Season 8 – 24 – 8 am to 9 am

Previously on “24”: We saw Lady Gaga drive away with Omar in the back of her car; We witnessed Cole’s attempt to become a Scanner to blow up Dana. It wasn’t working, but he did have the right facial expressions down cold; Dana got an immunity agreement, which is now as endangered as a cupcake in the middle of a kindergarten class; Omar went to great lengths not to be on the show again; Finally, we saw a number of things resolve (kind of), except for that weird smell in the heating ducts at CTU.

The following takes place between 8 am and 9 am:

8:00 am – Mrs. President gets a phone call from Jack, who gives her an apology: He wanted to kill a lot more bad guys, and save more heads of state. Jack has a wire hanging from his ear while he makes this call, but everyone is too scared to tell him about it.

In the hallway, Samir is relaxing on a gurney, with a not so relaxing Jack Bullet in his shoulder. They’re going to transport him for questioning. At least most of them want to do this. Someone no one recognizes as “The New Guy” waits until everyone looks in the other direction and tries to give Samir a Botox injection. He completely misses and sticks the injection in Samir’s neck instead. Realizing his mistake, he makes a quick exit, stage left.

While he’s headed down the stairs, he encounters Renee. She looks at him for a second and seems to recognize him from…somewhere, but she’s not quite sure where. She realizes it must be from those Brooding Seminars she’s been taking, and then she goes upstairs to meet with Jack.

8:02 am – Renee tries to console Jack by telling him the number of bad guys he personally shot, but it doesn’t do any good. Jack talks to Cole and tells him that he and Renee are headed home where there are (usually) a lot less terrorists.

8:03 am – Tim tells Mrs. President that the delegates have arrived, and she goes off to meet them. While this goes on, Novakovich tells Minister Jamat that he sure is sorry that Hasan died. Oh, and that he sure bets Jamat is happy that Hasan died, even though Novakovich is sorry. Jamat realizes he’s talking to a crazy person, and leaves.

8:07 am – Mrs. President arrives, and Jamat insists that she listen to what he has to say: He read a fortune cookie last night that seems like it fits this situation EXACTLY, so he’s pretty confident. They go off to a room to talk while the writer’s make up a new subplot for them.

Novakovich gets a phone call from the New Guy that gave Samir that bad Botox injection. He’s following Jack and Renee’s cab. In order to not arouse suspicion, he’s driving instead of trying to wildly run after them.

He reports that Jack was quite through with his shooting, except for Samir – and he’s been taken care of. The only problem might be Renee, who generally ends up being a problem in most subplots anyway. He’s pretty sure that he recognizes Renee from a much more interesting sounding plot which we weren’t fortunate enough to see.

New Guy announces that he has a death wish and is going to attempt to have Jack shoot him while pretending that he’s capable of killing Jack. Oh, and he’ll kill Renee too, just so things are nicely wrapped up. Novakovich doesn’t think this is a very good idea, because if New Guy gets shot, he’ll bleed in Russian, and CTU will know they were involved with Samir. They decide to put off dying for a while until they get to the point where they really need something exciting to happen later on in the hour.

Commercial

8:13 am – Mrs. President comes to talk to Dahlia and Kayla again, but this time she brings Jamat. Dahlia apologizes and tells him that Hasan was “super sorry” that Jamat was arrested, which would have been handy to know a few hours earlier.

Mrs. President tells Kayla that Samir was badly wounded, but will survive unless something really crazy happens like a Russian showing up with a syringe. Mrs. President promises that Samir will get a fair trial, and then will be fairly shot.

Mrs. President sits down with Dahlia and tells her that Dahlia should be the next president of Fictional Country. Mrs. President and Jamat tell her that she’s perfect for the job since she falls into the Douglas Adams category of the perfect president: She doesn’t want to be president in the first place. That lasts for about a minute until she realizes all the cool perks she’ll get with the office, and then agrees to do it.

She meets with Agent Tim, who asks if he can go ahead with some “big plans” for CTU.

8:18 am – Cole arrives back at CTU and tells Hastings that Jack might, for the first time in 8 seasons, sleep. He also says that Samir is still sleeping, and that there’s a hole in the side of Samir’s neck that should be nothing to worry about.

Chloe gets a phone call from Tim. She is surprised that Tim wants to talk to her. Tim explains that they’re going ahead with the peace process and the signing. Chloe quickly realizes what Tim wants. She tells him that she can never have a half man, half machine built out of Omar Hasan in time. Tim tells her that what he really wants is to know if CTU is capable handling security for the peace agreement. He also points out that Chloe is the one person that might have a clue at CTU (and says, “Hey! That rhymes!”), so he wants to put her in charge of CTU while they look around for someone stupid to take the post. Chloe tries to convince Tim that the design of the CTU entrance, the dark lights, the glass walls – none of these things in CTU were Hastings’ fault. Tim tells her that the decision has been made, and that she’s in charge now.

8:20 am – Chloe goes upstairs to check out of her new office, but Hastings is still there. She tells him that she doesn’t think what is happening is fair. He doesn’t realize she’s talking about what they’re doing to her, and not to him, but he takes it that way. He tells her that it’s his fault they hired Dana, and that he let the snake into the garden. Chloe thinks that Hastings might be tripping out because so far she hasn’t seen a garden or a snake anywhere near CTU. They decide to review protocols, which fortunately isn’t a double entendre.

8:21 am – Jack and Renee arrive at Jack’s apartment. Jack thinks he might have some coffee left over from the Carter administration, and goes to look for it. Renee tells Jack that she’s not going to hold him to any promises, and just as she’s about to launch into a big speech he kisses her to make her shut up. They start making out like crazy and Jack carries her off-camera.

8:22 am – At a building across the street New Guy kills Old Guy (who we’ve never seen before), just so he can spy on what Jack and Renee are doing off camera.

Commercial

8:28 am – Mrs. President prepares to leave, and asks her assistant to bring in Novakovich. Novakovich tells her that he’s surprised to hear that the peace treaty signing is going forward because he knows that Hasan’s penmanship is going to be terrible. Mrs. President informs him that Dahlia is going to sign the treaty, which is going to work out perfectly. They were able figure out how to get the entire parliament out of bed at whatever hour it is in Fictional Country and they going to agree to make her the new head of government, all within the last half an hour. Mrs. President is particularly impressed by this because in the United States it takes Congress a half an hour just to decide which end of the gavel to use to start a new session. Novakovich informs her that despite all this, they didn’t bring a pen, so they’re not signing anything.

8:30 am – Speaking of super fast – Ethan is not only already out of surgery for a heart blockage, but he’s awake enough to be riding around in a wheel chair while a doctor explains how he was able to accomplish this in less than an hour. Mrs. President arrives to push Ethan around some more. This time in his wheelchair.

Ethan likes the idea of Dahlia taking over, because “she’s hot”. Mrs. President tells him that she needs a way to convince the Russians to get on board with this agreement because she’s already got 10,000 “Russian on Board” signs that she’s been saving since the 1990’s, and this might her last chance to use them. Ethan tells her that she should get former President Logan involved. She doesn’t like this one little bit. Ethan says that Logan has information that might help them, and despite the fact that he’s a sleazy weasel, they should listen to him.

8:31 – Hastings announces to everyone at CTU that he’s gotten the honor of leaving the show early. He tells them that he’s sure Chloe will get the same level of loyalty and commitment that he received. Chloe appears to be hoping for a lot more loyalty and commitment than that, but doesn’t interrupt. Chloe escorts him out the door, just to be sure he really leaves.

8:32 – Chloe gets a call from Cole who tells her that Samir is going into cardiac arrest, and that’s not the type of arrest he was hoping to perform. A machine next to Samir that appeared to be working perfectly well a moment before by making nice “beep beep” noises, has started giving a continuous tone. Despite their best efforts to save it by putting a lot of electricity through Samir, they are unable to restart the machine.

8:33 – Chloe arrives in the CTU medical unit and realizes that the time from her taking over as the head of CTU to the time when someone died is now a new world record, and she’s not happy about it. She tells Cole that they need to run a toxicology report just in case Samir started injecting himself in his sleep.

Commercial

8:40 am – Jamat and Dahlia talk when Kayla arrives to speak with her mother about what’s happening. They stand around and make severe faces at each other and talk in very various dramatic ways with several clichés thrown in for good measure. Kayla isn’t happy that she’s going to have to call her mom President Mom now.

8:41 am – Back at the UN, Tim tells Mrs. President they’ve discretely moved “The Package” into conference room 3, so no one will notice. Mrs. President tells him that she is excited to meet someone from the cast of LOST, only to realize that he meant President Logan.

8:42 am – It turns out that “so no one will notice” must mean something different to Tim, because conference room 3 has glass walls and anyone can see President Logan in there just waiting. Mrs. President arrives.

President Logan gives his heartfelt apology for Mrs. President being in yet another season of “24” and she seems to accept that. She tells Logan that she wants to talk to him alone. Logan assures her that his buddy Jason, who looks like a younger version of Jacob from LOST, is AOK and has promised not to take them to any island or make them see dead people. She’ll have none of that, so Jason leaves.

8:43 am – Logan and Mrs. President talk about how the Russians won’t sign on to the agreement. Logan assures her that he has ways of making them sign, and he has certain “leverage” with them. Mrs. President isn’t too sure about this since Logan has been a sleazy weasel before, and is likely to still be a sleazy weasel. Logan says that all the details need to be between him and the Russians, and that in no way should be the least bit suspicious. Mrs. President thinks that Logan just wants to do this because it’s the last season of 24. Logan does the unthinkable for a politician: He admits he was wrong. Logan finally convinces her that since there are only a few hours left, so she should agree. He tells her that he needs to talk to Novakovich, and that shouldn’t be suspicious in the least.

Commercial

8:52 – Back at Jack’s place, Jack and Renee are in bed. Jack wisely gets up to get a drink, since he’s thirsty. He tells her “Don’t move”, which is usually a bad sign. And we see that it’s a VERY bad sign, since New Guy has set up a sniper rifle and intends to use it.

The phone rings. It’s Chloe, who informs Renee that she thinks Samir was assassinated. Renee tells her that even though it’s been six years, she’s pretty sure she recognized a fake EMT and that he was Russian, because all the best fake EMT guys are Russian.

Renee walks over to try to tell Jack about the phone call, but gets shot instead, which was not part of her plan today. New Guy continues to shoot, but misses Jack completely. He grabs the phone and tells Chloe that they’re going to need a medical team for Renee and some guys with bullets for the sniper. Jack grabs Renee, carries her in his arms heads for the exit of his apartment. New Guy, who has become a terrible shot, realizes he’s missed his chance to kill Jack, grabs his gun and goes after them. Jack makes it all the way downstairs and gets into a waiting cab, which races like crazy to the hospital. Which means the cabbie drives like a completely normal New York City taxi.

8:56 am – Chloe tells Arlo to bring up satellite photos to see if they can find the sniper.

Jack and Renee arrive at the hospital, and Renee heads into surgery. Jack can NOT believe his terrible, terrible luck with women. He gets a phone call from Chloe. She informs him that the sniper was in the building opposite of Jack’s and that the Old Guy they found dead there was unlikely to be the sniper. She tells him that Samir is dead and that Renee thinks she recognized the guy. Jack is surprised that Renee didn’t tell him about this, forgetting that Renee was busy catching bullets at the time.

The doctors come out of the operating room and tell Jack that Renee will not be appearing in the “24” movie they’re working on, since she’s dead. Jack is pretty upset about this, and cries. No nuclear weapons detonate because of this, unlike previous seasons.

9:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME ON “24”: Jack grieves! Jack wants justice! Logan wants to stop Jack! Jack warns Dana! SIX MORE HOURS FOLKS! SEE YOU NEXT TIME!