Season 8 – 24 – 10 am to 11 am

Previously on “24”, we saw: Ex-President Logan is still a weasel (apologies to any weasels that may be reading this); Dana is Russian for “mole”, since that’s who she was working with all this time; Jack tried to give Dana a “desk slam makeover”; Most people watching the show fell asleep for 50 minutes, yet somehow didn’t miss anything – fortunately they woke up just in time to see Jack take a CTU helicopter, because he’s just plain sick of driving cars.

The following takes place between 10 am and 11 am:

10:00 am – Jack continues his flight over New York city, only narrowly missing getting mugged. A couple of more helicopters show up, and tell Jack they’d like to have Jack’s helicopter back, so Jack lands it on the “Cooper” building. The helicopters continue to circle, providing narration to Jack’s actions as he makes his way down the fire escape and to the ground. The Fake New York Police arrive just in time to lose Jack, who has already made his way into the crowd.

10:05 am – Chloe and Cole discuss Jack’s great escape and the fact that he’s going to try and prove that the Russians are in on the whole plot. Chloe asks Cole to go out into the field. Hopefully he’ll understand that it’s to help Jack, and that he doesn’t just randomly walk into a nearby field. Arlo is tasked with using some of his personal spy satellites to try and help find Jack.

10:06 am – Mrs. President and Ethan are still at the U.N. He breaks the news they still haven’t found Jack, but NYPD is working on a perimeter, which is probably just like a CTU perimeter, except with bagels.

Ethan points out that covering up the Russian’s involvement with Hasan’s death are ground for impeachment. She misunderstands and says that she doesn’t think coffee grounds are good for peach schnapps. Ethan continues and tells her that she’ll probably also get a criminal indictment, which really horrifies her because she’ll have yet another thing in common with ex-President Logan. She thinks that CTU will find Jack, but since Jack won’t be the person at CTU looking for Jack, there’s no chance that will happen.

Ethan tells her that even if they find Jack, evidence will likely surface anyway, much like two hypothetical redneck bodies that were stashed away in a swamp. Hypothetically.

Mrs. President wants to make sure this peace deal goes through, but decides to make an announcement that the US is going to withdraw from the peace deal. They hold hands, which doesn’t make anything better, but it does creep out the viewers.

She leaves in the elevator, only to be confronted by something more horrible when the doors open: Ex-President Logan.

She tells him the peace deal is off and that his plan to sell those “President Logan Helped Broker The Peace Deal And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” shirts are down the tubes. She tells him that she’s going to have to call Mrs. Hasan and ask for her forgiveness. For what, it’s a little unclear, since Mrs. President really didn’t have anything to do with what happened, and only just found out about the Russian involvement. She might apologize for the weird plot shifts. We’ll just have to see.

Logan stops her as she’s doing this to tell her that he has an idea that might help the peace deal go through, despite everything that’s going on. He thinks it would be a great idea to classify Dana as an enemy combatant and to stash her away in private facility, and he just happens to know of such a place. He’s part of their internet affiliate program and if they use his associate id, he’ll get a nice kickback for it.

She doesn’t think they can keep her in a private prison indefinitely, because someone is going to find the receipts for that place and start asking questions. Logan assures her that people at the facility will be able to get her to talk, merely by putting her in the “Hello Kitty” suite of the prison. Mrs. President is completely against this type of torture, but Logan thinks it’ll be OK because of the peace accord.

Commercial

10:17 am – Arlo’s spy cams have picked up Jack at an intersection. They’re uncertain it’s actually him for a moment, since there are no bodies nearby. Chloe tells Arlo to redirect Cole to that area so they can find Jack.

Mrs. President calls Chloe to ask about Jack. She tells Chloe that she’d like to have Dana transferred to a “safe house”, which is likely to be more safe than anywhere but CTU, since Jack is coming there to get Dana. She also tells Chloe that a “private security firm” will be there soon to get Dana. Chloe isn’t sold on this idea. Mrs. President tells Chloe that Jack’s connections to people in the government make Kevin Bacon look like a hermit, so she wants to be extra-double-positive-sure that Dana will be taken away before Jack can find someone to help him. Someone named “Mark Bledso” will be showing up at CTU soon. She hangs up on Chloe.

Mrs. President tells Logan she wants to be sure that Dana isn’t tortured a lot. Maybe just a little. But not much. Logan tells her that he knows she doesn’t want to see things turn ugly. She tells him that things are already ugly, and points right at his face.

10:19 am – Jack has taken this time to go phone shopping for several of the same phones. He walks out without the chargers, and without paying. He must have threatened the store clerk earlier.

Interestingly enough, these brand new phones are already charged up, so Jack makes a phone call. He calls Chloe and they discuss what Mrs. President is up to. Jack wants “access” to Dana, which is likely to involve more head-banging lessons like last hour. Chloe tell him that Mrs. President gave the order to keep Dana away from Jack, but Jack rejects this on the grounds there is something illegal going on, and that he wasn’t the one doing it. Jack tells Chloe that she really doesn’t want to go against him on this. She gets hysterical and goes into her best “Cornholio” impression saying, “Are you threatening me?”

Jack explains that he’s only asking for help, and he wants to talk to Dana alone. She points out that he’s being hunted down by every law enforcement agent in the city. She pauses for a second and then they both laugh about this, since they’d never be able stand up to Jack anyway.

She wants to know what Jack will do with the evidence, because if there’s a book or movie deal, she wants part of the cut. He tells her he’s only interested in exposing the people that were in on the plot. (That makes a lot of writer’s in LA extremely nervous).

Chloe tells him about the private security firm coming to get Dana, but she hasn’t had the time to look in the yellow pages to see who the likely firms might be. Jack asks her to find out, and that he’ll call her back later. He hangs up and throws away the phone, leaving it to be picked up by someone else who will likely go to jail until they can explain they have no idea who Jack Bauer is.

Jack calls a man that seems to be an apprentice of Edward Lyle from “Enemy of the State”. Jack tells him that he needs a comm unit, some MP5s (which are two better than MP3s), an assortment of assault rifles, some body armor, and full surveillance package.

10:22 am – The soon to be aptly named “Bledso” and his security guys arrive at CTU. Bledso calls Guy Who Looks Like Jacob From Lost, Only Younger. Bledso tells GWLLJFLOY that in his professional opinion, it would be a good idea to kill Dana. He’s pretty sure that she’ll go along with it, because it would mean that she couldn’t be back on 24 anytime soon, not even in a movie. GWLLJFLOY isn’t willing to do this, but is willing to think about it.

Chloe arrives and introduces herself to Bledso. She tells him that she going to need to see some kind of paperwork – a letter, a note card, a crayon drawing… anything – before she lets him take Dana. She wants it to be official.

Bledso punches up something on his phone and HANDS CHLOE THE PHONE. Handing Chloe a piece of electronic equipment is like handing over chocolate to Willy Wonka… amazing things could be done with it. Chloe (of course) has a USB stick in her pocket, and is able to download the memory of the phone into the stick and hand it back before Bledso realizes what she did. He’s lucky it’s still running the same mobile operating system as before.

They enter Dana’s holding room. When Dana realizes that she’s about to permanently leave the show, she pleads with Chloe to not let them take her, but they take her anyway.

10:24 am – After they’re gone, Chloe plugs the USB stick into another phone and discovers where they’re taking Dana. Instead of calling Jack, Chloe makes a mistake I never thought I’d see her make: She calls Cole and tells him that she thinks Jack doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Cole tells her that if Jack’s right, (if…ha!) then they could be on the wrong side of everything. Chloe tells him that she’s on the A side and Jack is definitely on side B. Besides, they’re under Presidential Orders from Mrs. President. They have to bring Jack in. She hangs up.

She goes into the CTU room and tells everyone they’re going to try and help Cole capture Jack.

Commercial

10:30 am – Jack arrives at the location of Jim, the man he called earlier, and starts to look over the equipment he requested. Jim tells Jack that every agency in the area is looking for Jack, and that Jack must have done something really bad. Jack tells him that they’re not really after him for anything he’s already done, it’s what he’s about to do, which could involve a lot of shooting and explosions, that they’re worried about.

Jack calls Chloe, and she gives him the wrong address. It’s the location where they’re going to try and ambush Jack. Jack hangs up and throws this phone away in Jim’s garbage can. Jim doesn’t appear to have seen this happen, because with all the security equipment he has around him, he would have completely freaked out if he had. Jack tells Jim that he might be back for more equipment.

10:34 am – Cole explains to a bunch of his men that they’re going to try and capture Jack. None of these guys runs away. This proves they don’t know who Jack is, because if they did, they wouldn’t be hanging around trying to capture him.

10:35 am – Ethan arrives to tell to Mrs. President that her speech is ready to go, and is dismayed to learn that Mrs. President has changed her mind. She tells him that she has a really good plan to keep Dana “off the grid”. Ethan tells her that green energy policy is nothing they need to be talking about right now, since there’s so much at stake with the peace accord.

She tells him that Dana is being taken to a secure facility where Jack won’t be able to get her. She’s also authorized a private security firm to “acquire the evidence”, which is government talk for “torture”. Ethan can’t believe what he’s hearing. She goes on to explain herself, finally using the phrase “for the greater good”. Ethan realizes that Logan convinced her of all this, and tells her so. She looks at him and realizes that what she said is laughable too, but she’s already made up her mind and there’s no going back on that now. Ethan tells her that he’s going to resign because he really wants off the show. He tells her that she’ll be in good hands with President Logan. She tells him the other president used that slogan, not Logan. Then she says, “Hey! That rhymes! Slogan, Logan! Slogan, Logan! Sloganlogan! Sloganlogan!” She stops when she realizes Ethan has left the room.

Commercial

10:41 – Dahlia is very busy with paperwork already, even though she’s not been officially appointed to anything yet. She’s worried what people will think of her for being on the show this season. Kahlia enters the room and tells her that it’ll be best to confront this directly and openly admit to being part of this season of “24”.

10:43 – Jack arrives at the ambush site and calls Chloe. He rearranges some very lightweight and clean garbage bags while he talks to her. She tells him the likely location of where they would be holding Dana, if Dana were actually there, and this wasn’t really an ambush.

Jack goes on the run, and helps push a semi-tracker trailer down the street by putting his hand on it and running. Having pushed the semi out of the way, he continues on his way.

Chloe warns Cole, who warns his men.

Jack takes out his assault rifle and some ammo and hides by a truck. Using a dental mirror that he “borrowed” from the last dentist who made the mistake of scraping Jack’s gums too aggressively, he watches one of Cole’s men. Jack knocks on the truck, which is the universal “hey, come check out the noise” signal for guards, so of course the guard goes to investigate. One punch later, the guard is down. Jack tells Chloe he’s going in. Jack then grabs the guy he just punched and carries him into the building.

Cole and his men get ready for Jack. What they’re not ready for is a laundry bag with their friend on top of it hanging from the ceiling. After a minor scuffle, Jack convinces everyone to put their guns down (including Cole), by just yelling really loudly.

It turns out that Jack knew Chloe was lying all along, since she seemed a lot less enthusiastic about Jack kicking people’s butts than usual. He tells Cole to make a call to Chloe to let her know that the plan worked, which he does.

Cole wants to know what Jack is going to do next, but that just gets Jack to yell some more, so Cole does what he says and “locks down” his men. Cole tells him that he’s not sure he has enough Lox to cover all of them, but he’ll do the best he can.

Commercial

10:52 am – Cole has all his men locked down, including the guy that was on top of that hanging laundry bag. Sure looks like that guy landed face first. Anyway, Jack tells Cole to follow him. Jack tells Cole that he needs help to find Dana. Cole isn’t very convinced that Mrs. President could be covering anything up, but Jack is very insistent. He also points out that Cole has done a lot of work with Dana, and since she was directly responsible for letting the terrorists get their hands on nuclear material, not to mention pre-release copies of Avatar, he’s responsible too. Cole is relieved Jack doesn’t know about the Redneck Dunk Festival that he and Dana attended the night before. Cole decides to go along with it.

Jack tells Cole they have to pretend he’s taking Cole hostage so everyone will think that Cole wasn’t involved. Cole tells him they used to play games like this when he was a kid, so it’ll be fun. They convince Cole’s men of this because Jack starts yelling loudly, which should be convincing enough for anyone.

10:55 am – President Logan watches a fake news report about Dhalia when Ethan enters the room. Logan tells him he’s heard about the resignation, that he’s happy that Ethan is thinking of his health first, and that he’d like a letter of recommendation to be Mrs. President’s new adviser. Ethan tells Logan that he knows exactly what’s going on, and he tells Logan to stop the coverup. Logan doesn’t look like he’s believing it.

Ethan tells Logan that Mrs. President is pretty far out in to the woods on this, without a canteen, GPS, or even camping equipment. Ethan warns Logan that if Mrs. President has a problem because of this, he’ll come after Logan personally.

10:57 am – Dana arrives at her secure location with a black napkin over her head. The guys with her have tried to explain how to use it correctly, but she seems very mixed up and nervous. Bledso tells her that she needs to let them know about the evidence she was going to give to Jack, and the sooner she does this, the sooner she’ll be done with her plot line.

10:58 am – Mrs. President arrives at the press conference, and Dahlia thanks her. Mrs. President takes the podium and makes her speech which is your basic political speech with a lot of clichés.

While this is going on, Bledso and his men start surfboarding Dana, until they realize they’re doing the wrong kind of torture.

11:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME ON “24” – JACK KNEELS! JACK POINTS A GUN! DANA IS OUT ON THE STREET! WATER POURS! Oh, who am I kidding…it doesn’t look at exciting.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

Now I’m going to have another piece of my birthday cake! 🙂