Previously on “24”, we found out that: Dana had really bad taste in boyfriends; Ziya, who had previously gotten an Extreme Manicure from Renee, doesn’t have to worry about his thumb anymore; Renee is REALLY good at playing chicken – either that our she could tell by looking down that gun barrel that it wasn’t loaded.
The following takes place between 9pm and 10pm:
9:00 pm – Jack arrives in time to see that Renee is still talking with Vladimir. He makes a phone call to CTU, suggesting that Renee is trying to get off the show in any way possible, even by dying. Hastings doesn’t want to pull her, so Jack suggests that when he goes undercover as a buyer for what the Russians are selling, he’ll take Renee’s place. Hastings says that Jack wouldn’t be able to do that very easily, since he doesn’t have freckles and he won’t look good in a Renee’s pantsuit.
9:05 pm – Hastings tells Dana that he wants her to start talking to the nuclear team that will help with the rods as soon as they find them. He’s worried that since Jack has previous experience with nuclear bombs going off, that he might just try and put them in a backpack and bring them in himself.
Dana’s a little distracted because of what her ex-boyfriend Kevin wants, but she agrees. When Hastings leaves, she calls Kevin to tell him that she found $120,000 impounded at a police warehouse. Kevin, and his friend Mick, who are camping out at Dana’s place try and perform a “high-five”, but end up doing a “side-five” instead. Somehow Kevin puts enough brain cells together to realize that trying to break into a warehouse to steal the money might not work out that well. Dana assures him that she can talk him through it, and promises to meet him in 30 minutes.
Arlo, who is still hitting on Dana, comes over to ask whether she solved that “problem” she went out to fix. He makes his hourly really crude hit on Dana, but she doesn’t fall for this lame attempt. Chloe looks like she wants to taser him right now.
9:07 pm – Vlad and Renee arrive back at their hideout. Renee explains that a guy named “Ernst Muir” is looking for weapons-grade uranium. Vlad looks skeptical, saying that “Ernst Muir” sounds like a cross between a James Bond villain and a ghost from a 1960s TV show. Vlad finally agrees to try and find out where the nuclear material might be. He asks for $5 million dollars, coupons from last week’s McDonald’s circular ad, and some real Russian vodka. Renee said it might be a problem, but she’ll check with “Muir”. Vlad leaves.
Renee starts looking around for people, and then asks Jack when he’ll be ready. Jack’s still on his way, and the only thing he’s having a problem finding are those coupons, so it’ll take about 30 minutes.
Commercial
9:16 pm – At the incredibly well-equipped local nuclear exposure clinic, the doctor attempts to save Josef’s brother’s life. Josef gets a call from his father and tells him that they’re stuck in traffic. Bazhaev believes this “traffic” excuse, because he’s never actually seen “24”, and doesn’t know that this whole “traffic” thing is virtually non-existent in the “24” universe.
There’s a knock at the door and Josef immediately pulls out a gun, which is a Russian custom, at least in his part of Russia. A nurse comes to the door with the blood work. They have must very good medical facilities in New York. Round the clock blood work, nuclear exposure specialists, all working past 9pm at night.
Anyway, it appears the little brother is going to need a bone marrow transplant, which the doctor isn’t equipped to do, because he’s missing five other doctors to help him. Josef doesn’t like this at all, and thinks that pointing a gun at the doctor’s head will help things. Josef doesn’t realize that 1) dead doctors are much less effective than live doctors; and 2) Dead doctors still bill at very high rates. The doctor tries to figure out what he can do to help Josef’s brother, but it doesn’t look very good at this point.
9:18 pm – Ortiz arrives to tell Jack that everything is in place to grab Vlad and his gang, and that he wired instructions about how to transfer money to the Jack phone. Also, despite being in two Scooby Doo movies, he’s still getting work in Hollywood. He tells Jack that he’s heard that Renee is a bit unstable, and suggests that a beer coaster under her heel might just do the trick. Jack rejects that and says he’s going to improvise to get Renee out. Ortiz suggests that he can help, and Jack tells him that he wants to do this himself.
9:19 pm – Vlad, who pronounces “Renee” as “Rawnay” pours some drinks and decides to go all Dr. Phil, and asks Renee what’s wrong. She won’t talk about it. Vlad decides to try and apologize for things he did to her in the past. She doesn’t want to hear about it, but Vlad tries to use this as an excuse to hit on her. He says thing like “you should watch your tongue, you might lose it one day”…. You know, really touchy-feely stuff. She excuses herself to go into the bathroom.
9:22 pm – Jack is getting impatient because he hasn’t shot anyone at all in the last twenty minutes, and tells Ortiz they have to go in to get Renee right away. Meanwhile, Vlad tells one of his henchmen that once the money is wired to their account, “Ernst” should be shot dead. Vlad thinks that once “Ernst” is dead, Renee will join them. He says she really doesn’t have any other place to go, since she’s so desperate, but not exactly like “Desperate Housewives”, since that’s on another network.
Renee and Dana are having big ex-boyfriend problems this season.
Commercial
9:28 pm – Taylor is still in the UN watching Youtube videos of violence in Generic Mideastern Country. She’s upset because the video has a lot more views than anything she’s ever posted, and the commenter’s are a lot nicer too. Ethan tells her that because of those videos, the Germans, British, and Egyptians are going to pull out of the peace accord. She decides to do what any high level manager would do in this situation: She’s going to call a meeting! That’ll fix things!
9:29 pm – Hassan is informed about the situation in his Generic Mideastern Country, and is disturbed to find that Jamad has a cousin, who might be in on the whole “killing him” plot. Hassan wants Jamad arrested and doesn’t really care how this is going to look, especially since Jamad hasn’t appeared on camera yet.
9:30 pm – Over at CTU, Dana mesmerizes herself with pretty computer graphics while she waits for that special keycard she made for Kevin. It finally finishes, and as she’s walking out, Arlo starts to whine some incoherent techobabble about “freeing memory on the server”, which nearly never works since other processes are probably memory starved and the scheduler will probably allocate resources to those processes first, unless they’re talking about shared memory regions, in which case it might actually work. In other words: Duh!
Dana tells him she’s working on it, and when she turns to leave, Arlo asks where she’s going. She says to the bathroom, but makes no jokes about “do you think you can help”, because Arlo would probably say something completely inappropriate. He decides to squint at her as she walks off instead.
9:32 pm – Arlo asks Chloe whether she notices anything weird about Dana, because he suspects she might actually be the last Cylon. Chloe pretty much lets Arlo have it, tell him that he shouldn’t drool all over Dana, and that drooling might short out his keyboard. Arlo tells Chloe that she’s just jealous, and she tells him “Oh yeah, jealous… Won’t you stare at my ass as I walk away”. Which, of course, he does.
9:33 pm – Dana goes out to the completely unsecured CTU parking lot to Kevin’s beat up old 1970’s van that doesn’t look in the least bit suspicious. CTU must have large signs outside so people are sure to know where to find it. Anyway, Dana goes out to the van, and gives Kevin a phone, keycard, earpiece and instructions. She makes him promise never to bother her again. He promises, but crosses his fingers behind his back.
While this is going on, Arlo is putting his stalker abilities to good use, and watches over a closed circuit camera while this is all going on.
9:35 pm – Renee finishes the shower she’s been in for the last 15 minutes, puts a towel on, and realizes that Vlad is there watching her. Vlad thinks Renee has come back to him because she wants to be with him, but Renee doesn’t want any part of it. He threatens to stop the deal unless she gets together with him. She buys some time by asking Vlad for the drink he offered him earlier. She consults with Jack, and tells him that there’s no other way… she flushes her earpiece down the drain and goes to meet Vlad. Eeech. Sure hope she shoots him.
Commercial
9:41 pm – At the U.N., which is also open late tonight. Hassan’s bodyguard comes to get Jamad and insists on escorting him to the Generic Mideastern Embassy. The bodyguard calls Dalia Hassan, and tells her that he has something really important to tell her about her father. She asks what he’s talking about. Realizing that he’s skipped ahead a bit in the script, he tells her that despite having just called her, he’ll see her later so he can tell her what he wanted to tell her, leaving her very confused about what the heck the phone call was all about.
9:43 pm – At the all night nuclear exposure clinic, the doctor explains the dosage of medicine Josef’s brother should be getting twice every day. The doctor says that radiation poisoning is transferable through bodily fluids, so they shouldn’t under any circumstance kiss each other.
The nurse arrives with the rest of the medicine, only it’s not a nurse, it’s a man who shoots the doctor. Josef is a little upset that his father’s men have come to pick them both up, since the doctor hadn’t even written out the prescription for the radiation treatment. As they leave, we see that the nurse and a security guard have also died of lead poisoning.
9:46 pm – Jack arrives at the rendezvous point wearing a cunning Harry Potter disguise. Vlad’s henchmen try to trick Jack into speaking some really, REALLY bad German, and Jack passes with flying colors… his German is terrible. Really terrible.
Jack insists on talking to Vlad, so they make a phone call. Jack asks about the merchandise and wants to talk to Renee. Vlad doesn’t let him talk to her, saying that she’s busy throwing up about what just happened. Vlad tells him he’ll have the merchandise within the hour.
9:47 pm – Jack asks for their account number. They tell him it is 4-8-15-16-23-43. Jack looks a little suspicious, since it seems to be slightly off from what he expected those numbers to be, since he thought there might be a “42” in there somewhere.
Commercial
9:53 pm – Back at the Russian warehouse, Vlad finally explains that his plan is to take the money. Renee tries to sweet talk him, and actually smiles for the first time during this whole show. It doesn’t work. Renee tries to send a text, RIGHT IN FRONT OF VLAD. That doesn’t go over so well. He grabs the phone and chokes her.
9:55 pm – Fortunately for Jack, two things happen. Jack gets that text message from Renee, and Ortiz starts shooting all the bad guys that were just about to kill Jack. Jack only has the opportunity to smash a guy’s head into the side of a car. They make a phone call to Vlad, who is surprised to hear that “Muir” isn’t dead yet. Jack “explains” that he still wants to do the deal.
9:58 pm – Josef and his father discuss his father’s judgment. The father starts slapping Josef around, pulls out a gun and shoots the other son that is dying from radiation poisoning. Taking the younger son away from a doctor who was treating him, just to later shoot him, has a sort of logic to it…. In the Bizarro world…
10:00 pm – Time’s up!
NEXT TIME ON “24”: Jack shoots a warehouse wall! Taylor talks loudly into a telephone! Vlad wants to buy material! Kevin can’t follow instructions! Renee has Jack!
SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!
Yeah, next week that wall had it coming. Luckily no Russian arms dealers were hurt in that ordeal.
Very good roundup.
Love the fact that renee tried to send the text RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM! love it, so realistic!!!
Also love how Jack is all pussied up this year, worrying about Reneee and her life, when in past seasons he Killed good people for the greater good.
Seriously, read your column is the next best thing after watching 24 =D
your harry potter/costume comment was gold. nice work!