Season 7 – 24 – 8pm to 9pm

Last week – Steve was on assignment in…. Los Angeles! It was just like it’s always been depicted on 24, except: The traffic is much, much worse; hardly any cars flip over; there were no signs of thigh shootings; it is much, much larger than it appears on TV.

Jack Bauer must still be in Washington, because he was nowhere to be seen.

I’m beginning to think all this “24” stuff might be fake.

Previously on 24: Jack’s attempt to come out of the secure room and kill everyone by using odor from his armpit fails; Juma threatened to do impromptu surgery on Olivia; Senator Red Foreman got close up look at non-theoretical hostage situation, which still hasn’t changed his mind about Jack.

8:00 pm – VP Hayworth, watching Dora the Explorer from his secret location is interrupted by a phone call from Agent Larry. Hayworth and his assistant recap all the events surrounding the capture of the President, bringing us up to speed on what a bozo he’s been so far.

8:02 pm – President Taylor is with Olivia, who has discovered a way to cry without tears. President Taylor has a bloodstain on her mouth, which looks like a huge cold sore. None of the captured secret service agents feel it is their place to tell her about this, even though it’s the size of a VW Bug.

8:03 pm – Jack tells Bill that he wants to use natural gas to blow up the room as a diversion. Bill looks over at Senator Red Foreman, but Jack explains that’s not what he meant. Jack says the secure room he was just in just happened to have canisters of gas in it, in case the White House ran short on natural gas, or needed to make the room very secure. Jack’s plan is to run in there and blow it up, hopefully taking a few of Juma’s men with him. Senator Red Foreman wants to know what this plan is, but Jack tells him to shut up.

8:04 pm – Juma wants Mrs. President to read a statement, which presupposes she knows how to read. Juma decides that in an act of good faith, he’ll release one of the hostages. Apparently “release” doesn’t mean the same thing in Sangala, because Juma interprets this to mean “release from life”, and shoots a guy in the head. The President whispers to an assistant to be sure to check the Sangalan to English dictionary translations so that doesn’t happen again.

8:06 pm – Taylor agrees to read a statement which is clearly written by Juma, because it has a lot of pro-Sangalan propaganda, and some important news about how hair restoration for bald generals.

8:07 pm – VP Hayworth wants the live video feed that Mrs. President is speaking on to be shut down. Derrik tells VP Hayworth about the internet connections, and how they’re pretty complicated to shut down, unless you’re in the middle of something really important, in which case they go down for three or four days at a time.

8:08 pm – Agent Larry says the hostage situation is about revenge, but VP Hayworth still wants to negotiate, since negotiating with terrorists seems to be the cornerstone of his potentially new administration.

Back at the White House, Bill tells Jack he thinks they’re still in danger, and that someone on the outside is working with Juma. Bill makes a run for the room, and blows up the room taking a few of the guards with him. This probably wasn’t Bill’s best decision.

Everyone sees the explosion. Agent Larry tells VP Hayworth that the FBI is going in to see what happened. Wayworth seems to be under the impression that he matters in some way, and that yelling at the video shot of the back of Agent Larry’s head is going to stop him. Hayworth realizes this isn’t effective, so he yells some more.

The White House is pretty dark and there’s a lot of shooting, which is really going to have an effect on future White House tours. Agent Aaron runs to get Mrs. President and Olivia, and keeps them safe. Senator Red Foremen tries the old “nonononono!” tactic of getting someone to stop shooting when one of Juma’s men points his machine gun at the senator. Jack’s tactic of shooting the guy works much more effectively, but Senator Red doesn’t seem impressed

Juma was wounded in the explosion, but he still wants to kill the President. All he has to do is formulate a plan on how to get around all the federal officers, figure out where she is, and get around Jack Bauer… who just walked in. Jack tells Juma not to move, so of course Juma moves, and Jack kills him.

Larry and Renee show up to get Mrs. President.

Jack goes back to Bill’s body, and is clearly upset that he’s lost yet another good friend. Getting Jack upset isn’t going to be good for any of the bad guys involved with the rest of this season. Bill will be missed.

8:12 – Commercial

8:16 pm – An officer tells the President they’re still sweeping the West Wing, and she tells him the White House has people with brooms, so they shouldn’t bother. There are also still no lights at the White House, and they’d like to move her to Andrews Air Force Base. She wants to stay, to talk to the VP, and to find out how her husband has been doing. She plans to swap “You wouldn’t BELIEVE the kind of day I had stories” with them.

Olivia comes over, Mrs. President asks about Aaron. Olivia can’t believe this happened, and is slightly suspicious that things like this go on all the time at the White house. Mrs. President and Olivia have a heart to heart talk saying, “I don’t ever want to lose you again”.

Aaron walks by with his shirt open, looking like a middle-aged, balder version of Fabio, and nods to Olivia, who might just be into bald, middle-aged Fabios.

8:19 pm – Renee comes over to Jack. “The President is safe”. Jack says he wanted to set off the explosion, because since he’s the lead of the show there’s a lot better chance he would have survived.

Jack tells Agent Larry, “This isn’t over yet”. Juma wasn’t working alone. He was getting real-time intel from someone on the outside. Jack wants to talk to Burnett, and is pretty sure that he can be scary enough to make him reveal the plans for what was really going on.

Jack gets handcuffed with ordinary handcuffs, which shows you how much East Coast FBI agents know about Jack. Renee and Larry have a tiff over Jack’s good idea – Larry doesn’t want to hear about it.

Renee decides that she really wants to do what Jack said, so she decides to talk to Mrs. President and goes to talk to Ethan.

8:21 – Hey! Someone found the light switch. The lights are back on in the White House! They’re gonna need some drywall spackle. Ethan is back. Renee talks to him, and tells him about Jack’s suspicions.

8:23 – Back at the latest bad guy headquarters, which seem to get upgraded every time we upgrade bad guys, Greg tells Jonas Hodges that President is alive. Jonas thinks that Greg looks “two tense”, and Greg tells him he really only feels like one tent. Jonas suggests that Greg have a drink, which he does. Much to everyone’s surprise, (probably even Jonas’), Greg doesn’t die from a poisoned drink. Jonas looks like he makes a mental note to start labeling the poison drinks a bit more carefully. Or he might just have natural gas. It’s hard to tell from that look.

Jonas says that Juma held up his part of the bargain, except for the whole “dying” thing, and that “Everthing is still on track”. Jonas asks about some weapons and wants to Greg to get Chapman on the phone, and “I want to nail down some targets”. Greg looks around nervously, hoping that Jonas knows Graham Chapman died several years ago, and would be unlikely to participate in “nailing down some targets” even if he was alive.

8:24 Commercial

8:28 pm – Agent Larry is told that the chopper he requested will be here in 10 minutes to take Jack away. Jack looks excited until he realizes they don’t mean a motorcycle.

Larry gets call from Ethan. Ethan tells Larry want he already knows – there might be a continuing plot against the president. Ethan wants to send Jack to Burnett. Larry thinks Jack is a wild card. Ethan says he didn’t realize Jack had that kind of sense of humor, and that he’s be sure and ask about it the next time he sees Jack. Ethan wants to protect the president, and orders Larry to go in there and supervise.

8:30 pm – Mrs. President wants to talk to the families of all the dead people, but only the families that are still alive because she can’t speak with the dead. She wants to talk to her speech writer, but only if she isn’t dead, because dead speech writers have been tried at the White House before, and that didn’t work out so well. Mrs. President notices the young man she’s with, Patrick, seems to be a little shell shocked about all of today’s events, since this is his first “Terrorists Stormed the White House” experience that hasn’t been part of a video game. Patrick says it helps to “focus on work”, as opposed to focusing on almost getting killed.

Big President hug for Ethan. Lighting still isn’t right in this part of the Oval office, which is a good thing for us, because that was a scary-looking hug.

Since they ran out of so many extras during the hostage crisis, Mrs. President thinks it would be a good idea to bring in Olivia on as a special advisor. Ethan thinks Olivia is a political liability, since she leaked info against Mrs. President’s opponent during the campaign, which sounds like standard operating procedure for ALL campaigns. This one must be different.

Ethan says he thinks this idea about Olivia is a mistake. Mrs. President tells him, “I don’t care what you think! I’m so sorry! You know I don’t mean that.” She wants Ethan to tell Olivia this news, since she seems to be a little wishy-washy right now. Ethan gets this turned around on him the same way he did to Larry, and doesn’t like this one bit either.

8:33 pm – Helicopter loads up Jack, who tries to give Larry the evil eye, but it doesn’t work. Renee sees Larry. Larry is very upset about Renee going over his head. She tells him, “If we didn’t get in Jack’s way none of this probably would have happened”. Despite this being true, Larry suspends Renee for the next six games of the FBI softball league, and from her job.

Larry gets on the helicopter. Music plays loudly near the helicopter as it lifts off, since nearly all helicopters on “24” are equipped with powerful stereos. Larry says he’s going to watch Jack.

Commercial

8:40 pm – Using a very high tech video screen that’s not available at the local electronics store, a man briefs Jonas about target locations. Jonas says he thinks that hitting larger department stores would probably be better. They’ve programmed the computers to look at locations 10-15k people.

Greg tells Bauer is on his way to Burnett to find out all the information about what’s going on. Jonas looks a little worried, but Greg reassures him that someone named “Quinn” has been sent to the hospital to take care of Burnett and Jack. Jonas is completely against this, until Greg explains that “take care of” means “kill”, not offer snacks.

8:41 pm – Jack and Larry arrive at the hospital, where they meet the doctor, who gets all high and mighty on jack. He’s not a Jack fan. He reluctantly agrees,

Meanwhile, Quinn, dressed as an orderly, waltzes his way into the hospital with no problem whatsoever, despite the looks from people wondering why he’s doing the waltz. He goes into a random room to talk to Robert, an elderly patient there, and then kills him! Quinn apparently doesn’t like old guys.

This sets off alarms at the nurse’s desk, which causes they run off in the opposite direction from Robert’s room. They must be new. Quinn goes behind the counter, plugs into the computer at the desk, downloads some things to find Burnett. Good thing computer stuff is so easy to plug in and get working in a matter of seconds.

Quinn gets want he wants and goes to another room, and decides to climb through the ceiling to get in. Must be a short cut. Good the thing hospital built ceilings sturdy enough to hold people!

8:46 pm – Olivia sees Aaron without his shirt and thanks him. For saving her. And her mother. And for not wearing a shirt. “I want you to thank you for what you did”. Turns out, Aaron retired four years ago and something happened to Martha Logan. What happened? Aaron only says he’d prefer not to talk about that season of “24”. Olivia says that she hopes he won’t be a stranger, and Aaron has to point out that it would be impossible since they already know each other.

Ethan talks with Olivia about being a special advisor to the President. She seems to be happy to do so, and as her first goal, she’s going to see if she can get Ethan fired, which is pretty much how I’ve always envisioned how Washington really works.

8:49 pm – Commercial

8:54 pm – At the hospital, Larry actually touches Jack and doesn’t get instantly killed for doing so. Jack goes off to talk to Burnett.

Meanwhile, Quinn is still lost in the ceiling but has figured out where Burnett’s room is located.

Burnett wakes up, sees Jack and freaks out. Jack tries to talk to Burnett, but it’s a bit tough since Burnett is freaking out so much.

Quinn takes this opportunity to figure out a way to screw around with the sound from the room that Larry is listening too. Larry notices that Jack’s words don’t sound so much like words as they do buzzing. Larry thinks that Jack might be speaking in some kind of insect language, and isn’t suspicious enough to go running into the room in case something bad might happen.

Quinn works on the video to make it look like everything is OK in the room. He drops a gas canister. The gas is a gaseous form of Mentos and Coca-Cola which starts to make Jack and Burnett foam at the mouth. Quinn drops down from a ceiling panel, and smashes the lock on the door so no one can get in. Quinn gets fingerprints from Jack onto a glass shard, then kills Burnett with it. The real video pops back in, and Larry see that Burnett is dead.

Larry runs to the rescue, Jack goes into the ceiling, because that’s the most logical place to hide when you’ve been framed for murder.

Larry orders a security lock down, which of course allows Quinn to leave without being noticed.

Jack gets into a security room, Jack punches out a guard, takes a security DVD tape.

Greg gets phone call from Quinn, who lets him know that Burnett is dead and Jack has been framed. Jonas’ response? “Now we’re having some fun”.

Jack calls Larry and tells him that he’s been set up, and that “This threat is not over”. Larry tries to convince Jack to come back in, which of course would never work. Jack runs down an alley without any of the guards seeing him.

9:00 pm – Time’s up.

NEXT TIME – Larry complains to Janis! Larry calls Renee! Machine guns! Morris threatened! Senator Red tries to act tough! Jack acts tougher!