Season 8 – 24 – 2 am to 3 am


Previously on “24”, we saw that: Fahrad sure didn’t know when to stop calling people to ask for help; Kevin and Nick are playing an extreme version of “Marco Polo”; Tarin’s escorts have the ability to hear conversations while they’re locked in a trunk, 20 feet away from the phone call; CISCO must be paying a lot for product placement; Chloe can make a remote control out of anything; Terrorists leaders can talk people into blowing themselves up, but never go first to show them how to do it properly; Marcos is really, really terrible at being a terrorist.

The following takes place between 2 am and 3 am

2:00 am – Fortunately for Marcos, he hid in the one hyperbaric chamber that had a schematic for the exact bomb he’s got strapped to himself. That’s the first thing that went right for him today. Outside of there, Jack gets the lowdown on the make and model of the chamber, because he’s been looking for one for his house. It’ll take about forty minutes to drill into the chamber.

2:02 am – Chloe already has all the information about Marcos including his mom’s name, what his father did before committing suicide, and his favorite breakfast cereal (“Explodios!”). Jack asks CTU to go get Marco’s mom and to bring her to the hospital, because this is exactly the sort of thing that a mom could talk a kid out of doing.

After Jack hangs up, Hastings tells everyone in the CTU conference room that he expects the terrorists are going to hit a high-value target. That surprises everyone that had bet they were going to hit a low value target, and they’re upset they lost their bets with the “high value target” bettors. Hastings asks everyone to watch their monitors, radio transmissions and smoke signals for any sign that the terrorists are moving the bomb. The meeting breaks up and Hastings notices that Dana and Cole are back at CTU, but aren’t making out in the elevator the way they usually do, so he’s suspicious.

2:04 am – In that elevator, Cole tells Dana to act natural, so of course, Dana acts completely unnatural. Cole says that after the terrorist threat ends, he wants to talk over what happened. Neither of them is the least bit concerned that the elevator might be wired for sound.

2:05 am – The door opens and Hastings is waiting for them. He tells them they have “Holy Hell” to answer to. Cole tries to joke with him that he had a nun named “Holy Helen” as a teacher in grade school, but that doesn’t go over very well. Hastings puts Chloe in charge of Dana, and sends Cole to get Marco’s mom. He tells Chloe and Dana that they might have a chance to salvage their careers, which we know is code for they might be able to leave before the show gets any sillier.

Dana takes the Black Pebble of Information Technology, and ceremoniously hands it to Chloe, who takes it and is now in charge. She takes her place at the Lead Cubicle.

2:07 am – Somewhere on the streets of New York, the lead terrorist tells Samir that not only have they been able to penetrate the security system of the hospital, but they’re also able to watch Marcos while he tries to reconfigure the bomb. Marcos has been smart enough to activate part of the bomb, but not smart enough to realize that exploding part of a bomb would be good enough to explode the whole thing.

Commercial

2:13 am – Samir arrives at the secret warehouse where the rods are located. They dramatically open the case to dramatically look at the rods, but the rods have nothing to say, so they sit there looking very dramatic.

At CTU, Dana tells Chloe that nobody has been able to detect any kind of radiation signature anywhere. Chloe tells Dana she’s glad she didn’t get fired, which is Chloe’s way of showing respect for a fellow analyst.

Dana asks Arlo for an update about the terrorists, and in exchange Arlo questions her about what happened to that “other guy” and whether he’s gone or not. Dana resists the urge to say, “Oh, he’s GONE alright”, but confirms that Kevin is indeed “gone”. Arlo shows a brief glimpse of non-creepiness by telling her that he’s glad that she and Cole are still a couple, but then reverts to lizard status once more by hitting on her. Dana actually thinks he’s kidding.

12:16 am – Marcos continues to work on the bomb while Jack observes, thinking that if HE had the bomb, the thing would have already been fixed by now. The communications link into the chamber is up, so Jack talks to Marcos.

Jack tells him that by blowing up a bomb in New York, the IRK are going to be in deep trouble, because New Yorkers generally don’t stand for that kind of thing. They’ll have most of Manhattan’s population invading Hasan’s fictional country if that happens, and there’s NO accounting for what would happen then.

Marcos responds that Hasan signed “my country away”. Jack feels it necessary to point out that not only was Marcos born in the US, that he used to watch Barney when he was young, and that in fact his name is really just Mark. Marcos won’t listen to Jack and goes back to trying to remember enough of his electrical engineering classes to get the bomb wired up. He’s up to 2 LEDS on his jacket.

Commercial

2:23 am – In a hotel room somewhere in New York, Tamir is in bed with Kayla. He gets off a phone call with a friend in the state department, who he called to brag about what just happened and to find out about getting political asylum. They’ll be able to get it, but they’ll have to go into hiding for about a year or so. The fortunate part of that is that they won’t be able to work in the US while the asylum petition is being granted, so this might be their way off the show. He tells her that they’ll have to dip into their savings, and they’ll have to do a lot more shopping at the Dollar Store from now on. Kayla’s phone rings, but they don’t answer.

2:24 am – Dahlia is the person on the phone, and she leaves a message to have her daughter call her back. She has an important message about, oh, a large dirty bomb that could go off at any minute, and that it would be a good time to get the heck out of New York. She hangs up in time to see Hasan.

She and Hasan rehash their subplot for a while: Tamir was arrested because Hasan is paranoid. They decide to involve the police. He gets so confused he calls Dahlia “Kaylia” by mistake, but she doesn’t notice. He tries to comfort her.

2:26 am – Over at Marcos’ mom’s apartment, she’s packing to go to her sister’s house. Cole pretends to be a pizza delivery guy, and doesn’t let her know that he’s really from CTU until after she gives him a very generous tip.

Cole tells her that Marcos has been a very bad boy, has been surfing the Internet in all the wrong places, and now he wants to blow himself up. Well, not so much “up” as “completely apart”. She leaves with Cole to go talk to Marcos.

Commercial

2:33 am – Dana tells Hastings that Cole will be at the hospital with Marcos’ mom in about ten minutes. She decides that this would be a great time to bring up the whole “I was gone at a bad time” again with Hastings, and realizes that all she’s getting for her trouble is another chewing out. She rapidly apologizes and makes a mental note to leave things well enough alone. Her phone rings.

2:34 am – Dana answers the phone and it’s Milton from Office Space! Milton says his name is a probation officer named “Prady”, and he’s looking for Kevin. He’s suspicious that Kevin called her a couple of times. He wants to meet with her. He has to get the address of CTU, mainly because he’s from out of town. If he were a native New Yorker, he’d know exactly where CTU is, since they all seem to know.

2:36 am – Marcos is getting a LOT better at the whole “wiring the bomb” thing, because he just got the third LED to light up. The crew outside continues to drill into the chamber, which at this point will spray little Marcos bits through it since he’s really close to finishing rewiring the bomb.

2:37 am – Cole arrives with Marcos’ mom, and Jack explains the situation to her.

Meanwhile, Dana calls Cole in a panic, because of Prady. Cole tells her to make something up about Kevin, like he got tickets to an off-off-off Broadway water ballet, or SOMETHING… just anything to throw him off the trail.

2:38 am – Jack tells Marcos’ mom that she needs to do whatever she usually does when Macros is a bad boy, since she’s the only one he’ll listen to. Marcos sees her and freaks out. He can’t believe that she’s there. He’s so embarrassed that she would show up at his first explosion. She tries to talk him out of it.

2:39 am – While this is going on, Chloe notices that there’s a signal degradation in the video feed, and she’s pretty sure that someone else is watching everything that is going on. She’s not talking about the millions of people watching right now; she suspects that the terrorists are watching this channel to see if Marcos is going to blow up or not. She also suspects they’re routing this to a pay-per-view channel to drum up extra terrorist funding.

2:40 am – Macros tries to convince his mom that she’s really a great mother, other than the whole thing where he turned into a spy and wants to blow himself up. Jack tells them to disconnect the video feed, because of the pay-per-view going on. Marcos tells her goodbye, they grab her and pull her out of the room. Marcos gets the final LED going, when Jack goes in to have a talk with him.

Jack explains that he knows all about New York, and if the dirty bomb goes off, he’ll personally take Marcos’ mom to a restaurant near the detonation site and will force her to order something she’s not going to like to eat and make her pay for the meal. But first, Jack’s going to make her clean up all the Marcos parts from the inside of the chamber, because they’re going to need to use it again later today. Jack tells him that she’ll be singing “My Radiation” (“People try and blow us up, talking about my radiation”…) soon.

Macros can’t believe what he’s hearing. This day has been really, really bad for him. He makes Jack promise to not hurt her, in exchange for not blowing up. Marcos exits the chamber.

2:44 am – The terrorists who had been watching the video feed since it gave out switch back to using binoculars and see that Marcos is out! Jack’s working on the bomb trying to deactivate it. NOW we find out that there’s a fail safe code, and Samir wants it transmitted. Everyone in the room with him looks at him as if to say, “NOW you tell us you had a fail safe code? Why didn’t you say something before??”

The four LEDS on Marcos’ jacket start blinking, which is the universal bomb code for “something bad is about to happen”. There’s a nice little timer in the jacket too, which starts counting down. This must have been the deluxe version of the bomb vest, because you can bet the lower-priced version didn’t have all these options on it. Jack struggles with the bomb, but realizes he can’t disarm it. He asks Marcos for the name of the person putting all this together, and he names Hasan’s head of security, Tarin. Jack tries one last time to disarm the bomb, tells Macros that he can’t do it. He pushes Marcos into the chamber, tries to shut the door and… well, the bomb disarms Marcos. Disbodies and dislegs him too.

Jack is thrown clear of the explosion, but this will do nothing to help his tinnitus. He asks to talk to Hasan.

Commercial

2:53 am – Jack calls Hasan to tell him that Tarin is in on the plot, which is the first time the word “plot” has actually be used correctly on the show. Hasan tells Jack that his daughter has run away with Tarin.

2:55 am – Dahlia finally gets a hold of Kaylia. Even SHE can’t keep her daughter’s name straight. Dahlia can’t believe that Tarin is in on the plot, but finally gives up her location. She hangs up just in time to see that Tarin has been watching. Tarin wants to leave but Dahlia stalls, and goes to get dressed.

2:59 am – Jack explains to the rest of the agents that nothing exciting is going to happen, so they’re just going to end the hour here.

3:00 am – TIME’S UP!

NEXT TIME ON “24” – KIDNAPPING at 3:15! THREATS AT 3:24! 3:52 A TWIST HAPPENS! HASTINGS YELLS “SECURITY”!

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!