Previously on 24: We found out that: Lennox keeps skeletons in his closet; Jack can yell at Gray so much that he can make him cry; people that can arm nuclear devices can be found in less than an hour in southern California; if you pick pocket a phone from someone, it’s probably a good idea to just toss it on the ground after you use it; Jack and his father are about to sing “Unchained Melody” in the back of a van.
The following summary occurs between 12 pm and 1 pm:
12:00 pm – It looks like hazmat ice cream trucks take longer to get to scenes of tragedy than perky news crews. Perky news crews also don’t understand the concept of being down wind of nuclear explosions.
12:01 pm – Lennox puts on his sad eyes and goes to tell President Wayne that he’s really sorry that Haig resigned, and comes up with a lame excuse to try to get Wayne to sign his autograph on some authorizations to declare everyone in the United States as illegal. Lennox seems to think that getting Wayne to sign a piece of paper is going to get Fayed to stop exploding things. Wayne tells Lennox to pass out copies to the cabinet, and Lennox is REALLY excited about it.
12:02 pm – Haig gets a phone call from Bill, and tells him that she resigned. Bill says that this is a really bad day to resign, because if she takes a plane back to LA, she’ll be off camera for at least a few hours, hampering her chances to get an Emmy for “Most Overly Dramatic Actress In a Nuclear Crisis”. Bill tries to call her back, but she can’t afford the air-time minutes, and doesn’t answer the call. A door slides open, and she enters a little green elevator with a very bored looking CIA guy inside who looks like he wants to say “I joined the CIA for this?”
12:03 pm – At CTU, Chloe tells Bill that she can’t reach Jack by satellite, phone, or smoke signal. She says she’ll keep trying.
12:03 pm – In the van, a thug is on the phone with Gray, who is dumping hard drives… probably on Ebay. Jack’s father starts to tell Jack that everything he’s worked for has been for Jack, but Jack looks unconvinced since he still has a government job. A government job that lets him shoot people, sure, but still….
12:07 pm – The van stops at a junk hard, and the thugs make the mistake of 1) unchaining Jack, and 2) carrying guns. They move to a hole in the ground right next to a cement truck, and a struggle ensues! There’s shooting! YEAH! It’s been WAY too long, and Jack, while relieved he finally got to shoot someone, forgot to tell his Dad not to join the fun because now they have no one to question.
12:10 pm – Jack, with his hands still handcuffed calls Bill, and tells him that Gray has been a naughty nuclear collaborating monkey.
12:11 pm – McCarthy calls to tell Fayed that he found a guy to do the nuclear arming, and actually sends his resume to Fayed! They have very strict hiring laws in California.
Commercial
12:15 pm – Nadia plays a recording for Bill of a podcast she downloaded featuring Fayed’s and McCarthy’s phone call. Morris has a weird screen saver that he hopes can reconstruct the resume, in about 10 minutes, so we’ll check back then.
12:16 pm – Jack stops off to meet one of the CTU guys in the field, Hal Turner, outside of Gray’s house. Jack tells Hal that he wants Gray taken alive, but it’s OK to shoot just about anything else. Jack’s dad wants to know “What are you going to do to him?” and Jack answers, “His hair and nails”, and leaves before his father remembers that Gray is bald.
12:17 pm – Gray, his wife Marilyn, and his son Josh, all start arguing with each other when Jack bursts into the room with some CTU guys. Gray pulls a gun, which really surprises his wife and son. It seems that Gray hasn’t quite told the truth about his real job.
12:18 pm – Jack tells Marilyn that Gray is involved with the nuclear blast, and she doesn’t seem all that surprised that Gray is a weasel. Marilyn stops Jack cold when she tells him, “I’ve seen what happens when you try and protect people”. Ouch.
12:19 pm – The tactical commando guys at CTU must have gone through the Chloe Computer Training Course because they know how to upload whole hard drives up to CTU. Jack tells the commando to take Marilyn and Josh to CTU for safe keeping, because we all know NOTHING can go wrong there. Except Tony. And Edgar. And a Hobbit.
12:20 pm – Josh and Marilyn see Jack’s dad, and Marilyn tells him to tell Jack to “Keep Josh out of this”… She seems to be under the impression that Josh might be the mastermind behind this whole thing.
12:21 pm – Gray tries the “penguin on top of the television” defense and tells Jack that he panicked. Jack yells at Gray, and when that doesn’t work, Jack yells louder, which doesn’t work either. Then Jack tells the interrogation guy, “Set up the Interrogation Package”, which is an upgrade from the “Yelling At” package”. The Interrogation Package comes in a silver suitcase.
Commercial
12:27 pm – Milo gets Chloe and shows her information about Morris’ brother, who either stood way to close to a microwave oven, or got hit with the nuclear blast. He’s in critical condition. Milo takes a page from Management 101 and says he wants to keep Morris from knowing about this because he’s still got several hours of work to do. Chloe ignores this and tells Morris, who can’t understand why his brother was in Valencia. Morris tries to leave, but Chloe convinces him to stay and help.
12:29 pm – Back at the Bauer House of Impending Torture, Jack is on the phone with Bill, who tells Jack about the nuclear engineer and the resume. Gray is having the finishing touches of duct tape applied when Jack walks in and tells Gray about McCarthy’s plan to find an engineer. Gray tells him that since nearly every engineer in California works for Google now, he doesn’t believe it. Meanwhile, Jack’s father just wanders into Gray’s house, despite the large number of CTU commandos all over the place. One of the commandos is video taping the talk Jack and Gray are having for a DVD called “Bauers Gone Wild”, while Jack’s father watches.
12:30 pm – Jack wants to inject Gray with some rather nasty stuff that will cause pain and induce overacting in Gray, and it really works. Gray starts overacting all over the place, but won’t tell Jack anything. They really crank up the CCs of the stuff, and Gray finally starts to confess that it’s not McCarthy but it’s really about everything from LAST season, including David Palmer, Tony, Michelle, but he SWEARS he has nothing to do with Manilow. He tells Jack that he also set Jack up to be killed before, not just what’s happened today. Gray says he’s doing all this “because he loves his country”. Why killing Jack would help the country, I have no idea. I can only think that Gray hasn’t been watching Jack’s fine handiwork for the last few seasons. Gray makes the mistake of telling Jack the cliché “We’re just the same”, which must be a trigger word for Jack because it makes him REALLY mad, and he does the unthinkable. He pushes Gray’s chair over backwards and starts yelling at everyone that he wants to Gray dead right now. The only thing that stops his rampage is when Jack sees his father, who has a VERY disappointed look on his face. Gray looks angry. I mean really angry. I mean, if he were near the nuclear blast earlier, he’d be Bruce Banner angry.
Commercial
12:40 pm – Sandra’s in the hospital with Walid. Walid must be one tough guy, because all he has is a band-aid on his face after that beating he took in the courtyard. Sandra tries to comfort him by telling him that there’s a BIG lawsuit in this for him.
12:41 pm – President Wayne calls Sandra to ask about Walid, and she starts telling him that the men in the courtyard were “innocent bystanders” who just happened to pull down information from the Internet about the additional nuclear weapons, forgetting that the police might have been a bit interested in that.
12:42 pm – Morris downloads an open source application to try to help descramble what he’s working on, but it nearly doesn’t work because he just installed Vista.
12:42 pm – Jack is on the phone with Bill. Jack tells Bill all about Gray’s activities last season, going to Enron-like lengths to protect the company. Gray’s going to CTU, and CTU is setting up at a middle school for what I can only guess will be a gruesome show and tell later.
12:43 pm – Back inside the house, Jack tries to tell his Dad that Gray made “bad choices”, and that’s why he’s in the time out chair. Jack’s father says Jack deserved a “better family”. Jacks wants his father to go to CTU, which will just be about at maximum Bauer capacity by the time he gets there with Gray, Marilyn and Josh.
Commercial
12:50 pm – Morris’ Eclipse plug-in is working, so they should have the picture soon.
12:51 pm – A very scary looking vice president, even scarier looking than last year’s, is on Air Force 2 and confers with Lennox about “the plan”. The cabinet convenes, and Wayne wants to know if everyone’s read “Executive Order 1066”. Everyone looks as though they’re already sick of the other 1065 Executive orders, so one more is just more of the same. They all pretend they’ve read it.
12:52 pm – Wayne drops his own bomb that he’s NOT going to use Lennox’s plan, and launches into a political speech. He and Tom argue back and forth in the same format that Sandra uses to monologue. We also find out that the vice president’s name is “Noah”.
12:53 pm – At CTU everyone is running around urgently. They’re really dragging out the picture Morris is trying to reconstruct. The picture finally reassembles, and TA DA! It’s Morris! They’re going to try and get Morris to set the nuclear weapons! Morris, of course, has left the building, and is now in extreme danger of becoming the focus of the next several hours of the show. The whole thing with Morris’ brother at the hospital was a set up just to get Morris outside of CTU.
12:55 pm – CTU gets Morris on the phone, and just as he’s talking to Jack, McCarthy shows up, gets angry at the passenger seat of Morris’ car, shoots it, and steals Morris, all with everyone listening in on the phone. Bet that makes the Christmas blooper reel.
12:56 pm – Back at Gray’s house, Gray is still tied up, and Jack’s father asks to talk to Gray alone, which no one considers even the slightest bit suspicious.
12:57 pm – Well, well, well… Jack’s father and Gray are still in on the whole thing together. They’ve planned everything! They really, really want the company to survive, and Gray says he’s going to be a tough monkey to protect the company.
12:59 pm – Jack’s dad doesn’t believe him, shoots chemicals into Gray’s IV drip, and kills him! They just left a syringe lying around?? Wonder if that video tape was still going in the other room?
1:00 pm – Time’s up!
NEXT TIME: TWO HOUR SHOW! A SUPER FAST PLANE HAS GOTTEN ASSAD TO WASHINGTON ALREADY! SHOOTING! EXPLOSIONS! JACK HAS TO DISARM A TICKING BRIEFCASE!
Be sure and catch all of Steve’s summaries of Season 6 of “24”!
will be arriving on July 21st, 2007.