24 – Day 8: 10:00pm – 12:00pm

Welcome to the new season of “24.” OK, I know that’s not exactly the truth, but doesn’t it seem like it? Since the near-assassination of Hassan, not much action has happened, which was OK, but not ideal. This episode, however, things ramped up and we moved into the second stage of this season.

Debrief

• Jack, aka Ernst, went to the warehouse to meet with Renee and Vlad. After meeting him, Vlad starts making calls about the nuclear rods. One of them is to Sergei, who poorly denies knowing anything about them. After all of his contacts deny knowing anything, Renee pushes Vlad harder. Things get violent and, reaching back six years of aggression since she was raped by him, Renee stabs Vlad. Jack walks in and she accidentally stabs him too. He takes the rest Vlad’s men out.

• Once Sergei gets the call from Vlad, he halts the transport of the nuclear rods and sends his men to Vlad’s warehouse. Jack decides that, since he is POSITIVE that CTU will be tracking him from the air, he will get captured and be taken to where the nuclear rods are. This seems like a great plan until…

• No one knows where Jack is nor are they tracking him at all. He is lost. Awesome.

• Dana gets her ex into the building with the confiscated money. He and his partner lollygagged enough that they have to kill a cop and escape. Dana is too scared to notice that the world is falling apart around her.

• President Hassan is becoming more and more paranoid, bordering on Renee levels of crazy. After no information was retrieved from his suspicious UN delegate, he ordered his head of security to arrest the man’s wife and children. He refused, tried to explain himself, and left. He, too, was arrested. Hassan told Taylor that he continues to follow the provisions of the peace treaty, and Taylor is trying to buy time for everyone involved.

• Did I mention nobody knows where the hell Jack is?

Agent Philboy’s Assessment

I feel like there was a conversation in the writer’s room where they realized there hadn’t been much action and decided to alleviate it by giving us just enough action and a whole new segment of the season. I know I talked about this last year on the blog, but “24” isn’t really a whole season, but about four mini-seasons strung together by cataclysmic events. The last half of this episode will get us to the next four or five episodes. In this instance, we got rid of Vlad and all of the bush league Russians and are going to deal directly with Sergei, who will lead us to Hassan’s brother, who will lead us to whoever is really in charge. It looks like they used that transition as an opportunity to amp things up again.

Can we just say that Jack’s “pull the knife out of his abdomen and directly into the guy’s jugular” move might be in the top five Jack kills of all time? Jack and Renee continue to have this special bond that I hope will not end now that Jack is with the Russians. Jack sees so much of himself in Renee (That’s what she said, I know) that he can’t help but help her and try to protect her to the best of his ability. It’s going to be interesting to have Renee at CTU, trying to protect Jack as best she can. Plus, Jack getting tortured just means more badassery later on.

I’m still on board with the Hassan storyline, but I’m just a little curious as to where it might be headed. We know that the lease popular President in “24” history, President Charles Logan, will be coming back this season at some point, so maybe he’s brought in as a crazy consultant? My point is, we’ve already done the whole “crazy, paranoid, politician” storyline. What new ground can they tread with Hassan? Are they even looking to do anything new?

Things I Learned This Week

• Never date the boss’ daughter. It’s never going to end well for you.

• President Hassan has better glasses than Jack.

• You are not a man until you can pull a knife out of your own gut and make a knife throw that would make Crocodile Dundee proud.

• You don’t become a convicted felon without being the stupidest human alive.

This Week’s Kill Count = 3 Total Kill Count = 19

What were your impressions of this week? Did it do enough to restore any faith you had lost?