24 – Day 8: 12:00am – 1:00am

There were some unexpected twists and turns this week and we bid what seemed like a fond farewell to a truly awful storyline.

Debrief

• Sergei and Jack called Josef and offered him immunity for the nuclear rods. He agreed, then was shot by Farhad’s men. Farhad took the rods and went to a facility to transport them. Once there, Farhad’s men decided that since they could no longer get the rods out of the country, they would use them to attack New York. Farhad disagreed with their plan, escaped, and called CTU for rescue.

• Rob Weiss called Hastings. Since Rob vouched for Hastings and the reformation of CTU, his neck is on the line as well as everyone else’s. He proposes to let someone from the Department of Justice set Renee up to take the fall for all of the failures that have occurred so far. Jack returns and stops them before getting tazed trying to escape. He is about to leave before Hastings realizes Jack’s value to him at CTU. Jack agrees to stay as long as Renee is released and is cleared of all charges.

• Dana follows Kevin and the other guy into the woods. She stares at them just long enough for Cole to stop her from killing them. Dana explains everything to Cole and Cole threatens the two. Kevin is about to obey before his buddy stabs him and is eventually shot by Cole.

Agent Philboy’s Assessment

Wow, I thought we would have Josef for longer than 10 minutes. I wasn’t shocked, since anything can happen in “24,” but I was a little bit surprised. My thoughts then went to finding a reason for Jack to stick around. Renee was the perfect conduit for that, but I’m not sure that any romantic relationship between Jack and Renee isn’t a little forced. And maybe romance is just being assumed on my part, but I think the reality is that Jack sees a lot of himself in Renee and wants to be with her for anything that might happen in life.

The developments this week have things moving at a much faster pace, which is a definite improvement over the beginning of the season. The fact that the rods will now be used in NYC will give everything an old-school “24” feel to me, which is always something I look forward to every season. Maybe the turn of events might lead to Jack heading up CTU once more (It’s been my hope for about three seasons now that he will take over, and this season has just fueled that fire.)

A big part of the Cole/Dana storyline was killed tonight and I’m pretty satisfied with how it went down. Even though I’m not sure how the two of them will gel back into CTU, at least we’ll get to see the conflict that grows between Dana and Cole. I have to say, though, that the horribleness of both of their accents is getting pretty distracting, even though Katee Sackhoff’s devolution into a Southern drawl was pretty subtle for a show like “24.”

What I Learned This Week

• Don’t stare at the problem, just kill it.

• You can never have too many weapons in your hippie van.

• The Department of Justice just wants to frame you for murder and espionage.

Weekly Kill Count = 3 Total Kill Count = 25

Did you catch last night’s episode? Your thoughts?