Possumblog

Jack Bauer Update!

Well, what a crappy episode THAT was! Not nearly enough gratuitous bad-guy slapping, way too much time taken up with Deep Thoughts of a Highly Personal Nature.

BUT, to recap--these events take place during lunchtime. Yet, no one seems to be complaining about not eating, not even the Pudgy Needy Dork.

Brokenose Blonde gets lost in thought a lot this week, and interrupts her important nerve-gas finding assignment to moon over Jack, who looks at her and says kind words instead of being crazy mad insane like he should be and saying something like, “DO YOU NOT REALIZE WE’VE GOT NERVE GAS ON THE LOOSE AND THE WHOLE CTU’S BEING RUN BY GOMEZ ADDAMS’ SON!?”

Meanwhile, Crazy First Lady Jean Smart is found hiding in the stable amongst the saddlery and leather goods, which could have been very interesting, but wasn’t because she had on her Crazy First Lady pajamas which were decorated with little cartoon tranquilizers instead of something interesting and slinky. She got out from behind the whips and bridles and desperately clutched at Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy (who I come later to really like) and tried to get him to help her and she spilled the news about the phone call she got and how Nixon’s Evil Henchman had been rustling through her undergarments and was sending her to the crazy farm to shut her up. Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy listened politely (since she is Crazy First Lady Jean Smart) and then let the young guys take her off to repack the clothes she should have packed before she got out of the bathroom window. Her Brunette Assistant, Who Is Very Hot, stood around and moped, but that’s okay, because that’s obviously why she was hired. That, and for being hot.

In other matters, Jack is trying to figure out how to nail Nixon’s Evil Henchman Mole who has been creating all this trouble all along. Jack sets up a meeting with Mike, the Level Headed but Boring Bald Guy, so he can tell him secret things, and, of course, THIS is the one phone call that Stupid Evil Henchman of Nixon manages to intercept and he talks to Ruski Meester Beeg about it, and Ruski Meester Beeg is all POed that Bauer is still alive, and they go back and forth trying to escape blame. They decide unless Evil Henchman Mole does something quick, he’s going to be a Dead Evil Henchman Mole, and so they say ‘bye and hang up. “You hang up first.” “NO! YOU!” “NOoooo, YOU!” Et cetera.

Anyway, Nixon’s Evil Henchman Mole figures out he can manipulate the President, because the President has a brain the size of a bean, and figures he can bust in on Jack and Mike, the Level Headed but Boring Bald Guy’s meeting, get Jack arrested, again, and then sometime in there, Reba got back from the career night at the high school and I lost track of what was going on.

But apparently, after making his plans, Nixon’s Evil Henchman Mole finally told Nixon that he was kinda, sorta, ::air quotes:: involved ::air quotes:: with this whole nerve gas imbroglio--BUT IN A GOOD WAY--and convinces Nixon that it’s not the coverup that gets you in trouble, but the crime. Nixon, being evil and quite possibly the stupidest man to ever hold office aside from Harry Reid, decides, “Hey, whatever, as long as I get to have my own personalized stationary,” and tells his Now Openly Bad Evil Henchman to have the Secret Service be at the meeting between Jack and Mike, the Level Headed but Boring Bald Guy so THEY won’t endanger national security by revealing that there are NERVE GAS CANISTERS all over the place, AND to get CTU off the case so THEY won’t be asking all those uncomfortable questions.

Back at CTU again, the order comes down for everyone to go get lunch or something and forget all about the nerve gas, and everyone gets in a room and starts acting like a bunch of Democrat lawyers talking about needing “evidence” against Nixon’s Evil Henchman Mole and all that kind of crap in the face of a potential catastrophic terror attack (which they ought to already have figured out if they’d just watch the show), and Jack tells them they’re a bunch of babies, and then Gray Haired Boss gets all up in Rudy’s face about being a baby and a kid and a punk and not knowing when to shut up and tells him he doesn’t care if his mama IS Patti Duke, he should quit being such a whiner and make a decision and for goodness sake, cover up his huge hairy feet. Samwise gets his feeling hurt and takes Gray Haired Boss outside the glass room where everyone can still see him pout and almost cry and tells him to let him be boss, PLEASE, and they go back inside and decide to ignore the President, who by this time, everyone figures is stupid as a plank.

Jack runs into the Slacker Kid who Looks Like His Daughter and tells him to get a haircut and then talks to his former landlady, who wants to know if he’s ever going to pay her the last month’s rent he owes her (wink-wink) and he says he can’t because he’s a secret agent man and lives a life of danger. “IT’S THAT STINKIN’ CROOKED-NOSED BLONDE HARPY, ISN’T IT!?” she demands of him, and he thinks about it some, which is great, because he needs to waste a few clock ticks to think about what to say, because he DOES still sorta likes Brokenosed Blonde Girl, but he likes his landlady, too, who not only has a house, but doesn’t need a rhinoplasty OR breast implants, but she does have that slacker kid and he’s all conflicted and all and so he blinks and says “Uhhh..WHAT!? WHAT’S THAT!? Oh, hey, I hear bad guys calling and I gotta go. THE CHECK’S IN THE MAIL!” But it’s really not.

Jack goes to the ranch to meet Boring Bald Mike, and then gets arrested when everyone comes around. He screams at Mike, Etc., who screams at the Secret Service, who scream back, which makes Jack scream AND scowl, and Boring Bald Mike looks helpless. For some reason, they take Jack back to the stable (which as we know is VERY secure, and given his MacGyver-like ability to fashion killing implements from paper clips, seems to be the perfect place to keep him since it only has long leather straps and large heavy metal objects and probably hypodermics full of horse tranquilizers, but NO paper clips). Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy comes to get Jack, because they always send the boss to do such things, and Jack manages to convince him that a) Nixon is a feeble-minded idiot, b) Nixon’s Evil Henchman is in fact, a MOLE, and was involved in killing the Allstate Insurance Guy AND involved in the morning’s little shindig with the airport terrorists, AND helped steal a bunch of NERVE GAS CANISTERS, and c) that they need to do something. Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy thinks, and connects the dots, and adds two plus two, and figures something is rotten in Denmark.

Nixon and his Now Openly Evil Henchman are in the rumpus room when all of a sudden Jack comes storming in with Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy, and Jack starts filling in Nixon on all the ACTUAL bad news type stuff that’s been going on in front of his stupid face, and Nixon stammers that his Evil Henchman LIED TO HIM! Duh. Moron. “Agent Bauer--are you AWARE of what you’re SAYING?”

“YES, MR. PRESIDENT! I’m not a flaming idiot like you!”

“But, but--Agent Bauer--you mean these magic beans he gave me--they’re not…”

“No Mr. President, they aren’t magic.”

“And these X-Ray spectacles…”

“NO, Mr. President--they’re nothing but a cheap toy!”

“And, and Santa Claus? And the Easter Bunny? And professional wrestling?!”

“Well, he had to cloak his lies in believable truths, Mr. President--those things ARE real, as is the THREAT TO ALL HUMANITY BECAUSE WE’VE GOT NERVE GAS OUT THERE WANDERING AROUND!”

“Oh. That’s bad, right?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

FINALLY, Jack gets around to the action and leaps over onto the Evil Henchman and starts waling the crap out of him like he deserved, and the guy starts crying and being a baby and saying he’s just a humble patriot, which Jack slaps right out of his mouth, and Nixon gets all scared and starts squealing, “GENTLEMEN! THIS IS THE WAR ROOM! YOU CAN’T FIGHT IN THE WAR ROOM!” And Jack turns around and tells him that the Evil Henchman needs to be roughed up some because viewers really want that smarmy smirk slapped right off his head, and then he asks Evil Henchman where the nerve gas is, and because Evil Henchman is trying to be brave, he says he don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’, which causes Jack to whup out his frog gigger and FINALLY get all psychotic on the guy. He waves around the pig sticker and tells the guy he knows what Jack’s capable of--gouge out that right eye, then the left one, then work his way down. Nixon looks over at Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy, and begs him not to let Jack make a mess on the carpet, but Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy stands there, impassively, wondering exactly how it is that Jack has a knife, seeing as how he didn’t give it to him, and seeing as how the should have been searched before being put into the stable, and that he was slightly peckish, it being past lunch. “Mr. President, as your Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy, I think Jack’s doing a fine job, and if your stupid Evil Henchman would just talk, your carpet won’t have any of those tough blood stains.”

Jack finally decides to start to sawing on the Evil Henchman’s right eye, and he finally cracks and screams like a little girl and tells them the nerve gas is on a container ship, which earlier in the show had been delivered by two double-crossing goons who had to go into a long expository dialogue so people would know what was going on, yet made no sense in reality, because two double-crossing goons are much more likely just to talk about women and sports.

Switching back to important things, back in there sometime, Jack’s landlady somehow finds Brokenose Blonde Girl and tells her to back off, because she doesn’t care if Jack DOES still have the hots for her, Jack doesn’t want anything to do with all that glam secret agent stuff anymore (aside from the current ongoing crisis) and wants someone who actually looks like she eats three meals a day AND who has a spare room for rent. Brokenose Blonde Girl looks at her and thinks, deeply.

Nixon then figures he needs to stop the Funny Farm Motorcade, and runs up to tell Crazy First Lady Jean Smart that he was wrong and he believes her now since he has corroborating evidence from people who weren’t crazy. “And those magic beans--they weren’t really magic!” CRLJS, although relieved not to have to be given the warm sheets in the bathtub treatment, is obviously hurt by her husband’s stupidity and meanness, and you can see in her overly-made-up Tammy Faye Bakker eyes that she has decided Nixon won’t be getting any for a LONG time. Still, you have to give Nixon some credit for trying to get him a little peck on the cheek out of it, but I think he would have had better luck with CFLJS’s hot assistant.

ANYWAY, back at the ranch, Jack calls CTU and tells them to find the boat with the goods, and there is only one shot of Sourpuss Chloe, who acts all harried because she’s asked to do her job rather than sit there and be all needy, but Chubby Putz jumps up to say HE knows which container the nerve gas is in, because he hacked into the ship’s manifest and looked under “Canisters, Gas, Nerve, Secret, Stolen.”

They send a bunch of guys with guns to keep the canisters from attacking them, and then find out that one of the double-crossing goons is dead and all the canisters are gone, which is illegal because they didn’t note that on the manifest. Everyone is puzzled, and so Jack drags Worked Over Thoroughly Evil Henchman in to see what’s happening, and he plays dumb, and can’t believe that the unseen Ruski Meester Beeg he’s been palavering with on the phone might not be a swell guy and might actually just have been using Evil Henchman’s misplaced sense of right and wrong to HURT America!

Amazing, I know.

Anyway, then his phone rings and after everyone checks their phone, they figure out it’s his and he needs to answer it, and it’s another bad guy who tells them he’s gonna do terrible mischief and that they’re all a bunch of silly persons.

Everyone looks at Evil Henchman and he says, “WHA? What’d I do!?” and Nixon says, “Something really NAUGHTY! I think. Maybe. Agent Bauer, was he being bad?”

“YES, YOU STUPID SIDESHOW GEEK!”

NEXT WEEK: Jack will yell at someone, and hopefully slap them around a bit afterwards. Rudy will get a foot wax. Nixon will be sullen and stupid. Impassive Bald Secret Service Guy will think about a nice ham sandwich, since it’s now long past lunchtime. Ruski Meester Beeg will sit in his secret private lair and pet a cat and look at all kinds of big screen teevees with nothing but numbers on them.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at January 31, 2006 10:23 AM