05.19 | Episode twelve, 7PM - 8PM
Jack climbs down into a secret passage to find a man. He needs the element of surprise. So what does he do? Shines a huge bloody torch down the tunnel. If I was Syed Ali, I'd have committed suicide right there and then. Good thing that the terrorist obviously wasn't paying attention at this point. But he was obviously paying attention enough to be able to hide the trapdoor back underneath the carpet after closing it behind him.
I think that the most enduring image of this episode was Jack punching Ali in the face to stop him swallowing a cyanide pill. Much on a par with Jack asking for a hacksaw, a scene that's (almost) been long forgotten.
An enduring image, mainly because we've already seen the 'oh, someone stop him dying before I get to question him' trick done a few times before (the guy Nina killed on the airplane, the torturer who pierced Kate's ear). I was most surprised when Syed didn't die.
Bob Warner explained that his family used to live in London, and that Marie ran away after her mother died. And that's presumably when the terrorists got to her. Oddly, this part reminded me of the conversation that Tony Almeida had with Reza Naiyeer about his London upbringing - back during his interrogation at the Warner house. The BBC cut out a line about the Finsbury Park mosque in that episode, so maybe they did so again last night. Can anyone who's seen the US broadcasts let us know?
Marie tells her sister Kate that she murdered Reza. Dunno about you, but I hated that scene. Well, I hated Kate, with her whining and crying and the protesting of her sister's innocence and the whining. Marie seemed rather cool, though. Wasn't expecting her to just come out with the 'Well, I killed Reza' revelation to her sister like that, and then the writers go and top that by allowing the CTU agents to trace her call. People always hang up before the phone gets traced in telly and the movies. It's hard to guess why they even bother, knowing that they're 99% bound to fail. So well done those CTU boys on beating the odds.
Randy 'Howlin' Mad' Murdoch gets brought in to do some forensics work, much in the same way that Milo Pressman the computer contractor suddenly 'appeared' halfway through the last series.
The image that could be enduring (but wasn't) was Jack apparently killing Ali's eldest child. Though, automatically you should know that this is a show produced for US prime time, and therefore you won't die if you're under eighteen. As soon as President Palmer wouldn't sanction the killing, you knew Jack would find a way to fake it. And the videotape gag from Speed was easily the most unoriginal way. They could have hired suicidal Arabian midgets ready to take a bullet for the US. I'm sure you could find them as quickly as they found Ali's family, anyway.
Cleverest moment of the episode was Jack continuing the phone call from the President after Palmer had already hung up. That's the kind of thinking on your feet that we could all do with.
As for George's bad coughing and irritability? I think he's ready to drop dead any time now. Maybe he'll borrow Second Wave's big bag of cyanide pills?
