24 Recap: “11:00am – 12:00noon”

Title: 11:00 – 12:00noon
Original Airdate: 1/29/07
GMMR Recapper: LaLa

Don’t you hate it when as soon as you find out that your FBI mole isn’t needed in a dangerous situation anymore and you decide to extract him, your agents and guards suddenly become the SLOWEST PEOPLE EVER who suddenly take an INEXPLICABLY LONG TIME to alert all guards of the extraction orders, as well as just walk on over to the next room and rescue their man – who, by the way, has just been discovered by the bad guys to be a spy and is currently undergoing the beat down of his life? Yeah… such a, like, bummer when that happens ya’ll! Aaaaand it’s also an annoying plot convenience that happens a lot in TV and film, and just happened tonight to Sandra Palmer’s poor, heroic boyfriend Walid.

So it turns out that ol’ irritating, broken-record Sandra was right in this case on one point: once Walid got the phone, the Feds should have extracted him immediately for his safety. Because even though Walid got lucky and was suddenly able to pull off a master pick-pocketing move and steal the phone in the first place, there was really no way he was going to be able to repeat that move quick enough to return the phone before the guy noticed it was gone. Come on now, Feds, how stupid can you be? And where were the supposed “security guards” in the prison yard who were keeping a “close” watch on Walid’s safety?? Man, Sandra may have been annoying and mostly wrong (because Walid did, however, manage to give them the important information that there were 4 more nukes), but she WAS right about her man not being protected well enough. Sigh. I guess her character is redeemed… at least partially… for now.

Speaking of redemption, it looks like Jack’s father (played by the always brilliant James Cromwell) is not as bad as he first seemed, and is truly just trying to protect his son Graem (who he believes is mostly innocent/good) from jail because he “mistakenly” hired a man (one Darren McCarthy) who stole decommissioned nukes from him – and of course, said nukes just happened to be reactivated and used by the terrorists today. Oops! Graem’s bad! Daddy will fix it, don’t you worry little sport! Right… but unfortunately, “little sport” is not even close to the innocent victim that Daddy believes him to be – and dear old dad sure got a harsh wake-up call when Graem showed his true colors in the end by handcuffing him and Jack, and having his men/thugs throw them into a typically sketchy van at gunpoint as they passed Jack’s murdered CTU back-up guys. And all of this happened, Graem claims, because “Jack forced my hand”. Riiiiiiiight, Graem. Poor Jack and Daddy Bauer looked so betrayed and sad as they were driven away by their traitorous kin’s thugs. Man, just wait until they find out exactly HOW traitorous ol’ Graem/Bluetooth REALLY is, and about the whole trying-to-have-Jack-killed-several-times-part. Yeah… I can’t wait to see Jack’s crazy reaction to that. At least he was able to get in some good old fashioned plastic bag choking torture on his horrible brother before this all went down. And if Jack was willing to do that to his brother BEFORE he found out the whole truth about him, just imagine what he’ll do when he does find out! Hell hath no fury like Jack Bauer betrayed, folks!

In other 24 news, Fayed is still out there (having obviously left Valencia long before the nuke went off), and is putting major pressure on this Darren McCarthy person to get another nuclear expert to reactivate the other 4 bombs. However, dastardly McCarthy – who is stereo-typically a middle-aged, white British man – is just trying to get his stereo-typically hot young blond girlfriend to stop nagging him. [side note: Do you ever notice how in American shows, the villains are usually white middle-aged British businessmen, and in British shows, the villains are usually white middle-aged American military types? I’m just saying…] Meanwhile, over in Presidential under-ground bunker central in Washington D.C., slimy advisor Tom is secretly implementing his illegal muslim/Arab prison camp plan, as well as his racial profiling stop-gap measures – all with the help of his equally slimy assistant Chad Lowe, of course. Said stop-gap measures seriously hinder poor Nadia over at CTU-LA, whose computer security clearances are practically revoked as a result, thus preventing her from doing her work. Fortunately, Milo was willing to secretly log her onto his account so she could keep working (and is it just me, or did you guys detect some sparks happening between those two as a result of his noble deed? I sense another Tony-and-Michelle-type CTU pairing in the works. Speaking of… I really miss Tony and Michelle!! Sorry, just had to say that.)

Anyway, good ol’ Bill B. wasn’t just going to sit back and let Nadia be unfairly victimized, so he called the wife and updated her on the situation. Unfortunately, poor Karen had already questioned slimy Tom’s illegal antics and authority one too many times, and before she could bring Tom’s latest injustice to the President’s attention, slimy Tom thrust some damning evidence in her face about a mistake her husband made, and her possible cover-up of said mistake. His terms? Her immediate resignation. Karen then threatened to dig up some skeletons in Tom’s closet, but he countered with, “We’ve all got our skeletons – it’s proof that we don’t have. I’ve got mine… how long before you get yours?” Ouch. Thus, poor Karen immediately resigned, putting up no fight at all (to my disappointment). President Wayne tried to refuse her resignation, saying he valued and needed her too much – thus giving her the perfect opportunity to rat out slimy Tom – but she remained adamant, and will now be flown back to CTU-LA to be with her hubby. Man, if I were her, I would have risked jail and just told the President of Tom’s whole blackmail chicanery, as well as his illegal, behind-the-President’s-back deeds. I’m betting Wayne is the type of person who would fire Tom’s ass for such things, and then probably forgive Karen’s mistakes. Hopefully, Wayne will still get a chance to do just that to Tom – and then maybe replace him with Mike Novick! Speaking of, where is Mike? Or our beloved Agent Pierce? Come on, 24, bring them back! And also… please don’t kill them.

LaLa is a writer who currently resides in LaLa Land, aka Los Angeles. LaLa also likes to sing. LaLa also knows some lawyers in a law office. LaLa is also prone to making bad jokes, like this one. And of course, LaLa also loves her some quality television shows with quality actors on them, like House… and The Office… and 24… and, well, pretty much any smartly written show that doesn’t include a fat guy with a hot skinny wife or the words “two and a half men” in the title.