Magic Lamp

Previously on 24: We found out that: Lennox keeps skeletons in his closet; Jack can yell at Gray so much that he can make him cry; people that can arm nuclear devices can be found in less than an hour in southern California; if you pick pocket a phone from someone, it’s probably a good idea to just toss it on the ground after you use it; Jack and his father are about to sing “Unchained Melody” in the back of a van.

The following summary occurs between 12 pm and 1 pm:

12:00 pm – It looks like hazmat ice cream trucks take longer to get to scenes of tragedy than perky news crews. Perky news crews also don’t understand the concept of being down wind of nuclear explosions.

12:01 pm – Lennox puts on his sad eyes and goes to tell President Wayne that he’s really sorry that Haig resigned, and comes up with a lame excuse to try to get Wayne to sign his autograph on some authorizations to declare everyone in the United States as illegal. Lennox seems to think that getting Wayne to sign a piece of paper is going to get Fayed to stop exploding things. Wayne tells Lennox to pass out copies to the cabinet, and Lennox is REALLY excited about it.

12:02 pm – Haig gets a phone call from Bill, and tells him that she resigned. Bill says that this is a really bad day to resign, because if she takes a plane back to LA, she’ll be off camera for at least a few hours, hampering her chances to get an Emmy for “Most Overly Dramatic Actress In a Nuclear Crisis”. Bill tries to call her back, but she can’t afford the air-time minutes, and doesn’t answer the call. A door slides open, and she enters a little green elevator with a very bored looking CIA guy inside who looks like he wants to say “I joined the CIA for this?”

12:03 pm – At CTU, Chloe tells Bill that she can’t reach Jack by satellite, phone, or smoke signal. She says she’ll keep trying.

12:03 pm – In the van, a thug is on the phone with Gray, who is dumping hard drives… probably on Ebay. Jack’s father starts to tell Jack that everything he’s worked for has been for Jack, but Jack looks unconvinced since he still has a government job. A government job that lets him shoot people, sure, but still….

12:07 pm – The van stops at a junk hard, and the thugs make the mistake of 1) unchaining Jack, and 2) carrying guns. They move to a hole in the ground right next to a cement truck, and a struggle ensues! There’s shooting! YEAH! It’s been WAY too long, and Jack, while relieved he finally got to shoot someone, forgot to tell his Dad not to join the fun because now they have no one to question.

12:10 pm – Jack, with his hands still handcuffed calls Bill, and tells him that Gray has been a naughty nuclear collaborating monkey.

12:11 pm – McCarthy calls to tell Fayed that he found a guy to do the nuclear arming, and actually sends his resume to Fayed! They have very strict hiring laws in California.

Commercial

12:15 pm – Nadia plays a recording for Bill of a podcast she downloaded featuring Fayed’s and McCarthy’s phone call. Morris has a weird screen saver that he hopes can reconstruct the resume, in about 10 minutes, so we’ll check back then.

12:16 pm – Jack stops off to meet one of the CTU guys in the field, Hal Turner, outside of Gray’s house. Jack tells Hal that he wants Gray taken alive, but it’s OK to shoot just about anything else. Jack’s dad wants to know “What are you going to do to him?” and Jack answers, “His hair and nails”, and leaves before his father remembers that Gray is bald.

12:17 pm – Gray, his wife Marilyn, and his son Josh, all start arguing with each other when Jack bursts into the room with some CTU guys. Gray pulls a gun, which really surprises his wife and son. It seems that Gray hasn’t quite told the truth about his real job.

12:18 pm – Jack tells Marilyn that Gray is involved with the nuclear blast, and she doesn’t seem all that surprised that Gray is a weasel. Marilyn stops Jack cold when she tells him, “I’ve seen what happens when you try and protect people”. Ouch.

12:19 pm – The tactical commando guys at CTU must have gone through the Chloe Computer Training Course because they know how to upload whole hard drives up to CTU. Jack tells the commando to take Marilyn and Josh to CTU for safe keeping, because we all know NOTHING can go wrong there. Except Tony. And Edgar. And a Hobbit.

12:20 pm – Josh and Marilyn see Jack’s dad, and Marilyn tells him to tell Jack to “Keep Josh out of this”… She seems to be under the impression that Josh might be the mastermind behind this whole thing.

12:21 pm – Gray tries the “penguin on top of the television” defense and tells Jack that he panicked. Jack yells at Gray, and when that doesn’t work, Jack yells louder, which doesn’t work either. Then Jack tells the interrogation guy, “Set up the Interrogation Package”, which is an upgrade from the “Yelling At” package”. The Interrogation Package comes in a silver suitcase.

Commercial

12:27 pm – Milo gets Chloe and shows her information about Morris’ brother, who either stood way to close to a microwave oven, or got hit with the nuclear blast. He’s in critical condition. Milo takes a page from Management 101 and says he wants to keep Morris from knowing about this because he’s still got several hours of work to do. Chloe ignores this and tells Morris, who can’t understand why his brother was in Valencia. Morris tries to leave, but Chloe convinces him to stay and help.

12:29 pm – Back at the Bauer House of Impending Torture, Jack is on the phone with Bill, who tells Jack about the nuclear engineer and the resume. Gray is having the finishing touches of duct tape applied when Jack walks in and tells Gray about McCarthy’s plan to find an engineer. Gray tells him that since nearly every engineer in California works for Google now, he doesn’t believe it. Meanwhile, Jack’s father just wanders into Gray’s house, despite the large number of CTU commandos all over the place. One of the commandos is video taping the talk Jack and Gray are having for a DVD called “Bauers Gone Wild”, while Jack’s father watches.

12:30 pm – Jack wants to inject Gray with some rather nasty stuff that will cause pain and induce overacting in Gray, and it really works. Gray starts overacting all over the place, but won’t tell Jack anything. They really crank up the CCs of the stuff, and Gray finally starts to confess that it’s not McCarthy but it’s really about everything from LAST season, including David Palmer, Tony, Michelle, but he SWEARS he has nothing to do with Manilow. He tells Jack that he also set Jack up to be killed before, not just what’s happened today. Gray says he’s doing all this “because he loves his country”. Why killing Jack would help the country, I have no idea. I can only think that Gray hasn’t been watching Jack’s fine handiwork for the last few seasons. Gray makes the mistake of telling Jack the cliché “We’re just the same”, which must be a trigger word for Jack because it makes him REALLY mad, and he does the unthinkable. He pushes Gray’s chair over backwards and starts yelling at everyone that he wants to Gray dead right now. The only thing that stops his rampage is when Jack sees his father, who has a VERY disappointed look on his face. Gray looks angry. I mean really angry. I mean, if he were near the nuclear blast earlier, he’d be Bruce Banner angry.

Commercial

12:40 pm – Sandra’s in the hospital with Walid. Walid must be one tough guy, because all he has is a band-aid on his face after that beating he took in the courtyard. Sandra tries to comfort him by telling him that there’s a BIG lawsuit in this for him.

12:41 pm – President Wayne calls Sandra to ask about Walid, and she starts telling him that the men in the courtyard were “innocent bystanders” who just happened to pull down information from the Internet about the additional nuclear weapons, forgetting that the police might have been a bit interested in that.

12:42 pm – Morris downloads an open source application to try to help descramble what he’s working on, but it nearly doesn’t work because he just installed Vista.

12:42 pm – Jack is on the phone with Bill. Jack tells Bill all about Gray’s activities last season, going to Enron-like lengths to protect the company. Gray’s going to CTU, and CTU is setting up at a middle school for what I can only guess will be a gruesome show and tell later.

12:43 pm – Back inside the house, Jack tries to tell his Dad that Gray made “bad choices”, and that’s why he’s in the time out chair. Jack’s father says Jack deserved a “better family”. Jacks wants his father to go to CTU, which will just be about at maximum Bauer capacity by the time he gets there with Gray, Marilyn and Josh.

Commercial

12:50 pm – Morris’ Eclipse plug-in is working, so they should have the picture soon.

12:51 pm – A very scary looking vice president, even scarier looking than last year’s, is on Air Force 2 and confers with Lennox about “the plan”. The cabinet convenes, and Wayne wants to know if everyone’s read “Executive Order 1066”. Everyone looks as though they’re already sick of the other 1065 Executive orders, so one more is just more of the same. They all pretend they’ve read it.

12:52 pm – Wayne drops his own bomb that he’s NOT going to use Lennox’s plan, and launches into a political speech. He and Tom argue back and forth in the same format that Sandra uses to monologue. We also find out that the vice president’s name is “Noah”.

12:53 pm – At CTU everyone is running around urgently. They’re really dragging out the picture Morris is trying to reconstruct. The picture finally reassembles, and TA DA! It’s Morris! They’re going to try and get Morris to set the nuclear weapons! Morris, of course, has left the building, and is now in extreme danger of becoming the focus of the next several hours of the show. The whole thing with Morris’ brother at the hospital was a set up just to get Morris outside of CTU.

12:55 pm – CTU gets Morris on the phone, and just as he’s talking to Jack, McCarthy shows up, gets angry at the passenger seat of Morris’ car, shoots it, and steals Morris, all with everyone listening in on the phone. Bet that makes the Christmas blooper reel.

12:56 pm – Back at Gray’s house, Gray is still tied up, and Jack’s father asks to talk to Gray alone, which no one considers even the slightest bit suspicious.

12:57 pm – Well, well, well… Jack’s father and Gray are still in on the whole thing together. They’ve planned everything! They really, really want the company to survive, and Gray says he’s going to be a tough monkey to protect the company.

12:59 pm – Jack’s dad doesn’t believe him, shoots chemicals into Gray’s IV drip, and kills him! They just left a syringe lying around?? Wonder if that video tape was still going in the other room?

1:00 pm – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME: TWO HOUR SHOW! A SUPER FAST PLANE HAS GOTTEN ASSAD TO WASHINGTON ALREADY! SHOOTING! EXPLOSIONS! JACK HAS TO DISARM A TICKING BRIEFCASE!

Be sure and catch all of Steve’s summaries of Season 6 of “24”!

PREVIOUSLY ON 24: We learned that: Nuclear weapons make people stand up when they watch TV; Jack probably taught MacGyver how to use television antennas to save people from helicopters; It’s been so long since Gray (Hollywood Looking Guy from last season) has seen his brother Jack, that he can’t even remember Jack’s first name; If Jack asks you “Paper or Plastic”, always pick paper.

The following summary takes place between 11 am and 12 pm:

11:00 am – Wayne has been speaking on TV since last week and finally wraps everything up by telling the country that everyone faces a grave crisis…. Are there zombies out already in Valencia? Haig overhears Lennox’s plans, for conquest of the US without clearing it with Wayne, and doesn’t like it very much. They launch into speeches at each other, which hopefully gets it out of the way for the rest of the show, which we hope will involve thigh shots. Lennox plots to get Haig out of the way with one of his lackeys.

11:02 am – Over at CTU, Nadia pretends to type at a computer, and runs to Bill to ask about profiling, since anyone with a mideastern background has to do a double super secret login, plus they all need special decoder rings now. Bill tells Nadia that Chloe handles all the programming issues, but that using “gprof” will probably help her. Nadia asks how she’s supposed to work with one hand tied behind her back, and Bill says he bets that she still can type faster than most people. Bill asks about Jack, and Nadia says they haven’t heard from him, other than a requisition for a case of head-sized plastic bags.

11:03 am – Gray, who has been holding his breath since last week, starts crying that he doesn’t know where Jack’s dad is, when the bag is finally pulled off. Gray denies everything, until Jack shows him the bag again, and suddenly Gray magically remembers every single detail about the nuclear weapons. Turns out that Jack’s dad is into nuclear weapon recycling, and that Gray made a giant boo-boo by hiring the lowest bid contractor, who accidentally turned out to be a terrorist. Gray probably would have noticed that if he had read the guy’s business card a little more carefully.

11:06 am – Gray really insults Jack by telling him that “What we are were going to do would be a lot more effective than what you and your people were going to do.” Wasn’t Gray paying attention to all the explosive terrorists, thigh shots, and general mayhem that Jack caused last season? Oh, well, it has been a while since Jack was away at Chinese prison, so maybe he forgot. Jack’s dad is out looking for the nuclear weapons, handing out flyers and posting signs on telephone poles. Jack tells Gray that he’s coming along for the ride, since he’s fresh out of people to drive him around.

11:09 am – Mrs. Gray is taking this opportunity to watch another shot of the expensive nuclear blast special effect, never noticing that Gray and Jack were making lots of noise just a few feet away in another room. Gray and Jack leave.

11:10 am – Jack calls Chloe and asks if she’s picked up any threads, and Chloe tells him that she’s heard of “Pick Up Sticks”, but never of “Pick Up Threads”. Jack tells her to send a few field units out into the field, and to wait for him there, because he gets cranky if there is shooting going on, and he’s not involved.

Commercial

11:15 am – Milo tells everyone that the nuclear explosion, which seems to have burned out the picture on the LCD in the briefing room, is making it hard to find Fayed. Bill tells him that’s because the way this normally works is that they send a lot of people out into the field and come up empty; then Jack eventually calls in to announce that he’s single-handedly figured out where the bad guy is. Chloe comes in and tells Bill that Jack has asked for a couple of field units to be sent out into the field, and Bill tells Milo that this is what he’s been waiting for.

11:16 am – While Jack is driving around corners at top speed, Gray is trying to convince Jack that getting CTU involved is going to involve “the family”, which is apparently the Bauer mafia. Jack tells Gray to “trust him”, which is Jack code for “you could be dead soon”.

11:17 am – Bill calls Jack. Jack says that his father is involved with the nuclear weapons through McCarthy. Bill jumps to the conclusion that Jack’s father had nothing to do with the nuclear weapons being sold, and Jack points out that might not be a good assumption, but that they’ll have to wait for a little later in the show to find out if this turns into a real plot twist. Bill tells Jack to have fun shooting people, and to call him back when he finds out anything.

11:18 am – McCarthy is on the phone with a nuclear weapon engineer recruiter looking for someone that can activate nuclear weapons. The search on Monster has come up with nothing so far. His girlfriend starts complaining, and he finally pulls over saying that he doesn’t need “negativity” and needs “his space”, just like Dr. Phil always recommends. The phone rings, and Fayed wants to know if he’s found an engineer. McCarthy tells him it’s harder to find an engineer right now than before the Internet bubble hit, and hangs up on Fayed.

11:19 am – Back at the detention center, the FBI guy is showing Sandra his vacation slides when a picture of what’s going out in the courtyard comes up. He’s telling her that he’s going to post the pictures to the Web, and get CTU to look at them.

11:19 am – Milo instantly gets the pictures on his screen, and tries to go to Morris to get him to look at it. Morris tells him to talk to Nadia. Milo tries to get information from Nadia that he needs, and she tells him to go talk to Bill. Milo says he feels like he’s trapped in an old MASH episode.

11:20 am – Milo talks to Bill about Nadia, and Bill tells him that Nadia’s been flagged by a Homeland Security memo. Milo launches into a mini-speech, until Bill stops him and tells him to get back to work.

11:21 am – Bill calls Haig and asks if she got the memo. Haig says that she did, and that she promises to have a cover sheet on her next TPS report. Haig says she’s going to try and tell Wayne about Lennox.

11:22 am – Back at detention center, Walid faces away from the rest of the detainees, trying to hide the very visible earplug that the FBI put in his left ear last hour. He casually asks if everyone is from around there, where there kids go to school, and whether they know any homicidal nuclear terrorists. They all look at him funny for a couple of seconds, and then go on as if Walid asking questions like this is perfectly normal. They reveal that one of them has a cell phone that went completely undetected by the guards, and Walid says that he doesn’t even want to know where that thing was when it was smuggled into the detention center.

11:24 am – Back at the White House bunker, Lennox’s lackey comes up with a list of things he can blackmail Haig with, including video of her playing Solitaire on her computer, the late lunches she’s been taking, and the fact that Bill might have let Fayed go when he was in CTU custody 14 months ago. He wants Haig out of the way. Haig tells Lennox that he has skeletons his in closest too, and he tells her that his skeletons are out of the closest and living in San Francisco now, so there’s nothing she can do about it.
He wants Haig to resign within the hour.

Commercial

11:31 am – Morris wants to know why Nadia is taking so long, and Milo says he’s running a background downloads on her system, so everything has slowed down a lot. Milo logs Nadia in using his user id.

11:34 am – Haig goes to Wayne and asks for some time to speak with him. Since Wayne only has to worry about a nuclear weapon that just went off and a four more that are in the country, he of course says he has time to talk. Haig hands in her resignation, which Wayne doesn’t accept at first. Haig presses the point, and then butters him up a bit so that he’ll give her a good reference. She asks to be transferred to Los Angeles and then leaves. Wayne looks pretty bummed out. Lennox’s lackey bumps into her in the hallway, tries to get her autograph, and she declines. The lackey calls Lennox to tell him this, and in a first ever, we see that one of the real jerks on TV isn’t using a Windows laptop, he’s using a Mac.

Commercial

11:40 am – Jack and Gray look like they’re car shopping, but Jack’s on the phone with Chloe trying to find the car that McCarthy might be using. Chloe asks Jack what to do with the back-up teams that are “in a two block radius”, and tells Jack that she can’t use the term “perimeter” right now, because it’s “still too soon”. Jack says he understands. Jack and Gray go into an office building marked “Nuclear Weapons Traders”.

11:42 am – Back at the detention center, Walid watches the guy with the cell phone wander around the yard saying “Can you hear me now?” but no one can. In an incredible (and by that I mean “not at all credible”) feat of acrobatics, we find out that Walid also happens to be an excellent pickpocket, because he stumbles and grabs that guy’s cell phone away from him. He talks to the FBI using the wire he had implanted last hour, and the FBI asks him to call for carry out because it’s nearly noon. They also ask him to dial a number, press star twice, and turn around three times on one foot. The FBI says after that, he should just “put the phone back”. Chloe instantly gets everything from the phone after Walid dials it (because she’s just that kinda high tech girl we all know and love). The FBI instructs Walid to get the phone back to the guy he stole it from. He goes over to talk to the rest of the detainees, but can’t quite seem to figure out what kind of small talk to make.

11:44 am – Chloe is searching through the data when a skull appears on her screen, which doesn’t freak her out at all. Stuff like that happens to Chloe every day. She calls The FBI guy and tells him that the stuff on the phone is useless. The guys in the courtyard have been reading blogs, so the data is essentially worthless. She also says she’s horrified that anyone would be browsing the web with such a small phone with such a tiny screen. Sandra takes the opportunity to start making a speech, and the FBI guy urgently calls someone on his radio to tell them they’re going to extract Walid from the yard.

11:46 am – Meanwhile, out in the courtyard, the guy that was so proud for smuggling the phone in realizes that he hasn’t been obsessing about having it for the last couple of minutes, and can’t find the phone. Walid says that he doesn’t have it, but the cell phone guy is pretty quick on the uptake, and tells everyone to search Walid. They find the phone, and start using Walid as a punching bag, proving that whomever the FBI called is really slow at performing extractions. This all goes on for a short while until the guards all start running up, and the FBI guy finally calls for medical assistance. Sandra tries to talk to Walid, and he says that’s the last time he agrees to THAT.

Commercial

11:51 am – One of the CTU backup team guys calls Chloe to let her know that even though Jack has been at the McCarthy building for a long time, they finally just got there. These guys must be new, because Chloe tells them to watch all the entrances and exits to the building.

11:52 am – Inside the building, Jack reprograms an electronic door lock without the aid of any tools whatsoever, and he and Gray go inside the room. After 52 minutes, we FINALLY see a gun, which fortunately Jack is holding. Jack starts going through a conveniently placed computer and realizes that it has some kind of bizarre operating system on it that puts all the file access in a series of cascading menus. The files can’t be accessed because someone has started to scramble and delete them all. Jack hears a noise in the next room, so he does what any brother would do. He chains Gray to some furniture and goes to investigate.

11:54 am – Jack looks around, making lots of noise as he goes and gets into a fight with someone. Jack is just about to do a thigh shot when someone comes up from behind and hits him in the back of the head. The guy is just about to shoot Jack dead when Zefram Cochrane comes out of the next room and tells the guy not to shoot, because this is a little “Clouseau and Cato” game that he and Jack like to play.

11:55 am – Jack asks for his gun back, and gives the keys to one of the guys that tried to beat him up while Zefram explains that he’s been working on a warp engine design with McCarthy and things got WAY out of hand.

11:57 am – Jack tells his father that he’s looking for the nuclear weapons, and that if Gray has to go to prison, that’s Gray’s problem. Gray comes back and starts to smart talk Jack a bit, and says just the wrong thing (he mentions Jack’s dead wife), which really gets Jack upset and he nearly punches Gray in the face. Jack’s father must have been REALLY busy when these two were kids. Jack’s dad finally tells Jack to call CTU, when a plot twists happens while Jack is off guard – his dad’s thugs turn out to be Gray’s thugs! They have a gun on Jack and his dad now! Gray and the thugs take Jack and his dad out of the building.

11:58 am – Meanwhile, the special effect that went off a couple of hours ago is dissipating quickly, so they show one more shot of it while they can. McCarthy and his girlfriend are on a hotel walkway. McCarthy is on the phone trying to get a room upgrade when he realizes he accidentally dialed the recruiter that’s looking for an engineer that can enable the weapons, who has found a guy he thinks they can force to do the job.

11:59 am – Downstairs in the lobby, Gray and the thugs start to take Jack and his father outside when everyone notices that the two new CTU back-up team guys are going to need back-up teams themselves, because they’re dead. Gray tells the thugs to call him when “it’s done”, and they load Jack and his dad into a van. Jack looks VERY disappointed that he didn’t hit Gray when he had the chance.

12:00 pm – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME: JACK SHOOTS SOME BAD GUYS! THE RETURN OF THE DISSIPATING SPECIAL EFFECT! JACK GETS TO BEAT UP GRAY SOME MORE!

Be sure and catch all of Steve’s summaries of Season 6 of “24”!

PREVIOUSLY ON 24: We found out that:

When Jack throws up, nuclear weapons go off; When Jack fires someone, he really fires someone; If you EVER see someone that’s about to set off a nuclear weapon, rush them – yelling at them won’t stop them; Fayed is going to need some more bad guys to hang out with.

The following summary takes place between 10 am and 11 am

10:00 am – The unthinkable has happened: They positioned the TV in the Oval office so that everyone has to stand to be able to see it. On that TV, we learn that Valencia oranges are going to be a lot more scarce, mainly because of a nuclear weapon special effect we’ve already seen at least three times. The announcer on the TV they’re watching is stretching for time and giving everyone interesting, but completely useless facts about what happens when a nuclear bomb goes off.

10:01 am – Lennox tells Wayne that at least twelve thousand voters expired in the blast. Haig tells Wayne that her husband from CTU Bill just called to let her know that there are four other bombs available to the terrorists, so we could be seeing that same special effect again really soon. Wayne asks Lennox for the Joint Chiefs to bring one, until Lennox explains what the “Joint Chiefs” really are. Haig said that keeping people from taking airline flights will NOT be a problem. They also find the video of the explosion on YouTube already. Wayne is told he has to go to the bunker, and is pretty excited about it, since they keep some pretty cool food down there.

10:02 – At CTU, everyone’s watching on TV, and they’re all standing up too. The guy talking on the TV say there’s a nuclear physics expert who will talk about some scary things to more panic. Bill asks Nadia if they’ve heard from anyone (“No”), and Milo tells Bill that all their field teams were too close to the blast, and they’re dead too.

10:03 – A guy with a wire in his head is briefing Wayne about all the cool stuff in the bunker. The Vice President has been alerted and at first was very excited, until he found out that Wayne was still OK. He goes back to his VP duties of sitting around for something to happen to Wayne, and continues to follow protocol. Large silver cardboard doors behind them slam shut with a satisfying special effect noise.

10:04 – Haig calls Bill. She asks if the heavily armed teams they sent after the terrorists might have something to do with that nuclear weapon going off. Bill says he’s not sure. It could have been one of the California garage bands trying to play “Louie, Louie” when something went horribly, horribly wrong. Bill tells her they’re still looking for Fayed, and Assad is on the way to CTU. Haig asks Bill to be careful. Bill assures her that he’s NOT going to go outside for the next two or three hundred years.

10:05 – Chloe and Morris talk about what happened in the nuclear blast to “all those people, and Curtis”. She asks Morris why all the people she knows keep dying, and Morris asks her if she really knew twelve thousand people, obviously impressed. Then Chloe said that she’s having “packet loss” and wants to know if Morris wants to “boot her router”, and he agrees. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Chloe, she means exactly what she said.

10:06 – Many fire engines all over the place in California, dodging people that are trying to drop suitcases on other people on the street below, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

10:07 – Fayed’s car nearly misses a little girl in the street, and he hits the driver in the back of the head for missing her. Fayed continues the conversation with the person that sold him the bomb, McCarthy, telling him that the bomb wasn’t supposed to go off yet, that something must have happened. Fayed is particularly upset because he lost his engineer in the blast, and that it was going to be IMPOSSIBLE to find another one, because most of them have already been hired by Google. Fayed also says when the device to program the nuclear triggers blew up, they realized they forgot to do backups and don’t have a way to program the other triggers. McCarthy sympathizes, saying it’s hard to find a good backup program for Windows. Fayed offers to double McCarthy’s price for the previous transaction. Fayed says he needs them within the next couple of hours or the plot is going to drag on too long and they’ll lose viewers. McCarthy says he has to look up some things on web, and that he’ll call Fayed back. Fayed’s car continues on, and we see a helicopter parked by a student driver that won’t be getting his pilot license soon.

10:09 – It turns out that the student pilot is already on the street looking around for someone to help him, and of course he meets Jack. Jack, as usual is more than willing to help, but the student is a little freaked out when Jack tells him that the reason the helicopter crashed was a shockwave from a nuclear bomb. The guy says that there was definitely nothing about that in ANY of the manuals he has read. Jack climbs to the top of the roof like a spider monkey. The people inside are OK. Jack pulls a McGyver by grabbing a television antenna and pries open the helicopter door just in time to grab the guy inside. The helicopter sparks on the way down, and blows up a Porsche on the street, leading most of the Porsche owner’s neighbors to start clapping, since they didn’t like that guy very much anyway.

10:10 – Still on the roof, Jack calls Bill at CTU and tells him he’s getting AMAZING reception from up there. Jack says he’s “back in”. Bill says “I thought you were out”. Jack says this isn’t the hokey-pokey, and he wants someone to come pick him up. Bill says that’ll take a while since everyone’s already heard what Jack did to his last driver, but says he’ll send a car.

Commercial

10:16 – Down in the bunker, everyone is sitting down because the televisions there are in a much better position than they were in the Oval office. Wayne is Skype-ing with a military officer. Wayne wants to know if Fayed was state-sponsored, and if so, who it was. The officer tells Wayne that the CIA is going through photos to see if Fayed had ever driven for NASCAR which would make it a lot easier to see who the sponsor might have been.

10:17 – A guy dressed as Captain Kangaroo tells Wayne that he’s not sure which country sponsored the bombing, but he’s willing to take the chance to blow up a lot of things because he has some ships he wants to use. He says, “We’ve been playing games with these terrorists for 11 weeks now”, and Wayne says that they should have been trying to catch the terrorists instead. Captain Kangaroo continues, “The only language they understand is force”. Lennox starts to make a lame Star Wars joke, but Wayne stops him. Captain Kangaroo wants to send them “back to the Stone Age”. Wayne says he seriously doubts that Hollywood would even consider making “The Flintstones 3”, let alone hire terrorists. Haig says that Captain Kangaroo seems to be speaking in clichés, and they need a translator right away before everything goes to the dogs.

10:17 – Wayne starts to tell Captain Kangaroo that sending a lot of nuclear weapons all over the place probably isn’t the best tactical nuclear weapon option at this point. Captain Kangaroo starts to argue with him. When Lennox speaks up to tell Captain Kangaroo that he HATES it when people interrupt during meetings, and we also find out it is not Captain Kangaroo… it is Admiral Kangaroo. Wayne says he’s going to retaliate, with “our sights locked on our enemy”. Haig looks worried that Wayne might have caught the cliché virus that Kangaroo has.

10:18 – Wayne asks Haig what CTU has learned in the last 20 minutes about the remaining nuclear weapons. Haig says they’re loud and that people don’t want to be around them when they go off. Wayne says he’s not talking about Trump and Rosie, he wants to know about the remaining nuclear weapons! Haig says that CTU has been watching satellite TV, but don’t know where the bomb was meant to be set off, and that just like she told everyone just twenty minutes ago, Fayed may or may not be alive, and that if he’s alive that would be “bad”. Like “tell him about the Twinkie” bad.

10:18 – Fayed tells his driver to make a phone call to someone, to let them know that the nuclear weapons in the back of the car (which they almost had an accident in nearly hitting a little girl) are “safe”, which I think the caller could have assumed because there wasn’t a second nuclear explosion recently.
10:19 – At CTU, Assad arrives and starts to give Bill a speech about not being his enemy. Assad tries to shake hands with Bill, but Bill spots the joy buzzer in Assad’s hand, so he doesn’t shake it.

10:19 – Morris and Chloe are setting up mineral water and laptops (always a good combination to have right next to each other) in the CTU boardroom. Morris makes various wisecracks while doing this, showing us why Chloe probably started going out with the guy in the first place.

10:20 – In the boardroom, Bill tells Assad that Fayed has four more nuclear weapons, and Assad seems to be a bit surprised by this. Assad tells Bill that he came to the US to stop Fayed and to take a tour of “star’s homes”, if there was any time left over. Bill and Assad recap the whole “I’m here to stop Fayed, and to broker a peace deal” story just in case we didn’t remember them pounding that into our heads last week.

10:21 – Assad says that the source of the nuclear weapons is General Dmitri Gredenko. Chloe immediately starts to open up a Russian database, because she just happens to have one lying around.

Commercial

10:25 – Milo tries to get all technical with Chloe by pointing to the file name “Gredenko” on the screen and Chloe tells him that it’s a yellow sticky note, not a file name. Morris comes over and just happens to have a list of everyone that Gredenko ever met during business meetings, and Chloe goes to tell Bill about number 17 on the list: “Philip Bauer”. Bill says, “Bauer…. Bauer… Doesn’t ring a bell”. Chloe smacks him on the back of the head and Bill says, “Oh, THAT Bauer. Jack’s Dad!”

10:26 – Bill calls Jack about the “Gredenko”, and asks if he recognizes that name. When Jack says “no”, Bill gets all snotty and says, “Well, your dad does!” (Classy, Bill). Jack hasn’t talked to his dad in nine years, but wants to have a really awkward conversation, so Jack volunteers to talk to him. Bill tells Jack to leave the driver on any old street corner, and that Jack can have the car. The driver mumbles something like “Curtis said there would be days like this”.

10:28 – At the detention facility, there are prisoners standing in the courtyard standing really still and trying to pretend that a nuclear weapon didn’t go off today. Sandra’s on the phone and she recognizes the FBI as they walk in because of the white iPod wire coming out of the agent’s shirt and into his ear. The agent says that his friend, Agent Jennings, wants to give Walid an iPod that can record conversations, so he can find out if there’s an active terror cell in the dentition facility. Sandra asks why all the cells aren’t already all wired up for sound, but everyone ignores her. Then she asks how they’re going to put a wire on him, and they tell him that they use a very small staple gun and that the nervous twitches will go away about a week or two after they get the staples back out.

10:29 – In the courtyard, the men being held there are standing around in a circle talking, not letting Walid join in their terrorist games. Walid tries to join in the conversation, but the men don’t really seem to take to him.

10:30 – The FBI agents go walking across the courtyard, yelling out Walid’s name, right in front of the group of men, who I’m sure would never in a million years suspect that Walid might eventually try something with the FBI. Walid, for his part, acts like he has no idea what’s going on, mainly because he really has no idea what’s going on. They make a HUGE deal out of roughing up Walid, so much that Walid almost starts to confess. That’s when one of the agents whispers to Walid that they’re wiring him up. They throw in a few extra punches to make it look real. Sandra’s in the other room listening to all this and freaks out, telling everyone she’s the one with the lawyer, err acting training, not Walid. She tries to go help him, but the FBI hold her back.

10:31 – Out in the courtyard, all the men are watching while Walid is pretending to get beaten up with very realistic punches from the FBI. The FBI guys show Walid a Windows Mobile PDA with Fayed’s name in huge letters on it. Walid starts to ask how they got Fayed’s PDA, when the agent punches him again and tells Walid that he’s supposed to drop Fayed’s name to the guy’s in the courtyard. Walid seems pretty confused about this whole situation, not to mention the audience. The agents leave. The guys in the courtyard seem very impressed that Walid can take that kind of beating, and Walid tells him it’s because of his days as a mime and walks away.

10:32 – Jack makes a phone call, and someone named Sam answers. Sam tells Jack that he doesn’t know where Jack’s father is, because he left in a mysterious plot point we’ll learn about later. He also casually drops the fact that Jack has a brother named Gray. Jack asks for the phone number, since Jack hasn’t talked to him in a while either. It also turns out that the entire conversation from Sam’s end is being broadcast in HD TV to a guy named Liddy who’s video taping Same for some reason.

10:33 – Liddy calls someone, and WHOA! Gray is “Hollywood Looking Terrorist Guy” from last season! And he still has the Borg implant in his head! Gray is pretty surprised that Jack is alive, and doesn’t seem all that happy that Jack is back. I’m guessing that Gray and Jack didn’t exactly see eye to eye about things, mainly because Gray tells Liddy they should have killed Jack when they had a chance.

That’s just a guess though.

Anyway, Gray caught the cliché virus too, because he tells Liddy that “My brother has a way of digging things up that need to stay buried”. I bet Gray is still mad at Jack for digging up a pet from the backyard when they were kids.

Commercial

10:38 – Gray gets a call from Jack, and they make ironic small talk. Jack tries to find out where his Dad is, but Gray is of no help. Gray says he’ll try and find out where their father is. Gray almost asks if he can get Jack’s exact GPS coordinates, so he can send a squad of commandos right over to help Jack out, but stops himself just in time. It doesn’t appear that Jack suspects a thing… yet.

10:39 – Jack calls Chloe to see if she can find “Graem Bauer’s” address, but questions why someone would give a kid a first name with a spelling like that. She asks Jack if Gray got beat up a lot as a kid, and Jack hints that’s why Gray might have turned out the way he did. She gives Jack the address, knowing that Jack just got off the phone with Graem. I think Chloe is pretty sure that Jack surprise visit to Graem won’t be that great for Graem.

10:40 – Back at Graem, err Gray’s house, we find out that he has a wife and son, which is kind of weird because we never saw them last season when he was locked in that room giving orders. Must have been another part of the house. Anyway, the wife and son are watching TV, and the wife is standing and the son is sitting. It looks like they almost got the TV in the right place, but not quite. when Gray walks in. Gray tells his son that now that a bomb went off in LA, he’s SURE that the next one will be somewhere else, and says under his breath that “I oughta know”, but no one else hears this.

10:41 – Gray tells Mrs. Gray that Jack is back from his Chinese takeout, and Mrs. Gray seems surprised. They start to have a little “inside baseball” conversation that only they understand until it comes out that Jack had a thing for Mrs. Gray, and Gray still doesn’t like that. That’s even when Mrs. Gray didn’t take Jack, and went after a small, balding ticked off guy with a piece of metal in his ear.

10:43 – The White House speech writing staff is hard at work trying to think of a political correct term for devastating nuclear explosion, and have come up with “high energy physics event”, which doesn’t go over with Lennox at all. He wants to call it “a big bang boom”. Wayne is more worried about how he appears on TV than anything else, and Lennox takes the opportunity to point out that if everyone had just listened to him and they had bombed the living tar out of anyone that even thought the word “terrorist” everything would be just peachy. Lennox and Haig start to argue, with Wayne jumping in to help give a nice little speech about trying to get everything back to where it was before: Safe streets…. Except in LA where Jack Bauer is shooting everything in sight.

10:44 – McCarthy picks up a blonde woman on the street who has been waiting for him. She’s really mad because the wind might change and put “nuclear thingies” into her hair.

10:44 – McCarthy calls Fayed and says, “Things are looking up”. Fayed says that’s a really bad pun, considering what happened today, and wants to know what McCarthy has found. McCarthy tells him that he thinks he’ll have some good news for Fayed soon. Fayed tells his men that the rest of the bombs are going to go off today, and to get ready. One of the guys does an imitation of SpongeBob saying, “I’m Ready! I’m Ready!” but Fayed ignores him and walks into a building. Then he backs up and walks through a door into a building.

Commercial

10:49 – At CTU, Nadia tells Bill that she just got done talking to Assad, who gave them a few more names. Bill tells them that since they’ve known each other for less than an hour now, and that they’ve known that he wants peace for everyone, it seems completely appropriate to put him on a plane where he, as a top terrorist leader, can go meet face to face with the President, since there’s no way anything bad could happen to the president if they meet fact to face. Bill puts out his hand to shake Assad’s hand, and after checking to make sure that Bill didn’t spit in his palm or anything like that, Assad shakes it.

10:50 – Milo tells Bill that the FBI put one of those special iPods on someone at the detention center, and that a podcast is being broadcast over the internet right now. Bill tells Chloe to start streaming the audio right away.

10:50 – Back at detention courtyard, the men argue back and forth about Walid, and whether or not they should talk to him. Somehow, the FBI got an undercover cameraman to show off what’s going on in the courtyard too, because Sandra is watching Walid over closed-circuit TV. Sandra is pretty upset by all this, and tells one of the FBI agents that he shouldn’t be giving speeches. The agent reminds her of the speeches she gave last episode.

10:52 – Out in the courtyard, one of the men from the group goes to talk to Walid about getting beaten up by the FBI. Walid drops the name “Abu Fayed” after the man prods him for information, but the guy says he doesn’t recognize it, but it’s good enough to join the clique with the other guys in the courtyard.

10:55 – Over at Gray’s place, Jack arrives and tells Gray they need to talk. Gray hugs Jack, and checks Jack for a wire. Gray’s son, Josh, comes downstairs and Jack shakes hands with him, showing off the cool hand makeup he’s wearing. Gray takes Jack to his special office, and tries to make small talk about Chavez, but Jack just wants to find out where their dad is.

10:56 – Gray tells Jack to relax, which Jack does by punching Gray in the face! Jack locks the door to the room, gets a lamp which Jack renders useless by pulling the cord out of it. Jack ties up Gray, and tells him that he wants information.

10:57 – Back at the White House, Lennox tells the president that they’ve adding a few more clichés to the speech, and that it’s in the teleprompter ready to read. Wayne makes his speech to the American public.

10:59 – Jack REALLY wants to know where his father is, because he doesn’t even as “paper or plastic”…. He goes straight for the handy plastic bag that Gray just happens to have, and wraps Gray’s head with it! Jack better hope Gray doesn’t think to just bite into that bag!

11:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME: JACK PULLS A KNIFE ON HIS BROTHER! GRAY DISSES JACK’S DEAD WIFE! LENNOX PLOTS AGAINST HAIG! ZEFRAM COCHRANE IS JACK’S DAD! WAIT UNTIL JULIAN FINDS OUT!

Be sure and catch all of Steve’s summaries of Season 6 of “24”!