24 - 7x01 to 7x04 “Day 7, 8:00 am to 12:00 pm” - Review
"Special Agent Williams, you wanna get a bite to eat? That's not a come-on, I'm actually quite famished."
Plot Summary:
(Night One): Four years after Day Six, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) is pulled out of a Senate Sub-Committee hearing on the misuse of torture to help the FBI apprehend a group that’s gained control of the nation’s computer systems, a group lead by Jack’s former CTU co-worker, friend, and previously dead (!) Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard); President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) weighs a potential U.S. invasion of an African country in order to stop a horrific genocide; the First Husband (Colm Feore) attempts to discover the truth behind his son’s suicide.
(Night Two): After apprehending Tony Almeida, Jack discovers that his friend is a triple agent; Jack frees Almeida from FBI custody and joins him (and two other old colleagues) undercover in exposing a well-hidden, high-ranking government conspiracy; President Taylor debates prolonging the U.S. invasion after being threatened by the man behind Almeida’s terrorist cell; FBI Agent Renee Williams (Annie Wersching) resorts to extreme measures in her attempts to track down Bauer and Almeida; Henry Taylor receives conflicting facts from his son’s ex-fiancée and Presidential Chief of Staff Ethan Kanin (Bob Gunton).
SENATOR MEYER
Did you torture Mr. Haddad?
JACK
According to the definition set
forth by the Geneva Convention --
yes, I did. [my edit] Ibrahim Haddad
had targeted a bus carrying 45
people, 10 of which were children.
The truth, Senator, is that I
stopped that attack from happening.
SENATOR MEYER
By torturing Mr. Haddad.
JACK
By doing what I deemed necessary
to protect innocent lives.
SENATOR MEYER
So basically what you’re saying
Mr. Bauer, is that the ends
justify the means and that you
are above the law.
JACK
When I am activated, when I am
brought into a situation, there
is a reason, and that reason
is to complete the objectives
of my missions at all costs.
SENATOR MEYER
Even if that means breaking the law.
JACK
For a combat soldier, the difference
between success and failure is the
ability to adapt to your enemy. The
people that I deal with, they don’t
care about your rules. All they care
about is a result. My job is to
stop them from accomplishing their
objectives. I simply adapted.
In answer to your question, am
I above the law: no sir. I am
more than willing to be judged by
the people you claim to represent
I will let them decide what price
I should pay. But please do not sit
there with that smug look on your
face and expect me to regret the
decisions I have made. Because, sir,
the truth is, I don’t.
And with that, we’re off to the races! Cleary, 24 co-creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran were paying attention to the many vitriolic op-ed pieces regarding their show and its “endorsement” of torture in the war on terror; Season Seven returned after a near two year absence with Jack Bauer sitting tall before the United States Senate (and Clarence Boddicker, in an appearance two seasons too late!), justifying both his and the show’s apparent disregard for basic human rights, such as the right not have a ball point pen shoved into one’s eardrum during questioning.
What I find bewildering is (as least as I see it) that Mr. Bauer is usually on the receiving, rather than the giving end of said torture. And when he does threaten someone, rarely does he go all the way (Jack's Hour One pen attack doesn’t even dimple its victim). It’s the thought that counts.
Frankly, in the reality of the show, Jack should already have a national monument devoted to him, not a pat on the back from some anonymous FBI agent while he's being benched yet again during an active investigation for doing his job right. Jack always (almost always) does everything right. But I digress.
Since he and the show now have a open rep for being torture-happy maniacs (a rep which, apparently, single-handedly brought down CTU during his African savanna) 24 spends a unusual amount of time upfront in self-reflection -- which it then happily subverts by the end of its pulse pounding, opening two hours.
My friends, 24 is finally back on the air after an extended leave of absence, and not a moment too soon! Following the Season Six debacle of Bauer family feuds and gratuitously repetitive plotlines, the show’s producers tore up the standard playbook (for the most part) and transplanted us to a new location (Washington D.C.) with a mostly new roster of supporting characters.
While Night One was largely infused with a breathless pace and intriguing new characters, Night Two slipped back into some of the old familiar rhythms (and twists). Despite an obvious drop in quality, I’d forgotten how intense the show can be as it airs live -- 24 works best watched in its first viewing; both Nights One and Two constantly, compellingly demonstrate its ferocious exploitation of the show’s minute-by-minute narrative progression. Was I on the edge of my seat for the most part despite the many contrivances? You betcha-and that’s why I still watch this show.
The 24: REDEMPTION TV-movie that aired last Thanksgiving was pretty lackluster, but watching the first four hours unfold made me realize how integral it was in setting up this year’s events. That, and the fact that “Zombie Almeida" 's return was leaked months ago helped focus our attention on the hows and whys of Tony’s return, not the “wtf” of it all.
To wit: The show opens at the aforementioned Senate Sub-Committee (and Jack Bauer doesn’t need to hide behind a lawyer, no sir), when the FBI comes knocking with another subpoena for our hero-this time because they need his help tracking down the once-dead, now alive-again ex-CTU agent Tony Almeida. Tony and his group are behind the kidnapping of a tech expert who designed a firewall that protects the nation's critical operating systems (air traffic, water control, etc). Yeah, I know, it’s a mouthful, but it’s also the same caper as the one in DIE HARD 4, so really, it’s not as complicated as it sounds). Jack’s naturally flabbergasted, and in a nice nod to character continuity, first asserts all of our questions about Tony’s resurrection (didn’t we see him die? What about the lack of a silent clock (sic)), then automatically defaults to denying that Tony went over to the Dark Side (Jack’s the kind of man who puts loyalty ahead of distrust, which is what make him our hero).
I enjoyed seeing Carlos Benard play the other side of the fence in the first three hours of the show (no Cubs cup cameo!), as it clearly seemed as if he and his group planned to crash two airplanes together during their landings (yes, that’s DIE HARD 2 as well). And yet, like Jack, we felt our own niggling doubts, as Tony didn’t seem quite as ruthless as he could have been - Almeida averts the planes at the very last moment in the beginning of Night Two (I had no illusions that the creators didn’t have the balls not to follow through themselves; after all, they nuked California last year, so what’s a few hundred people now), and tells his boss that the tech mastermind they’d kidnapped “was at the place where he’d do anything they told him to do”).
Turns out Tony’s terrorist boss (who conveniently injected Almeida with some sort of super reviving serum after he was dead for “almost” 10 minutes off screen back in Season Five) is a disgruntled ex-military type that had already pre-selected Tony for his team based on Michelle’s death (and Tony really was working for them at one point, his shared disillusion with the government was no ploy), and that guy's boss is the African Commander whose brother was killed by Robert Carlyle in REDEMPTION. Tony's real boss is revealed to be Bill Buchanan (Bill!!!!!!!!!! Chloe!!!!!!) in Hour Three, as their little cabal formed in Season Five has now been recovened, plus one. Just in time too, because Janeane Garafolo’s Chloe-FBI stand-in was a poor substitute for the real deal, right down to the snarkiness and interpersonal conflicts with her other tech co-workers (Mary Lynn and Janeane’s hacker showdown was unintentionally amusing on several levels).
Now that the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit is no more, 24 uses the very real institution of the FBI as its entry point, and much emphasis in the first two hours is placed on its adherence to rules and laws, as opposed to the bending or breaking of them that we’ve gotten used to in seasons past. I particularly enjoyed this Hour One exchange between the Washington Field Office Supervisor, Agent Larry Moss (Jeffrey Nordling), as he and Jack have the first of what will undoubtedly be many civil disagreements:
MOSS
So what’s the alternative, Jack?
Break in and torture the guy like
you used to do? Isn’t that how
you ended up in front of a Senate
Sub-Committee?
Jack gets in Moss’s face.
MOSS
Oh, is this how it starts? You get
in my face, tighten your jaw, then
if I say something you don’t like,
you slam me against the wall?
JACK
You have no idea what I do, and the
last time I checked, you subpoenaed me.
You want my advice, you want my help,
take it. You don’t, don’t. I don’t
care.
Moss may be the typical 24 bureaucratic prick (and that’s why Jack’s always breaking the rules, to circumvent these myopic bottom-liners), but the critical new character is FBI Special Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching, a rather attractive redhead formerly on GENERAL HOSPITAL). The capable and forthright agent (and potential love interest for Jack, barring Kim Raver’s return) initially seems to be one of those by-the-book Joe Friday-types, but as the four hours progressed, her adventures with Jack seemed to have a big influence on her. Walker, who may already be romantically involved with her boss Moss, went from “We’re the FBI, not CTU, we honor the law” to kinking a helpless gunshot suspect’s ventilator tube in order to get him to confess Almeida’s location (‘course it didn’t help that Jack put her in a sleeper hold during his big escape, and from her p.o.v., duped her and the Bureau into thinking that he was one of the “good guys”).
But that’s how it goes in the 24-verse. Traffic may be non-existent on both coasts, federal institutions can easily be infiltrated by moles, and there’s always a mobile technical gizmo than can hack a totally secure computer system; but the ethical dilemmas are the same for the “good guys” as they are for us in the real world. Most of the President’s plotline dealt with her response to the Africian genocide crisis (a.k.a. Iraq / Somalia / Rwanda / Afghanistan Part Not Again), as set up in REDEMPTION), as she agonized over various moral relativisms, indeterminate exit strategies, and good old-fashioned guilt that the situation demanded - issues all highly relevant in today’s political climate. As a character so far, she's no David Palmer, but she may sadly end up foreshadowing Obama’s dilemmas at some point. There are no easy answers for her, him or us: twenty four hours will not be enough time to solve crises of such magnitude and complexity, innocent lives may often be preserved at the expense of other innocent ones, and only history will be able to fully judge us in the end.
That, and Nielsen ratings.
Other Notes:
• The overall plot for the season seems set. The African military rebels want to use the Tony-infiltrated terrorist group to force the U.S. to not intervene in Sengala; a plot all of which is engineered by Jon Voight’s evil senator (who was also set up in REDEMPTION - sensing a pattern yet?). When Taylor sends the Army in anyway, the terrorists will retaliate Stateside. Hilarity ensues.
• I didn’t really discuss the plotline of the First President Henry Taylor at all, mostly because it was fairly uninteresting (I had to work fast to figure out the missing pieces between now and REDEMPTION in regards to the son’s death) and obvious (it’s clearly a set up for the discovery of Jon Voight’s involvement in the African plot). That being said, Taylor’s Secret Service agent is probably working for the bad guys.
I appreciated how a woman President is a complete non-issue so far; after all, we’ve already “elected” two African-American presidents to the Oval Office in the 24-verse (although they didn’t last very long). Wonder how that bodes for Taylor’s chances…
• That was Egan (Michael Billingsley) as Michael Latham, the kidnapped creator of this years technical McGuffin (the PCI device, or whatever it was called)! Yes, I still miss THE NINE. I also noted during my second viewing that the “blank” call he got from Tony was to confirm that he was in the car right before it got ambushed (kind of like in THE GODFATHER, when Sonny gets that “wrong” call).
• Who was Ibrahim Haddad, anyway? I was racking my brain trying to figure out which season he was in, until the ever-helpful Google pointed out that that was a character invented solely for the hearing. I love Google.
• Senator Meyer told Jack he was due back at the hearings tomorrow morning at the same time. Something tells me Bauer won’t in any shape or mood for that!
BTW, any effort to corral or second-guess Jack is automatically a moment of comedy for the show. Because, really.
• “Everyone who was involved is in prison or dead.” They talked as if Charles Logan wasn’t dead, although it sure seemed that way after Martha stabbed him in Season Six. I sure hope he isn’t dead. Then again, it might be better if he was.
• Is Karen Buchanan returning as well? I already know Morris will. Speaking of, Chloe looked both (a) good, and (b) not pregnant. Mary Lynn Rajskub got preggers right before the initial shoot in ‘07 -- hence, Morris' “return” sometime midday this year.
• “Madam President, we had a near miss incident at JFK.” I thought of Carlin immediately. We miss ya, George.
• Jack’s been watching SHAWSHANK, hence, he noticed the sniper’s tan boots.
• No one stands up to Flying Attack Jack! Sorry Tony! Besides it’s all good, their man love was back in full force in Hour Three (“Sorry I almost broke your neck.” “You almost did.”)
• The crisis analysts put a lot of emphasis on the terrorists potentially contaminating the water system or turning off the power grid. Foreshadowing, methinks (I need to stock up on water) …
• “I saw you on C-Span” That made me laugh. Also, because the FBI agents were so totally inconspicuous in their removal of Jack, so open with their reasons, and because that the cameras/microphones would have picked up everything, that single-handedly made that moment the most exciting event in the history of C-SPAN coverage ever!
• Didn’t Sam Seaborn work for Gage Whitney? I’m pretty sure he did.
• FBI dude (the one who called the FAA in Hour Four about his wife) is totally going to get fired and go to jail. Plus, he just moved up his wife’s plane to crash quicker. He’s gonna have a real bad day…
• Here we go again with an embassy invasion. At least these cats had the presence of mind to have a panic room. And I thought those things came with their own separate, secure phone lines…
Episode grades: A (Hour 1) / B+ (Hour 2) / B- (Hour 3) / C+ (Hour 4)