go however, and starts to chew him out about letting people into her office, when she notices that the picture frame on the wall has got a weird blue glow she never noticed before. She looks and sees a computer behind it, tries to break in, and can’t. She calls security.
6:22 am – Just outside the White House, Ethan gets stopped. Ethan tries to explain that he only went back for comic books, but goes with them anyway.
6:23 am – Renee calls Janice, who is none too pleased that she wasn’t called earlier than this. She raises her voice at Renee, who ignores it, and starts talking to Chloe about what’s going on with Jack and Kim.
Chloe gets on the phone with gate 7 at the airport to try and save Kim. Janice gets on the phone with the White House to let anyone there who might be a mole know what’s happening at the airport.
A ticket agent calls up a number of standby passengers, and then lets Kim have the phone to talk to Renee. Kim can’t believe that Tony is now Evil Tony, because she used to call him “Uncle Tony” and everything. Renee convinces her that it’s all true. Renee says that Agent Franks was sent to watch her, but it’s tough for him to do now because he’s dead. The couple she’s been sitting with are the type of people that move their airline seats all the way backward, take up all the overhead compartments, and all the foot space in the seats that don’t even belong to them. In other words, they’re bad, bad people.
Kim turns around to describe Bob to Renee, and it turns out that Bob has decided to help her out by coming up right next to her. Kim makes up a story about not having her toothbrush in a clear plastic bag, and getting a phone call from security about it. She goes back to her seat after Bob, very unsuspiciously tells her that he got worried when he saw her on the phone. Bob would make a great stalker.
Kim sits back down and tries to make small talk with Bob and the woman, and starts showing off baby pictures.
This really ticks off Bob, who starts shooting everyone in sight. The woman pulls a knife on Kim, but Kim has the presence of mind to stab her in the thigh, which would have made Jack proud. The woman gets shot dead, Bob gets shot in the thigh (which makes three thigh injuries in one show!), and escapes into a stairway. Kim decides to follow Bob, which I’m pretty sure Jack would NOT approve of.
Commercial
6:33 am – Olivia confronts Ethan in a White House interrogation room and tries to bluff her way through getting the recording. Olivia tells him that she really wants the data card he has because it has her entire iTunes collection on it. Ethan refuses so she finally calls in a security guard to search for the data card. Ethan finally turns over. Olivia breaks the card into pieces.
6:36 am – Aaron takes over escorting Ethan out of the White House, and hands Aaron the REAL data card she was trying to find. They hope to embarrass Olivia by telling everyone about her obsession with Sanjaya and the fact that she had Jonas killed.
6:37 am – Cara, Tony and Jack arrive at the secret hideout. As usual, we know it is a secret hideout because all the lights are turned off. They take Jack down a long corridor to the secret hideout’s operating room. They’re going to see how many quarts low Jack is by taking some of his spinal fluid. From that they’ll be able to tell if they’re going to be able to make “Bioweapon Jack” or not. Jack starts to have a seizure, and they give him a sedative to make him stop convulsing.
Outside the room, Tony tries to make his case that he needs a “larger role” in the organization, and that he needs to see Cara’s contact. She pulls one out of her eye to show him. He tells her he means her boss, and she says she’ll see what she can do.
Meanwhile, they start to extract spinal fluid from Jack, which is especially painful since he has more backbone than any ten guys alive.
Commercial
6:45 am – Olivia’s on the phone with Martin. Martin tells her to quit panicking. Agent Tim arrives to tell her that Mrs. President needs her in the Oval Office to start doing her job.
6:46 am – Renee and her team arrive at the airport, guns drawn, into a crowd who pretty much ignore them all. She figures out that Kim is probably following Bob.
6:47 am – Kim is following Bob, which is pretty easy because Bob is bleeding and limping all over the place. Bob heads up some stairs, hoping to escape. She loses him, but finds a police officer. Fortunately, this officer is NOTHING like Jabraan’s officer – this guy is actually helpful.
Kim gets on the phone with Renee and tells her that Bob is on the upper levels of the parking garage and probably doesn’t even have a ticket stub, so she should be on the lookout.
Turns out that Bob wasn’t all that far away after all. He’s driving straight towards Kim and the officers (oh, and “Kim and The Officers” would be a good name for a rock band). Bob shoots both the officers, but one is a pretty darn good shot himself, and shoots Bob. Bob’s car goes out of control, flips over, and flames start shooting out of it.
Kim, using her innate Bauer instinct, realizes that she’s going to need some way of finding Jack, and that Bob is the only connection she has left. Well, that and she remembers that Renee told her that. She runs to the car to save the laptop Bob was carrying. Bob isn’t dead though, and has other ideas. They fight briefly, and with a “it sucks to be you”, Kim breaks free, without any harm to herself. It’s a different story for her coat though, which is on fire. She finally gets that off, and continues to stand RIGHT NEXT TO THE FLAMING CAR, along with Renee and the other agents (“Renee and The Other Agents” would also be a good name for a rock band). Kim explains that they should be able to use the camera and transmitter to help find Jack. Renee looks like she wants to offer Kim the job that Janice has.
Commercial
6:54 am – Ethan gets in his car and starts to play the data card back through his hybrid car’s system, which is another nice product placement. He fast forwards the recording to the EXACT spot where Olivia incriminates herself, skipping over all the parts where she was singing to herself in her office when she thought no one was listening.
6:55 am – At the lab, Tony asks about the levels of pathogen that’s been extracted, and the biochemist is pretty darned excited. He thinks that after they take out Jack’s organs, they’ll be able to make all the pathogen they need, plus they might have enough left over to make their own RoboJack. He also mentions that the only way to destroy the pathogen is to expose it to 500 degree heat, which is a specific plot point that will come up again later.
6:56 am – Cara tells her boss, Alan, that Jack is going to help them reconstitute the bioweapon – well, at least major portions of Jack are going to. She tries to convince Alan that he really needs to meet with Tony. He agrees and even wants to come over within the next half hour, but plans to have Tony killed if he “doesn’t like what he sees”. Cara tells Tony to put on his best “I’m with YOU guys” face.
6:57 am – The biochemists unstrap Jack, and he takes the opportunity to kill all of them, while handcuffed! Jack runs through the door to escape, setting off the alarm, and is momentarily stunned by looking at the sun. Tony and Cara head after him, but don’t see where he went.
7:00 am – Time’s up!
NEXT TIME ON 24: RIGHT NOW!
7:00 am – Renee talks on the phone with Chloe, but they’re having problems finding where the camera was transmitting. Kim’s worried because they have a less than an hour left to find Jack and save him.
7:01 am – Jack crawls under a gap in a garage door and finds some taxi cabs, which are all locked for some reason. Jack finds a key in the shape of a huge wrench and opens one of the taxis with it. The loud noise attracts Tony, who tries to use his gun to unlock some of the taxis, and to try to shoot Jack. Jack gets the garage door closed, notices that the taxis are all leaking gas and tries to light himself on fire, because he heard about that “500 degrees will kill the virus” thing. Tony uses a fork lift to break into the garage, knocks away the flare in Jack’s hands and knocks Jack out.
7:04 am – Ethan is now back inside the White House, and goes to see Olivia. She’s really surprised to see him, but not in a good way. Ethan tells her that she just destroyed her own iTunes library, and that he has the evidence against her, which he gave to Aaron. Aaron looks completely disgusted with Olivia, which is pretty much how everyone in the audience feels too.
Olivia tries to explain how she tried to save Jonas, by not paying the guy who killed him, and that she planned on throwing a fundraiser, and everything. Ethan doesn’t believe this for one minute.
Olivia tries to tell him that she’ll resign, he’ll get his old job back, and even get what’s behind door number three, but Ethan isn’t buying any of it. He just wants the truth out there. Olivia points out that if that happens, Mrs. President will have a major scandal on her hands. Ethan says he knows all that, and wants Olivia to tell the president herself!
7:07 am – Jack is chained up by Tony, and he tries to lecture Tony about service to the country. It turns out that Evil Tony isn’t really Evil Tony after all! He’s been doing this all along so he could get to Evil Alan, which has taken him four years to finally meet him. Alan Wilson is the guy responsible for President Palmer’s death, was behind Charles Logan, AND had Michelle killed. Jack can’t believe this is about revenge, because HE would never do anything for revenge, nosiree. They yell at each other enough for Cara to hear, but she’s out of earshot.
Tony tells Jack that he’s the one that saved thousands of people today. Jack points out that, technically, Tony’s actions did kill a lot of people, and that if he ends up killing Alan, nobody will ever know.
Tony tells Jack that it won’t be a problem because he’s made Jack a special belt with explosives on it, and he’ll blow up Jack and Alan together.
Tony does say that he’s sorry though. So, I think we don’t have a Good Tony. I’m going to stick with Mainly Evil Tony. He duct tapes Jack’s mouth shut.
Cara arrives and takes a look Jack’s medical record, which pretty much says Jack is having a very, very bad day.
Commercial
7:14 am – Cara tells Tony that Alan doesn’t know about her relationship with Tony, and neither did we until just now. She thinks it would be a good idea to keep Alan in the dark about that, since she’s probably having an affair with him too.
7:15 am – Alan arrives in a limo with two very inconspicuous black Humvees, and a bunch of guys dressed in black. Tony makes a joke about one even dressed liked Steve Jobs, but nobody laughs. The guys search Tony and Cara and take their guns. The guys give the all clear signal.
Alan steps out of the limo, trying to act as menacingly as he can, but he looks pretty silly, and speaks with a weird accent. Alan asks to see the pathology report, and gets upset when they bring the paleontology report instead. They get things straightened out.
Some of the guys bring back Jack while Alan looks over the report. Just as the bomb is about to go off, Renee arrives via helicopter and ruins everything. There’s a lot of shooting, but fortunately only the sidekicks get killed. None of the main characters are hurt.
Tony realizes he can set off a pretty cool special effect, so he shoots some gasoline which sets off a big oil can explosion. He uses this opportunity to go after Alan and Cara, who have both left the area.
Renee gets to Jack, and he explains what Tony is doing so she (and the audience) can understand. Renee also happens to know all about the exact triggering device on Jack’s explosive belt, so she disarms it. For some reason, Jack leaves with the bomb still strapped to himself!
Tony catches up with Cara and Alan. He shoots Cara, and pulls a gun on Alan. He explains why he wants to kill Alan, and starts beating him up after he explains everything, including that Michelle was pregnant with their son when she died.
Tony makes the classic mistake of explaining everything to the bad guy instead of just killing him on the spot, which gives Jack and Renee enough time to find them and to shoot Tony so they can both be taken into custody.
As he’s leaving, he blames Jack for running away from everything.
Commercial
7:27 am – Renee confronts Alan, and tells him that if he cooperates she’ll talk to the grand jury. Alan says he has no idea what she’s talking about, doesn’t know anything about a conspiracy, and was just out riding around with his security personnel in their Humvees and his limo when all this happened. She storms off.
7:28 am – In an ambulance, a paramedic tries to give Jack some drugs that he says will ease his pain. Jack says that’s a pretty obscure Field of Dreams reference, so he doesn’t want anything for the pain.
Renee walks in says that Alan isn’t talking. She really, really wants to make him talk. She wants some advice. Jack says that first, never start a land war with Asia, and second, he’s been struggling with what to do when he tries to save people.
They have a nice little speech together about laws and the difference between the law and saving people. Jack’s advice is – make choices you can live with, and never order the McRib sandwich – it’s way overrated. They finally take Jack to the hospital.
Commercial
7:37 am – Olivia and Henry are waiting for Mrs. President at the White House. Olivia explains that Jonas is dead because of her, and that she was the one that had him killed. Olivia almost looks like she’s actually sad about the whole thing, but never sheds a tear, possibly because she’s a robot.
Mrs. President is pretty upset with Olivia, but Henry wants her to do a cover-up to save Olivia. He blames Mrs. President for their son’s death.
Agent Tim interrupts with some “good news”, but she sends him away. He leaves, and Henry tells her to destroy the recording. Henry and Olivia make sad faces at each other.
7:40 am – Agent Tim tells Janice that he’ll be there soon, and he’ll be there in twenty minutes to get Alan, which is right near the end of the show, so it doesn’t look good for Alan.
7:42 am – Chloe accidentally pays Janice a complement, tells her to have fun with her TRS-80s and leaves the FBI offices.
7:44 am – Jack tells the doctor he doesn’t want any morphine. A nurse arrives to tell Jack he has a visitor! It’s Gohar, the cleric from the Mosque!
Jack tells him that he’s made a lot of mistakes, like not killing all the bad people he could have, and he’s wanted to correct them before he died. The cleric tells him that with all Jack’s flaws and goodness, he’s simply a man. I have no idea what that means either. He says a prayer for Jack. Jack thanks him and says, “It’s time.”
Commercial
7:51 am – Mrs. President comes back to see Olivia and Henry. She kisses them both. She apologizes for causing all the problems she has for the family, but has decided to do just one more thing and has Olivia arrested by Aaron.
Aaron tells Olivia she’s going to the Justice Department, and she shoots him a look of death which doesn’t work, so she goes with him.
Mrs. President leaves Henry, who won’t speak to her. Ethan is still in the hallway where he was waiting to gloat while Olivia was taken away. Mrs. President is pretty sure that she’s lost Henry too. She says she’s lost everyone. Ethan decides this would be a good time to put the moves on her and says she hasn’t lost him.
7:56 am – Alan is lead into a room where he can be interrogated. Janice comes in with some transfer documents. Renee tells her to leave, but Janice refuses. It’s pretty clear that Renee wants to go Jack Bauer on Alan, and pulls a gun on Janice! Janice keeps talking and Renee inexplicably doesn’t shoot her.
Renee goes into the room with Alan, and closes the door.
7:57 am – Kim arrives at the hospital to find Jack in a coma. Gohar introduces himself as a friend of Jack’s.
Kim tells the doctor that she wants to go through with the experimental treatment to save Jack, which will undoubtedly save him, but leave everyone else’s fate up in the air.
8:00 am – TIME’S UP!
NEXT WEEK: THERE IS NO NEXT WEEK!
SEE YOU DURING THE NEXT SEASON OF “24”!
(Special thanks to Dave and Judi for letting me post these summaries each week over at Dave Barry’s website, to my wife and kids for putting up with me while I write these each Monday, and my good friend John for reading through all these each week before I post them).
Side effect of the stem cell therapy. Kills the virus but Jack becomes trans-gendered.
Isn’t it like Kim to screw up even death! I loved that despite the fact there were a dozen fallen people, all with phones with perfectly good batteries and loaded weapons, Kimmy decided to follow the homicidal maniac without anything but her wits. Not only that, Kim’s wits save the day after all was said and done. Oh dear lord, kill me now! Seriously, just take me and send me downstairs without dessert. It’d be more humane…
Nothing about the first Battery Low in the history of TV? Oh well… Still great! Great humor!
Thanks for another season! Your posts are always something to look forward to each week.
Just wondering if you’re going to be doing the parody like 24 – the next day again this year?
No, not this year. I have too many other projects I’m working on right now.
One of them is a podcast segment that I’ve been doing for a popular World of Warcraft game. It’s called Ask Buxley.
I have several other things going on too, but none of those have been announced.