Season 8 – 24 – 6 am to 7 am

Previously on “24”, we learned: Mrs. President has advisers that think they can help by saying “Are you kidding me?”; Jack can get cell phone reception everywhere except in ambush situations; When Hasan hears gunfire, he’s believes he can turn into Jack Bauer; Holding nuclear rods in your bare hands isn’t as scary as it sounds; You should never have a heart attack in front of people who are stealing files from your computer.

The following takes place between 6 am and 7 am:

6:00 am – Ethan is still sleeping off that heart attack. Just to be sure he stays in his room so he can’t contact anyone, Rob locks him in. Rob’s pretty sure Ethan is old enough not to be able to figure out the telephone, fax machine, and computer, so there’s little chance Ethan will be able to contact anyone.

6:01 am – Rob meets with the General, who’s really in high gear since he’s ordering people around that actually listen to him. Rob wants to help Ethan, but The General refuses. Since the General is tall and looks like he’s in charge, Rob relents even though The General is clearly a moron.

The General calls Mrs. President over to give a not quite complete status update. Rob interjects that people are good at those connect-the-dot coloring books, so when they finish up page 10 and realize they’re looking at the a nuclear weapon, they’re going to freak out. They’ll probably color the picture first, but then they will DEFINITELY freak out.

Mrs. President wants to know the casualty figures. The General says that not counting the numbers of viewers they’ve lost this season, there will be about 58,000 less taxpayers in about 10 minutes.

6:05 am – Jack and his group continue to walk back to where they came from. Hasan complains the whole time about what happened, and really wants to do something. Since the sniper Jack is carrying is slowing them down, Jack reluctantly puts him in a room and locks him in, instead of shooting him in the other thigh.

Renee informs Jack that Hasan wants to go all Bruce Banner all over the terrorists. Jack points out that 1) Hasan hasn’t be exposed to any gamma radiation at all today and 2) it really doesn’t matter what Hasan wants to do, because he is under orders from The President of These United States (dammit).

In a moment of extreme cunning, Jack lets Hasan pop him in the back of the head with a gun, knocking Jack unconscious (although we all know that Jack is never truly unconscious). Hasan really, really wants to give himself up to the terrorists so there’s more drama in tonight’s show. And fewer dirty bombs. Dahlia argues with him about this. She’s pretty sure he’s doing this to get out of taking out the garbage and doing the dishes, but can’t prove anything at this point. Hasan locks everyone in the room, which is exactly where Jack wants to be. Hasan and the sniper leave.

6:07 am – The sniper grabs keys for the car from UNDER THE BUMPER, which clearly shows that he is not a native New Yorker. After thanking Hasan for being a complete idiot and handing himself over, the sniper calls The General. He tells The General that Jack pretty much killed everyone on his team, and that Hasan is cooperating.

6:08 am – Ethan is still on the coach, Rob is still in freaking out mode. The General tells Rob there will be time for freaking out later. Maybe not for Ethan, but Rob will be able to, for sure.

The General makes the call to Samir. Rob tells him that they have Hasan. Hasan tells Samir that Mrs. President didn’t have a thing to do with this, and that he’s the one giving himself up. Samir hangs up. The General is surprised his little plan didn’t work, since it seemed to work out so well when he plotted it out on that Risk board at home.

6:09 am – One minute to go: Tarin doesn’t look all that excited about his very first suicide mission, and nervously looks at his watch. Chloe tries to stare down a computer. Arlo tries to stare down Chloe. Mrs. President stands right next to a plate glass window, which is just the place to be standing in case of a massive explosion.

With 10 seconds to go, Tarin gets a phone call. Samir says, “BOOM! Ha! Just kidding, turn off the bomb.”. He stops it with 7 seconds left, just like in his favorite movie, “Goldfinger”. Except with less guys that have dangerous hats.

Commercial

6:15 am – No explosions later, Jack breaks through the window in the door which has kept them locked in.

Jack calls Chloe and tells her a Verizon slogan. She wants to know what’s happening, and Jack tells her that it’s important to keep it a secret that Hasan has handed himself over. Jack wants to talk to Tim Woods, and that nobody else can know.

Dana tries to “help” Chloe, but Chloe tells her that she should go write a Cobol compiler instead.

Outside, Jack gives the “all clear” signal and runs into a bunch of pigeons in a vain attempt to recreate the opening to the Mary Tyler Moore show. Jack’s upset that he forgot to bring the hat to throw. He’s also upset that Hasan is no where to be seen.

He brings Dahlia and Kayla out in the open, just to tell them that it’s not safe for them to be out in the open. Therefore, he wants them to go to the Air Force base, which is also probably not safe, but it does have a lot of big planes with bombs that might come in handy later.

Dahlia and Renee try to point out that Hasan gave himself up willingly. Jack points out that it doesn’t really matter, because he reports to The President of These United States (dammit).

He calls a cab, and within 2 seconds has one. Dahlia and Kayla get in. The driver is extremely excited because he’s also from the same fictional third world country they’re from and wants their autographs.

Chloe calls Jack back. He tells her to look at the video feeds for where they are, and see if they can find Hasan.

6:16 am – Mrs. President wants an update. The General says he has no idea what’s going on. Rob tells her that he STILL can’t find Ethan, and that perhaps he went out for a fresh Krispy Kreme donut. Rob says he’ll page Ethan, but Mrs. President tells him she wants a donut too, so he should go find him personally. And to bring one with extra sprinkles.

Mrs. President receives a phone call from Homeland Security, which is a code word for “Jack Bauer”. Jack explains that The General has been a very naughty General, and that he needs to know where The General plans on handing over Hasan. Jack tells her to confront The General. In Jack Speak, “confront” means to “punch in the face and shoot in both thighs”. She misunderstands this, and goes to talk to The General instead.

6:19 am – Chloe has the video feed and she tells Jack where Hasan is headed. A friendly New Yorker volunteers to let Jack have his car by leaving the car running while going to get a newspaper. Jack jumps in and drives off.

6:20 am – Tarin watches as Hasan’s SVU drives up. Everyone is pretty unsure what to do, since it’s the first time they’ve done anything like this. Tarin calls, and tells Hasan that he needs to talk to Sniper Guy.

Tarin tells the Sniper Guy to get out of the car and follow his instructions. Fortunately for Tarin, Sniper Guy has not been trained in “Being Observant”. Tarin gives him instructions on how to use a cross walk and where to find the keys to the van with the weapon in it. Sniper guy realizes only too late that Tarin has double-backed and grabbed his van! Sniper guy looks pretty upset, because that van is going to come out of his paycheck.

6:23 am – A Secret Service agent meets with Mrs. President as she dramatically walks down the hallway. He informs her that Rob is in on the whole conspiracy with The General. She asks, “Are you saying that Rob is in on the whole conspiracy with The General?” The agent informs her that he’s afraid so. Mrs. President says, “Nice to meet you, Mr. So. Let’s go find The General and Rob.”

6:24 am – Out on the street, Sniper guy finds the van and opens the back door before waiting for the bomb squad.

Right at this moment, the agents and Mrs. President find The General, Rob and Ethan. They try to cover it up saying they’re having a sleepover, but nobody believes them. Mrs. President confronts Rob. He tells her that it wasn’t an easy decision, but he decided to act like a bigger Bozo than before. She tells him that she’s going to throw the switch herself when Rob walks The Green Mile.

Rob’s phone rings. It’s the pizza guy who’s calling about that pizza Rob and The General ordered. Also, he has information about where the bomb is. Mrs. President sends agents out to go get the bomb.

Sniper Guy looks pretty nervous with about standing next to that explosive van, and wonders how he’s going to keep away looters until someone else gets there to help him.

Commercial

6:31 am – Hastings explains everything that CTU should know about already. Chloe looks upset about not being able to tell everyone that she was the first to know about everything Hastings is explaining.

Suddenly the lights go on, causing Arlo to scurry back into the darkness.

The video feeds are back, and they have the images of the black SUV containing Hasan. Hastings asks Chloe and Dana to work on finding where Hasan is. Dana’s immediate reaction is to walk away from her terminal, which nobody finds the slightest bit suspicious, since she’s only spent about three minutes there for the twelve hours.

Chloe confronts Dana about this, and Dana explains that she was just going to go into the server room to hold up the networking cables over her head so the Ethernet packets would travel more quickly. Chloe tells her not to be stupid and to help find Hasan.

6:32 am – Out by the van, a Roomba has been completely modified into a special dirty bomb robot. Sniper Guy tries to justify his actions to Jack, but Jack doesn’t want to hear anything about it. Fortunately for Sniper Guy, Chloe calls Jack before he attempts to shoot him.

Chloe tells Jack where Hasan’s SVU is headed, and that there’s a good chance a lot of shooting will be involved. Jack briefly considers jogging the thirty blocks to Hasan’s current location, but decides not to show off. Hastings gets on the line to tell Jack that Mrs. President wants Jack to lead the operation. Jack tells him that he’s not a doctor, but he’s very good at Operation, and that he’ll do his best to remove the Funny Bone without getting Hasan killed. No one seems to understand this except Chloe.

Jack tells her that he’s going to need a lot of people with guns because they’re going to need to shoot the driver. And the car. The driver because he’s a bad guy, and the car because it was a very bad car today. Jack wants Cole to be in charge.

6:34 am – Dana sees that Cole is back, and uses an excuse to go get him. She calls Tarin, but hangs up on him. Cole asks about the parole officer, and Dana tells him that she killed him, opened a big panel in a conference room and dragged his body into it. Then she says, “Kidding! He’s gone.” Cole tells her that they’ll make it through the rest of the season, since there aren’t many hours left.

6:35 am – Hasan looks like he’s rethinking this whole “give myself up” thing and tries to talk Tarin out of taking him to Samir. Tarin is still pretty upset about Hasan closing down all his favorite restaurants back home. Tarin tells him he won’t be around to find out if Chucky Cheese will open back up or not, and Hasan cries. Tarin tells him to stop acting like a 1970s environmental commercial.

Commercial

6:41 am – Mrs. President watches Ethan being taken away, and despite his heart attack, orders him back to work as soon as possible since they have a lot of work to do. Ethan looks at her like she’s out of her mind.

Mrs. President then goes to meet with Dahlia, and impresses her with an automatic door opener made up of two soldiers opening the door for her automatically.

Dahlia and Kayla are still freaking out about Hasan giving himself up. Mrs. President tells her that they’ll have complete video of the operation to get Hasan back and she’ll have a front row seat in high def, of when he gets shot or killed. They agree to watch.

After they leave, Mrs. President thanks Renee for helping. Renee looks like she’s a deer caught in the headlights of a car, but asks to leave to go to CTU.

6:42 am – Mrs. President joins the Hasan Ladies in front of the screen where they’ll get to witness the carnage that’s about to happen when Jack shows up.

6:43 am – Cole tells Jack all about the plan to get Hasan back. Jack of course, inquires about perimeters. Cole tells him that he can have all the perimeters he wants, but the several they have should do nicely, as is. The plan is simple: Shoot a lot, do some exciting driving, shoot some more and possibly get Hasan back. Perhaps in several pieces, but back. Oh, and shoot as much as possible. They expect that to happen eight minutes.

6:45 am – Dana suggests that there’s something bad happening in the server room, which Chloe doesn’t believe, but Cole does. Dana goes into the server room to do some sabotage. Arlo, for once using his powers of stalking for good instead of creepiness, asks Dana what she’s doing. They banter back and forth a bit until she volunteers to let him look at what she’s doing. He sits down and starts to look at what she’s up to, and wants to know why she’s got Plants vs. Zombies up on the screen. She tells him that it’s a diagnostic program that simulates what might have happened in New York if the bomb went off. While he’s looking at the screen trying to figure out what to plant, she comes very, very close to killing him. Whether it’s because he’s been a creep all this time, or whether it’s because he’s started to figure out what’s going on is unclear. Just as she’s about to put Arlo out of everyone’s misery, he gets a phone call from Hastings to get back to what he was doing. He leaves.

Dana immediately calls Tarin to tell him that CTU has been following him, and that they’re all over. Tarin, bright guy that he is, looks all over the van, and she has to tell him “all over outside”. She tells him to calm down, and to get to a parking garage. Tarin thinks that New York parking is much too expensive, but he’ll go along with it. Dana says she has to figure out how to get off the show as soon as possible, because this acting is really damaging her career. She leaves the server room.

Commercial

6:53 am – Mrs. President and the Hasan Ladies continue to watch the Hasan Hostage channel. At CTU, Cole realizes that it took a very long time for Dana to leave the server room and make it all the way back to her desk. He asks if she walked backwards to whole way, but Chloe interrupts with information. The SVU they’ve been monitoring is five blocks ahead of Jack.

Jack takes this opportunity to do some fast driving. Meanwhile, Hasan tries to talk to Tarin about giving himself up, but Tarin has other ideas.

6:55 am – Jack gives everyone instructions, which mainly involve fast driving. Tarin counters this with some backwards driving, some quick turnarounds and a ride towards the roof. Jack follows all the way to the top, just in time to see Tarin drive off the roof! Jack finds Hasan….is gone!

Somewhere else, they’ve made an exchange. They’ve drugged Hasan and thrown him into a Hasan-sized trunk of a new car. The driver is a young blonde mideastern woman, who doesn’t stand out at all in a crowd… if that crowd was full of platinum blonde women.

Jack realizes there was an exchange and tells Renee about it. He’s found Tarin’s cell phone, which he won’t be needing any more, since he’s dead. (Jack gets a lot of free cell phone minutes this way). He tells her that they’ll figure out who he’s been talking to when they get back to CTU.

7:00 am – TIME’S UP!

NEXT TIME ON “24” IS RIGHT NOW.