Possumblog

Jack Bauer Update!

For the multitude of you who don’t care enough to watch 24, I have assembled this handy recap of last night’s show! YAY ME!

Okay, so this one takes place after lunch, and nobody seems to care that they haven’t eaten. Silly persons. We pick up with Jack and Nixon talking about something--Reba called to say she was on her way home from work right at the top of the show, and so I couldn’t hear a lot of what was going on, other than Jack was saying something about his briefs, and Nixon talked him into staying on to try to help him find the nerve gas that his Evil Henchman had allowed to get loose. Jack, however, obviously wanted just to leave and go back and find his landlady and her slacker hippy kid and live happily ever after. But, you know, Nixon just reeeeeeled him back in with all this crap about duty and country and “we need you, Jack,” and Jack seems to be a pushover for that stuff, so he says OK and gets on a black helicopter.

Poofyface Chloe is back again in a big way this week, all pouty and sarcastic and rude and mean and adolescent and bulgey-jowled, and she’s just a tapping away on the computer while her big tubby needy friend looks longingly at her, hoping she’ll ask him what he’s going to have for supper, or if there’s a sale at Target.

Oh, good grief--not THIS! Simple trusting moron idiot boy Samwise Gamgee gets a call from Courtney Love, who says she’s working two jobs but needs money. Rather than be a good Republican and tell her to work three jobs, Stupid Rudy decides to go meet her. Which is STUPID. How do they promote at CTU!? “Well, his mom was Patty Duke, y’know, so let’s give him a nice job ordering people around!” Why not just tell Courtney to wait until the end of the day and he’d meet her? Why not leave a couple of bucks at the front desk? WHY NOT JUST START TALKING ALL STATICKY AND SAY YOU’RE IN A BAD CELL!? Stupid hobbit.

Must be the week to introduce new characters, because there’s some old fusty dude who’s contacted the guys who have the nerve gas, and he’s happy as a lark to tell them what they need to know to fix ‘em up to explode, and for once, CTU is doing the right thing and overhearing his conversation, and recording it, and trying to trace it down. Duh. Pshyeah, we’re tracing it. And then it goes dead, I guess, because Catherine came in to tell me she’d found her GameBoy SP that has been lost for nearly a year. Found it right where she left it, she did--underneath the headboard of her bed.

ANYway, CTU dashes to work to trace the call and it’s coming from a hidden lair in super secret downtown building that only has one tenant, and he’s a real evil identity thief who’s never been convicted, and so they divert Jack and his black helicopter there so he can meet up with Cowboy Curtis, the Big Bald Black SWAT Guy. I sure hope they’ve all figured out what a Flank Two position is! Anyway, the guy tells them the have to cut open the canisters VERY PRECISELY because they’re full of nerve gas, doncha know, and that they have to cut round the bottom exactly 20mm up from the base, and that the case is only 5mm thick. Stupid European Measurements! ::shakes fist::

While they’re diverting him, Puffyface Chloe tells the Gray Haired Boss they need the Crap Weasel who let the Assassin in the building several hours earlier help her overcome the security because, despite the fact that he broke her heart and sowed his seed upon her field, he is STILL a much faster clerk-typist/cryptographer than she is, and certainly more so than her chubby blackshirted needy putz cubicle mate. “BUT CHLOE!” says Needy Chub. “SHUT UP, MORON!” After which, he looks hurt. Gray Haired Boss thinks it over and says, “Oh, what the heck--we already have such crappy security anyway, it’s not gonna hurt to let him play with the toys.” Chloe thinks she shouldn’t have let Weasel Boy play with her toys, but you know, she can’t dwell on that, because there’s, like, some sort of bad stuff going on.

Jack, still flying hither and yon, phones up Brokenose Girl and screams into the phone for her to commit a huge error--“Don’t tell my very hot daughter that I’m alive, but bring her in to CTU, possibly in a bikini or a tight tank top, so she can push buttons and tear things up, or possibly get whacked on the head, or create a huge amount of trouble for me and the rest of the country by compromising my mission!”

Brokenose Girl says, “Okeedoke and roger that, Jack darling!”

The Bad Guys with Gas have a fight after one tries to talk some sense. NO SENSE TALK HERE, KOMRAD! Then the show up later at a motorcycle repair shop, “HEV U INNY PREZIZHUN COOTING TOOWELS!?” Yeah, moron, a torch and a hacksaw. Putzes. ANYway they tell the motorcycle repairguy they’re just a bunch of fun-luvin’ freedom dudes, and get to work or they’ll plug him. I swear I thought I heard the guy tell him that the cuts had to be made at 10cm above the bottom. Which, despite being Stupid European Measurements, I figure is not quite the same as 20mm, but maybe I misheard it. And I’m sure the guy has a metric ruler, since he has a shop full of Harleys. Probably doesn’t even HAVE a ruler. But he does have some kind of weird horizontal circular hacksaw deal of some sort. They get one open, and GEE WHIZ, a red LED readout! How clever these danged evil people are! Anyway, there sure did look like an AWFUL lot of room inside that canister after it was cut open--I think they probably could have done just as well with some tin snips.

Back at the Ranch, Crazy First Lady Jean Smart comes in to purr at Nixon some, who can’t figure out what to do, other than look like a shriveled up dog poopy, so Crazy First Lady wallops him across his putty-like face and tells him not to try locking her up in the nuthouse--any!more! He winces and to his credit does not cry, although he does eagerly get Mike the Bald Guy to come in and save him from further humiliation at the hands of his slappyhappy wife.

Mike starts figuring out a good cover-up for the cover-ups that have already been started, and CRLJS says, “WAIT! You’re talking about a COVER-UP!” She goes down the whole laundry list of stuff that Nixon has had happen with his stupid Evil Henchman--the guy got the Allstate Insurance Guy killed, he helped steal nerve gas, he helped get the nerve gas on a truck bound for somewhere, he fondled her delicate heaving chestal region to find her paperwork, he lied, he cheated, he did not raise the seat to pee--surely no President in his right MIND would want to cover that kind of thing up!! Nixon, wavering, still thinks a cover-up sounds hunky dory, but doesn’t want to get his other sallow jowl slapped, so he pretends to be interested in what the Crazy One has to say, and tells Bald Mike to lump it. With a wink and a nod.

Jack and Cowboy Curtis get to the building, and then have to run down the block, which won’t create the least bit of curiosity, since this is, after all, Los Angeleeeez, and Chloe and Crap Weasel figure out the building security and guide them in via their little earpieces. They slap the front desk guard around a lot and turn off the cameras then get on the elevator and slap him around some more and go upstairs, but the upstairs guards have more than just a pair of ugly black Dr. Scholl security guard shoes to work with, and pull out some guns and start trying to use them by standing up and firing into the air. Despite the fact that they took gun-handling lessons from the “Stand up from behind cover and start shooting in the air” school, they still manage to wing Cowboy Curtis, who falls down. Jack, however, does not get hit and quickly dispatches the guards by NOT firing wildly, but rather by the clever tactic of shooting at them.

He runs in and finds the Fusty Old Dude and starts popping shots off at him as he tries to run. RUN, FUSTY DUDE! PING! PING! PING! Dern--old man moves pretty good! But alas, he does catch a slug, and Jack goes and arrests him and then Chloe tells him there’s some other bad guy afoot in the bedroom, but it turns out to be a waifish Kiev girl he got online by Googling for underage Russian brides. This guy’s a real jerk, let me tell you--which is why I am glad Jack gets to rough him up a bit to try to get him to tell him everything.

The bad guy says he wants a lawyer, and Cowboy Curtis lets him have a little jackboot action on his bad leg, and the guy whines and cries and Jack talks some more and the guys and gals at CTU sit around looking Pensive and Concerned, and then the Fusty Old Guy says he wants a deal signed by Janet Reno to leave the country, have a cool secret lair somewhere else, and a Ferrari, and an ice cream machine, and some socks, and a box lunch, and…portentous pause with dramatic ticking and music--

THE GIRL!

Jack can’t stand this because she’s just a kid and reminds him of either the slacker son of his landlady or of Kim, except Kim is much more filled out. He starts to whack him around some more for even suggesting such a thing, and STUPID RUDY decides they don’t have time for torture! STUPID RUDY! Has he not watched this show!? There’s always time for mindless hurtage of bad guys! But NOOOOO, give him a deal, he says, like he’s Monty Hall or something.

BACK AT THE RANCH, Crazy First Lady Jean Smart, who is still in her pajamas pretending to be a blogger, helps Nixon write his “I’m a big idiot, but you can still trust me” speech that he has no intention of giving if he can find a way to ship CRLJS off somewhere safe and full of powerful narcotics, and she looks all pleased with herself being in the driver’s seat like the old days when she worked with those Sugarbaker gals-- and Nixon looks like he’s suffering from indigestion, and gout, and then Bald Headed Mike tersely calls him on the phone and says terse things about serious matters, and tells him the President he has something to show him, but Nixon is worried about the LAST time Mike tried to show him something, but he and CRLJS get up and go where Mike is, wherever that is, and find that his Former Evil Henchman is now a Late Lynchman, having strung himself up in yet another closely guarded room. Coward.

Well, cut him down, then.

MEANWHILE, silly, dim, Sam the Hobbit stumbles out of CTU into the daylight to go meet Courtney Love, and he tries to give her the name of a good doctor, because he’s an IDIOT, and several of Courtney’s roadies jump Sam and beat the crap out of him and steal his wallet and CTU Secret Spy Agency ID and Discount Card, because SAM IS DUMB. Shouldn’t you have to have mad ninja skilz to be in charge of CTU?! Shouldn’t you take a friend with you when you go to a bad part of town and meet a crack ho in a back alley? Shouldn’t you JUST GIVE HER THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR WHEN YOU HAD HER ON THE PHONE!? Stupid, stupid Rudy. And he didn’t even get lunch!

BACK AT THE FUSTY GUY’S LAIR, Jack breaks the news to the waif that despite the fact that he’d been nice to her, he traded her for some information about secret electric doohickeys and some magic beans, and he’s sorry, but he’ll make sure nothing else happens to her. Somehow. Chick’s not buying it, with good reason. Obviously, SHE’S seen the show before and knows how these things play out. She goes to get dressed, and then comes out, and plugs the old rapist with a double tap from the 9mm she had hidden in her sweater. Somehow. She was so skinny it would seem a hogleg like that would have been pretty noticeable. Then again, Bugs Bunny was able to hide anvils and stuff like that in his pockets, so you know. Anyway, nice shot. Of course, had all the SWAT guys wandering around the place SEARCHED FOR HIDDEN WEAPONS, the Fusty Old Dead Guy might not be dead. But hey, whatever.

NEXT WEEK: Jack goes to meet the Bad Ruskies and give them the codes to blow the nerve gas canisters, and of course, they have to go to the mall, because they missed lunch, but that’s dangerous because there are a lot of people there, and the Chinese barbecue place got a bad health department rating. Rudy goes completely nuts and tells them to blow it up anyway, because he’s run the numbers and although he’s illiterate and isn’t smart enough to keep from getting mugged, it’s still a good idea to gas a smaller bunch of folks than a big bunch of folks.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at February 7, 2006 12:15 PM