Summary of “24”: Episode 20 – 1 am to 2 am

Previously on “24”, we saw that – Jack was able to confuse CTU by driving under some power lines; Mike has been going to psychic classes and knew exactly where to go to find Jack; Bill was put on his annual “You’re not the head of CTU anymore” vacation; Audrey has taken some Chinese language lessons a little too seriously and has completely forgotten how to speak English, because her head can only hold one language at a time.

The following summary occurred between 1 am and 2 am:

1:00 am – While he was waiting for everyone to show up, Jack took the time to clean the whole building so there would be a nice clean explosion. He tells one of the CTU field agents that, yes, that was the only plastic explosive he had time to rig.

1:01 am – Mike goes to talk to Audrey, but she’s still very upset about Silver Spoons being cancelled so all she says to him is “Help me Jack! Please don’t let them do this to me!”, and several million viewers make the same plea to the writers about the rest of the episode.

1:02 am – Nadia has jumped right into CTU command, setting up perimeters and everything. She starts cutting off people while they explain what she just asked them to explain. This is going to be very endearing. At this rate, the people in the office will be rigging her chair to explode any time now.

1:04 am – Morris goes to see Nadia, and she denies his request to be reassigned, making her even more popular. Morris is pretty insistent, but Nadia doesn’t want to hear about it. Morris looks at her office chair, sizing it up it up for just the right kind of office explosives.

1:05 am – Nadia gets a call from Mike, who wants to know if they have a lead on Cheng yet, besides the three huge black Hummers that they just drove off in. It sounds like Mike has lost his amazing powers of deduction that he used to find Jack. Nadia asks about Audrey. Mike says that Audrey is completely non-responsive, and that the Chinese must have done a little take-out on her brain, because she’s acting weirder than normal. Nadia insists that Audrey be brought back to CTU, because there are going to be a lot of people that are going to want to make fun of her there. Nadia asks if Mike has enough psychic energy left to know what Jack was thinking, and he tells her all about Jack’s plan to blow up the building and sacrifice himself. Despite this, Nadia is still mad that Jack let the secret chip get away. Jack tries to get Mike to let him talk to Audrey, because they used the same Britney Spears videos when they tortured him, but Mike refuses. Mike takes Jack and Audrey separately back to CTU.

1:06 am – Karen briefs Acting President Noah about Cheng’s escape, and Noah looks like he doesn’t like sitting in The Big Seat as much as he had previously hoped. He asks about Bill and how it went when Karen fired him, hoping that she at least had SOME fun with it, because Noah sure would have. Noah gives a little speech to Karen that he gave to Lennox to make sure that she is on board too. Lennox interrupts to let Noah know that the Russian President is on the video phone. Since they get “24” on iTunes, the President probably already knows about Cheng having the chip.

1:07 am – Off in her evil secret lair, Evil Lisa locks a secret evil door, and surprise! Gets jumped by an evil lobbyist. They immediately start negotiating the clothes off each other.

1:08 am – Back at the White House, Noah is on the phone with the Russian President, who points out that Russia is still doing better than America in the President count, since America has already had four during the time he’s been in power. As expected, Sukarov already knows everything about what has been going on. Noah makes a pun and says that he won’t let Sukarov “dictate” to him. (Ha! Soviet humor). Noah tries to play up the “Hey! You guys let an ex-Russian General in OUR country!” angle, but Sukarov isn’t deterred. Sukarov threatens to let his Russian generals have an “appropriate response”, and hangs up.

1:09 am – Noah is freaked out about the Russians already knowing that’s going on and wants all White House blogging to stop immediately. Lennox points out that it probably wasn’t the blogs that did it, but it was more than likely a spy at the White House or CTU!
Noah tells Lennox and Karen that CTU can get whatever they need to find Cheng.

1:10 am – We finally have an answer about how Cheng was able to get away: They used their lo-beam headlights so no one would see them! Even more surprising, Cheng has the exact interface he needs to connect the chip and upload its information to his technical support guy, who is less than an hour away. Oops! They must be running windows, because the tech support guy says they need a special access code to get at the chip, and their computers don’t have Windows Genuine Advantage software installed. The tech support guy says they’re going to need someone to figure this out for them, and since their phone calls to India are likely to be monitored, they’ll need to find someone. This would be a really bad time for Morris to go to the 7-11.

Commercial

1:17 am – It’s been ten minutes, so of course Evil Lisa is done “debriefing” the guy in her secret evil hideaway. She goes off to take a shower, and of course, he goes into her purse to download something evil from her evil phone. Evil Lisa’s Evil Guy makes a quick phone call to another VERY evil looking guy, who confirms that Evil Lisa has no evil idea about any of this new evil stuff.

1:18 am – Chloe asks Morris what he was talking to Nadia about, and he explains his transfer was denied. Chloe apologizes to Morris for that “You armed a nuclear weapon today” crack. Morris tells her that they are “over”. (We didn’t even know they were really “started” again. We should pay better attention). Chloe seems to be pretty upset, since her chances with any of the other CTU guys are pretty slim, since she has no other technical equal there. She hides her face in the wall and tries to blow her nose while she cries, but cement isn’t very good for that.

1:19 am – Karen tells Nadia the good news about the Russians wanting to blow something up, and that Nadia can have some more resources. A team of experts has arrived to see Audrey too, but they haven’t looked at her yet. Nadia, realizing she’s now in WAY over her head, and that she’s already ticked off a bunch of the remaining CTU staff, asks Karen to have Bill back in charge. Karen won’t tell Nadia what happened.

1:20 am – Nadia tells Dr. Bradley, the doctor who will look at Audrey, that she wants to hear his impressions immediately. Dr. Bradley says that he does a great Christopher Walken, but there will be time for that after he’s looked at Audrey.

1:21 am – Milo tells Nadia that Mike and Jack have just landed. Nadia wants Jack secured (HA!), and wants to see Mike right away.

1:22 am – Dr. Miracle Max Bradley goes to see Audrey, who is doing some of her best acting ever by not saying a thing. They find little black marks on her arm, which are, technically, bruises.

1:23 am – Mike drops off Jack in a CTU interrogation cell, and Jack continues to beg to see Audrey. Jack tells Mike to “Take care of Audrey”, but he doesn’t really mean what the rest of us hope that really means.

1:24 am – Back in Audrey’s room, Dr. Bradley keeps saying “look at this!”, like this is first day on the job. He comes out to explain what everyone already knows: Audrey isn’t saying anything. It turns out that she either got repeatedly attacked with porcupines or that the Chinese gave her over 100 injections. Dr. Bradley seems to think the best course of action is to give Audrey even MORE drugs that will help her snap out of it. Mike is against this, and Dr. Bradley points out these are good American drugs, not the cheap Chinese stuff. Nadia asks what the downsides are, and Dr. Bradley says that it could cause vascular damage, neurological damage, and even death. Nadia says that she’s aware of the upside to all this, but wants to know what the downside is. Dr. Bradley says this is the only thing that will work. If only they had a Jack Bauer! Then they could do something! Mike says they do have a Jack Bauer! Dr. Bradley thinks a second and says that Jack might just upset Audrey more. Mike points out that at least Jack wouldn’t kill her, and Nadia points out there’s a downside for everything. Dr. Bradley says that he’s in charge, and since he has a lot of needles ready to go, he’s more comfortable about attempting something that might kill Audrey. He leaves.

1:25 am – Mike tries to convince Nadia to let Jack try to talk to Audrey, because it is what “Bill would have done”. Nadia gets a little miffed about this.

Commercial

1:30 am – Acting President Noah calls Evil Lisa and wants to know where she is, and that she needs to get to work right away. Noah says “I need you”. Evil Lisa says “I need you too”, but I doubt they’re talking about the same thing. Evil Guy and Evil Lisa kiss, and she leaves. Evil Guy calls Really Evil Guy, but we don’t hear what they say.

1:31 am – Lennox arrives in Noah’s office, and beats around the bush for a while about the CIA report he’s holding, outlining that someone at the White House is talking to Evil Guy, whose name is Mark Bishop. Lennox finally tells Noah that Evil Lisa is involved, and Noah seems really surprised. Noah had been thinking he was the only one she’s been evil with. Lennox points out that they have lots of evidence that Evil Lisa and Evil Mark have been evilly meeting for lots of evil naughty time. Noah says this is a pretty big problem because he’s been playing Evil Noah with Evil Lisa and they’ve been having evil naughty time together too. Lennox gets a look on his face as if to ask why HE wasn’t getting any evil naughty time, but doesn’t say anything. Noah tries to explain how he and Evil Lisa get involved while Lennox makes a lot of disgusted expressions. Lennox finally tells Noah that they might be able to turn this whole situation to their advantage.

1:35 am – Mike goes to see Jack, and tells Jack about Dr. Bradley’s evil plan…. While he uncuffs Jack!!! He tells Jack to “Make it look good”, and turns his back! Jack jumps Mike and makes him pass out. Jack gets out of the cell, grabs a gun from a guard, and goes after Audrey!

1:36 am – Dr. Bradley gets everything set up so he can try and kill, er, I mean, “help” Audrey, and Jack bursts into the room! He grabs Dr. Bradley throws him against the wall, and takes Audrey. After they leave, Dr. Bradley pulls the “Jack Bauer Has Audrey” alarm, and everyone at CTU knows that Jack has Audrey. Nobody except Nadia seems to be the slightest bit surprised.

Commercial

1:41 am – Morris tells Nadia that they still haven’t found Jack. Morris says it’s going to take a little bit of time, and Nadia offers the helpful manager advice of “make it take LESS time”. I’m sure Morris never thought of THAT. Good thing Nadia is on the job. Nadia looks up to not see Chloe, because Chloe is either invisible or not in her seat, and Morris doesn’t know where Chloe is.

1:42 am – Mike shows up on the CTU show floor, and Nadia confronts him about Jack. She’s not buying the whole “Jack overpowered me” thing, and Mike says he thought the plot needed a little spicing up, so he did what he thought was best.

1:43 am – Morris spots Jack! Nadia, acting like only a Star Trek captain could, decides to go get Jack herself, telling Morris to have others follow her.

1:44 am – Jack locks himself in a room with Audrey, and tries to talk to her. Jack starts telling Audrey her life story but she doesn’t seem to register anything. Thankfully, Audrey doesn’t say a word. Jack tells Audrey he loves her, and she grabs his hand, just as Nadia and gang use a CTU arc-welder to get through the door. There’s a brief drawing of guns, and Audrey blurts out “Bloomingdales!”, which everyone interprets as “Bloomfield”. Nadia tells Dr. Bradley to go to her office and some other CTU agents take Audrey away. Nadia promises Jack that she’ll make sure Dr. Bradley doesn’t touch Audrey.

Commercial

1:52 am – At the White House, Lennox tells Noah that there are large numbers of Russian troops entering the Asian theatre, and they’re going to be mad there’s no popcorn and no show being played. Lennox says they’re going to be so mad, they’ll be able to get to an American base within the hour.

1:53 am – Evil Lisa arrives back in Noah’s office acting like she didn’t just do something evil with someone else. Noah tells Evil Lisa that the Russian’s know what’s going on. Evil Lisa tries to act like Innocent Lisa when Noah asks about Evil Mark, but Noah won’t have it. He reminds Evil Lisa that cavorting with the enemy is Treason, and tells her to go back to Evil Mark. She tries to protest, but Noah threatens her with another non-spot no-action filled season of “24”, and won’t hear of it.

1:58 am – Ex-Secretary of Defense Heller goes to talk with Audrey, promising to take her away. Audrey looks scared that he might drive off a cliff on the way home, like last year. Heller goes to ask Nadia if he can talk to Jack.

1:59 am – Heller goes to Jack. Jack promises to take care of Audrey. Heller threatens Jack and tells Jack to stay away from Audrey. Heller says, “You’re cursed, Jack! Everything you touch, one way or another, ends up dead!” I had no idea Heller was part Gypsy, but I stand corrected.

2:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME ON “24”: JACK WANTS TO CLEAN UP! JACK WITH A GUN! ASSAULT BY THE CHINESE! EXPLOSIONS IN A SEWER!

LOST: Why The Others Are Desperate To Get Women Pregnant

SPOILERS AHEAD

You’re going to have to stick with me on this one… This is going to be a long post.

I said in my A Secret War post that I thought there were people on the outside that wanted to find members of The Dharma Initiative. I have a theory about why, and what’s really behind what The Others are doing.

First, let’s recap what we know for sure:

The Dharma Initiative has been working on something on the island for more than 20 years.

They’re REALLY well funded.

The Others are working on experiments which involve fertility.

They’ve recruited specialists in infertility (Juliette) to try and keep women who got pregnant while on the island alive, since they die before the third trimester.

They’ve found an island that is very difficult to find in conventional ways to do these experiments in secret, and they’re going to great lengths to keep people from finding out what exactly they’re doing.

We’ve heard over and over about The Others desire to get “Good People”.

The Others and some of the survivors of Flight 815 know that something about the island makes people heal faster.

We know that the helicopter pilot told Mikhail “I am not alone”.

I could go on with this, but you get the idea…

The thing that really jumped out at me after finding out that the helicopter pilot told Mikhail “I am not alone” was that the pilot was making an attempt to scare Mikhail, in the way that we’ve seen in other shows in movies. Nearly every time you’ve seen someone that’s dying in enemy territory, you tell them, “There will be more after I’m gone”, and things like that.

So, what possible reason would there be for a group on the outside to be so concerned about what The Others were doing on the island that they wanted to get to the island in the first place? That group must really want to stop, or at least expose, what’s happening on the island.

It’s also been very odd that The Others have gone to really great lengths to disguise what they’re doing. Here you have an island that no one can find, and when strangers crash on the island, they feel the need to disguise themselves and keep the crash survivors away by scaring them.

And it turns out that the experiments they’ve been doing have been to make sure that women that get pregnant on the island live through the pregnancy. Why would they hide something like that? Wouldn’t you really want to be sure you could get all the help you could?

I was thinking all of this over and I realized that the reason The Others are so desperate to find a way to keep the women pregnant is that they HAVE to do it, in order for the rest of their plan to work.

The Others’ Plan

Well, take into consideration that they’ve found a place where people heal really quickly. We’ve been told there’s no cancer. What if they’ve figured out a way to harness whatever does that on the island? That would explain why Ben could tell Juliette with such certainty that Juliette’s sister would survive. Furthermore, it could even be that it would make people live a LONG time. (I know, we haven’t seen anything about that yet, but stick with me here).

Also take into consideration that there’s something on the island killing people who have been “bad”. Sure there have been some deaths that were accidental (Boone), but there sure have been deaths where people who have been bad on the outside were killed for that very reason (Eko).

Now, say that you wanted to rid the world of all evil and make sure that all the good people lived. In fact, you could even rid the world of all disease, have people live healthy lives, and not worry about anyone “bad” harming anyone.

You find an island, and you have both parts: You have something that would be able to go through the population getting rid of “bad” people, and you have a cure for every known disease.
But you discover the “downside” of curing people would be that with that “cure” is women couldn’t survive a pregnancy. That’s a pretty big downside.

You’d REALLY want to fix that kind of problem, because if you could, you’d have what you consider to be the perfect society.

Would you want to hide that? You bet. Would that be something everyone would want? No way.

If The Others are really in the final stages of unleashing their plan to create a Utopian society, people opposed to what’s going on would want to find them to stop them. That’s why I think The Others have been so secretative about what they’ve been working on. If they can find a way to make women survive that pregnancy, they’ll be able to create their Utopian world.

Now, whether this island is Atlantis or another mythical place that had a perfect society that ended up dying out because they couldn’t figure out the whole pregnancy issue, I don’t know at this point.

I think all signs point that this is what The Others are trying to achieve.

Update

Back in October of 2005, I wrote a theory about Lost. In there, I wrote that I thought nanobots were used by Christian Shepard to cure Jack’s patient, the woman that eventually became his wife. While it’s not nanobots, having a vaccine from the island does fit in well with my theory that Christian Shepard was working with Dharma on testing the cure. He was the head of the staff at the hospital, and would have access to everything. Including the woman that Jack didn’t think he’d be able to cure during the surgery on her spine, only to find out later that she was cured. If Christian Shepard were working with The Others/Dharma/Whoever-They-Are, he could have been the one that really cured her with a vaccine from the island.

Furthermore, who better to be in on wanting a Utopian society than someone who profited from the war industry… Alvar Hanso.

LOST: A Secret War?

Some spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen D.O.C. yet, don’t read further!

If you’ve read the spoilers below, or read them on another site, you’ll already know that the pilot told Mikhail, “I am not alone”, which certainly seemed to surprise him.

What did she mean by that? She wouldn’t necessarily tell him that there were more people on the helicopter just for his information. I mean, why would it matter so much to her when she knew that she was dying that she needed to tell him something like that? It doesn’t make sense.

What does make a lot more sense is that she’s telling him there are more people like her out there, and that she told him that to scare him. We’ve seen scenes like that in other shows and in the movies. If you think you’re dying, tell the enemy that there are more people out there, and they’re coming.

I think it’s likely there is another group of people (Other “Others”?) that have been trying to find this island, and they’re going to continue to search until they can find it.

The type of gear the pilot was wearing, particularly the helmet and mask, make me think this might be some sort of military operation, or at the very least, they’re treating it like one.

I think this definitely ties into the reason The Others have been trying to keep women from dying when they’re pregnant, but I’ll leave that for a follow up posting that I’ll make later today.

LOST: D.O.C. theories

SPOILERS AHEAD

Another good episode! It was quite a surprise to see Mikhail show up, especially since we thought he was dead. He was probably on the verge of death after Locke threw him into the sonic fence, because people tend to heal quickly on the island. This could also mean that Ms. Klu is alive as well, and would certainly explain why she didn’t seem very worried when she asked Mikhail to shoot her.

I’ll try and dig up what the helicopter pilot really said when she saw Michael, because I don’t think it was what Mikhail said it was.

Once it was obvious that Mr. Kwon was alive, it didn’t take that much of a leap to realize that Mrs. Kwon was the one that was blackmailing Sun.

Jin and Mr. Kwon falls right in line with the “Father Issues” that everyone else on the island seem to have.

Sun’s in huge trouble right now. The question is, are the other women in trouble too? Why is Ben having Juliette get “samples” from the other women? Forced pregnancies?

The final big “shocker” of the episode, when the helicopter pilot said that Oceanic 815 was found and there were no survivors…. Well, I think that was a big red herring. The people who built all the facilities on the island seem to have a LOT of resources. I think the most likely explanation is that the plane crash site that the “world” found was staged. Now, WHY was it staged… that’s the bigger question. They either did it to prevent people searching near the island, or make people stop searching because they need the Losties (or at least some of them) on the island.

update: Changed “Michael” to “Mikhail”. (Thanks THG) That’s what I get for writing when I’m tired…

Summary of “24”: Episode 19 – 12 am to 1 am

I post as Steve (The 24 Guy) over on Dave Barry’s live blogging of “24” each week, and write a summary of the show each week, in the same spirit as the rest of the blog.

You can read the rest of my Season Six of “24” summaries on that page, if you need to catch up.

Here’s this week’s episode:

Previously on “24”, we found out: Audrey regrets going for Chinese take out; Wayne regrets forgetting about VP Noah’s Jedi mind tricks; Karen regrets not picking up Noah’s resignation earlier than the press conference; Evil Lisa regrets getting involved with VP Noah; Bill regrets not paying attention to Chloe during meetings; Chloe regrets not being sneakier when uploading things to Jack’s phone; Mike regrets not letting Jack drive; Jack does not regret going to take out some Chinese.

The following summary occurred between 12 am and 1 am:

12:02 am – Mike forgot to go to “How to Commandeer a Car” class, and jumps right out in front of traffic to grab a car after Jack left him behind, nearly getting killed. He finally flags someone down, and throws the driver to the ground in the middle of traffic, which was especially thoughtful. Mike calls to tell Bill that Jack “got the drop on him”, he avoided getting “slipped a Mickey”, and intends to find “that dirty rat”. Bill holds a very short impromptu meeting, in which he summarizes what’s left of the plot so far, just in case anyone at CTU wasn’t paying attention. Chloe, who has been playing Desktop Tower Defense on the hardest setting (and winning), gets interrupted by Bill who wants her back on the job to find Jack.

12:02 am – Jack drives to his favorite burger joint, only to find that land developers have put up power lines there. He uses the opportunity to disable the tracker. Chloe and Morris argue, and Milo takes the opportunity to spread some gossip about Audrey. Bill, Morris, Mike, Chloe and Milo are all afraid that Audrey might come out of this alive.

12:05 am – Meanwhile, at the White House briefing room, a spokeswoman gives fair warning to everyone that VP Noah might take over the country and to hide the children.

12:06 am – After dismissing everyone from the Oval Office, Noah asks everyone to leave except Lennox. Noah asks what Lennox’s intentions are, and Lennox says he’s flattered, but not interested. Noah explains that he’s worried that Lennox won’t like how he looks sitting in the President’s chair. Lennox repeats that he’s flattered but not interested, and then realizes what Noah really means. Lennox says that he just made the tape to protect himself, and now realizes that a bulletproof vest for bullets and a lead hat to prevent Jedi mind tricks would be better. He also says that he doesn’t intend to use the recording he made earlier. Lennox tells Noah, “You have my support”. Noah says, “Support can be beautiful”, and Lennox says for the third time he’s not interested, and also that slogan is for a competitor of one of their sponsors. Noah switches subjects and wants to know if Karen Hayes is going to slow them down, and Lennox says only as a speed bump. They decide to keep Karen on staff for now.

12:08 am – Jack calls Cheng, who still has a really tacky ringtone. Cheng tells Jack that Audrey’s life means nothing to him with Audrey sitting right there, and she must feel so appreciated. Jack tells Cheng that since he’s being chased by CTU, they need to alter the plans. Jack tells Cheng to meet him at an abandoned hotel. Cheng says he’s very flattered, but not interested. Jack says that he just wants to meet there for the exchange of the chip for Audrey. Cheng agrees, forgetting that Jack has been out of the country for the last couple of years and that the abandoned motel might just be a new shopping center by now.

Commercial

12:14 am – Karen tries to explain they have their TOP people at CTU trying to find Jack, but Noah won’t hear about it. Lennox suggests they send other agencies, like the FBI, the CIA and the Men in Black, after Jack. Noah agrees, and Lennox and Karen leave.

12:15 am – Aaaaah! Noah and Evil Lisa are kissing each other right next to the Lewinsky memorial couch, temporarily blinding millions of viewers.

12:16 am – Mike continues to drive around aimlessly looking for Jack, while on the phone with Nadia and Bill. Fortunately all the streets are completely empty because everyone in Los Angeles has gone to sleep. Mike drives up to the exact spot where Jack parked under what have to be the only set of power lines in L.A., and uses his boy scout training to confirm that he did in fact find tire tracks. Somehow, he’s even able to determine the direction Jack headed, presumably because all CTU truck tires are installed with the treads in a certain direction. Apparently, the power lines don’t block cell phone signals, just circuit board trackers. Mike asks what roads are up ahead. Nadia tells him, and within ten seconds justifies the direction that he thinks Jack might be heading, and that Jack might have grabbed one of the terrorist cell phones that can be used to trace where he’s going. (Reminder: “might” in 24-speak means “for sure”).

12:17 am – Milo can’t even believe Mike’s amazing power of deduction. Morris tries to pick a fight with Chloe when Morris gets upset that Chloe sent over some actual work that replaced the minesweeper game he was playing. Chloe asks Milo if he can defrag Huffman keys, and Milo says, “Can a packet sniffer decode Ethernet headers? Sure!”, so Chloe sends the file to Milo instead. Morris and Chloe argue a bit more about who’s encryption schemes are better until Chloe goes too far and tells Morris not to arm any more nuclear weapons for terrorists, which hurts Morris’ feelings and he stomps off. Chloe makes a sad face.

12:19 am – Karen gets a phone call while talking to Lennox, and gets a visit from a new guy named Peter. Peter has a YouTube video that Karen just HAS to see. Karen rightfully points out that Reid is a weasel, which he goes on to confirm later on in the video: Bill had Fayed in custody, and let him go! (Reid makes a surprised face!) Karen knew about it! (Another surprised face!) Karen is in a cover-up! Karen admits that while the “facts” were true, Fayed entered the country illegally, so of course they let him continue to wander around without supervision. They had NO idea that Fayed would go nuclear. They were surprised as anyone. She continues with a little speech until Peter interrupts and asks about Karen’s attempted resignation. Peter wants to make sure that Bill or Karen gets in trouble for letting Fayed go.

Commercial

12:28 am – Jack drives up to the old motel, which looks like summer camp in a slasher movie, except with less screaming and dead bodies (so far), and goes inside one of the (ahem) bungalows.

12:29 am – Nadia calls Mike to let him know they found Jack’s call to Cheng, and it shows (surprise!) Mike was right about where Jack was headed. Mike asks if there’s anything between him and Santa Maria, and Nadia says she didn’t even know he was Catholic. Mike says he meant the town, and Nadia tells him that some towns are up ahead.

12:30 am – Bill gets a phone call from Karen, and she asks if he has a minute. Bill says that he doesn’t, and Karen says she’ll call back, not letting on about the BIG trouble they’re both in. Bill hangs up and looks worried that he’s going to be asked to pick out drapes soon.

12:31 am – Nadia tells Bill where they think they might be able to stop Jack. Bill rolls his eyes because he’s sure it won’t work, but doesn’t let on.

12:32 am – Karen goes to Lennox’s office and asks if he remembers threatening to completely destroy her career and Bill’s career. Lennox says, “Sure!”, but apologizes. Karen explains about Reid, Peter’s deep need to indict someone as soon as possible, and the fact that someone in the Justice department is up at midnight. Lennox points out that the choice is easy, since Bill can take the fall, forgetting that Karen is married to the guy. Karen doesn’t want to hear about it. Lennox doesn’t seem very sympathetic, but has tons of advice about how to be a sleazy weasel and throw Bill to the sharks.

12:33 am – At the motel, Jack has been able to use some bed springs, a bed vibrating mechanism, and some old soap to create a plastic explosive and detonator which he installs in the room. Jack calls Bill and for the first time in the history of “24”, does NOT get Bill on the phone. I can only guess that Bill has taken this opportunity to go to the bathroom, and forgot his phone. Jack explains that he set up an explosive in the motel room, that he intends to blow himself up along with the nuclear weapon component, and that he thought it would be cool if Bill got the message after he blew himself up.

Commercial

12:38 am – Morris goes to talk to Bill, and asks for a transfer to anywhere else but near Chloe. Bill points out that Morris’ timing is really awful, but agrees.

12:39 am – Bill calls Karen, who lets him know that because of no fault of his own when he and Homeland Security let Fayed go, she has to fire him as the head of CTU. Bill points out that she did that last season, but she says that it’s different this time, and she really means it. Bill points out that his job is kind of important, and that he’s going to look pretty guilty even though he’s not. Karen says that it’s pretty important that she keep her job too, since it’s only been her second season on the show and she’s close to the president. Bill doesn’t see Karen’s side of things and hangs up on her.

12:41 am – Mike calls Nadia, and wants to know more about Jack, but she has nothing because Jack used double secret probation codes to encrypt the phone call.

12:42 am – Jack calls someone, just as Mike drives up to the motel where Jack is hiding with his bomb. Mike was able to find Jack with almost no help from Nadia, which I’m sure will be in Mike’s report at the end of the season, if he lives that long.

12:43 am – Bill calls Nadia in, and says he’s going to resign. Nadia thinks this is all pretty weird and Bill confesses that he didn’t so much “resign” as “got fired”.

12:44 am – Some CTU rent-an-agents come to escort Bill out of the building, and Bill tells Nadia that she’s in charge until they send a replacement. Bill starts to point out that the last replacement ended up marrying him, so Nadia might just be meeting her new husband soon, but he has to leave and doesn’t get the chance.

12:45 am – As Bill leaves, Morris runs to him to let him know that Mike found Jack’s truck, and Bill says “That’s good news” and leaves with the guards. Morris turns to Nadia to tell her that he had no idea that security was that strict around CTU, especially with everything else that has already happened today. Nadia tells him that she’s now in charge of CTU, and Morris looks like he’s going to bust out laughing.

12:46 am – Nadia immediately holds an impromptu meeting. Bill would have been proud because she immediately tells everyone to do exactly what they’re doing already.

Commercial

12:51 am – Mike breaks into Jack’s car, pulls out a gun and calls CTU to let them know that he’s arrived at what looks like the Bates Motel, so he’s going to check all the showers looking for Jack. They start using all the satellites they have to find Jack, but Mike stops them. Mike says that perhaps, just perhaps, the long stretch limousine that just pulled up might be something important, so he’s going to surveil it with some surveillance, and asks for a massive amount of backup.

12:53 am – Cheng gets out of the car, and goes to the exact bungalow that Jack is hiding in. Jack says he won’t do a thing unless he sees that Audrey is safe. Cheng calls someone in the limo. Audrey gets out and starts to head for the room. She’s got a gag in her mouth. Cheng explains they were so freaked out about Audrey’s crying all the time that they finally had to do something about it. Jack scribbles this down on his hand for later, in case he makes it out of this alive. Jack takes the gag out of Audrey’s mouth, and she seems to be pretty freaked out and unsure of Jack. There’s a pretty good chance that Cheng kidnapped a woman from a Chinese laundry and disguised her as Audrey, because Audrey would never wear the kind of clothes she’s got on right now voluntarily. Jack tells Cheng that Audrey needs to leave the building WITHOUT the gag, out of the range of the sniper Cheng has set up, so he knows she’s safe. Jack tells Audrey to leave to go to a gas station to pick up some Skittles. She leaves.

12:56 am – Just as Jack tosses the component to Cheng, Mike shoots the sniper. There’s lots of shooting and Jack is shot! Someone launches a missile at a helicopter! Cheng is getting away! This never would have happened with Bill in charge!

12:57 am – Some of the Chinese guys who missed the “let’s go now” signal from Cheng get shot by Jack. Fortunately, Jack was wearing a bullet proof cummerbund. A bunch of agents enter the building, and Jack demands to talk to the person in charge. Mike walks in and Jack explains that he had a spectacular special effect all ready to go off, and Mike ruined the whole thing. Mike also helpfully points out that he let Cheng get away too. Mike calls Nadia, who orders that Jack be placed under arrest.

12:59 am – They bring Audrey inside, and that Chinese laundry lady theory is looking a lot more plausible because Audrey doesn’t recognize Jack! She’s acting weird! Even weirder than usual!

1:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME: AUDREY BABBLES! NOAH’S WORRIED! A SPY! KISSING! (NOT AUDREY AND JACK!) FOUR MORE EPISODES TO GO! (TWO HOUR FINALE!)

Juliette’s Mission and Sun

What’s Juliette’s “mission”? Before The Other took off, Ben told Juliette that he’d see her in a week.

I (and a lot of other people) have been assuming that Juliette is up to something that isn’t very good, because of everything else that’s happened.

I got to thinking about this some more, and realized that while Juliette is probably trying to get to Sun, it might just be to warn her about what might be happening to her. (Women that conceive on the island end up dying).

We know that the father is either Jin or Jae Lee. If it were Jae Lee, chances are the Sun will be OK. Why? Because Claire was pregnant before getting to the island, and she’s OK. If Jae Lee was the father, Sun wouldn’t be in any danger, but Juliette might try and get to her to see what they can find out about her pregnancy.

If the father is Jin, then it’s BIG trouble for Sun, and Juliette could be there to try and talk Sun into getting some therapy or SOMETHING to help her, because she’s going to die otherwise.

Either way, whatever is happening, it doesn’t look good for Sun. She’s either going to have to admit that she’s the mother of Jae Lee’s baby (which has pretty dramatic implications for the Jin/Sun relationship), or she’s going to die unless Juliette helps her.

Either way, I think Juliette is there to help Sun. I think it’s probably that The Others know about Jae Lee, and when Juliette tells Sun she knows about that, it’ll be what convinces Sun that Juliette is actually trying to help.

….Of course, as usual, this is all theory, so we’ll see how it plays out when “D.O.C” (Date of Conception) airs in a couple of days.