08.10 | Episode twenty four, 7AM - 8AM
The following takes place between 7AM and 8AM...
So Jack Bauer and Sherry Palmer escape relatively unscathed from some of the worst driving ever. There was me thinking that Jack was having a heart attack at the end of last week's show, and he turns out to be fine. The car crash was all just a plot device leading up to a series-defining moment. The bit where the ruthless, inventive, versatile - and just plain lucky - government agent gets trapped in a car by a jammed seatbelt. I swear I thought I was hearing things when Kiefer came out with that bit of dialogue. A jammed seatbelt? What is he, five years old? Could he not have slipped out of it? Unscrewed the 'clunk-click' bit? Cut throught the belt with a trust pocketknife? Burnt through it with a lighter? No, he got stuck in it like a whining baby.
Because I love the show, I will just presume that they'd meant for the car to be on the verge of blowing up, or something, that they'd run out of special effects budget, and that the writers had to come up with a replacement scene pretty sharpish.
But a jammed seatbelt?!?!??!? If only he'd held on to that hacksaw for the past 23 hours...
After a whole three hours of being a baddie, Mike Novick turns back to a goodie again. He makes the connection between Peter Kingsley and rogue Coral Snake commander Jonathan Wallace, who, apparently, had been speaking on the phone. Mike gives Ryan Chappelle a bollocking and puts the wheels in motion for the strikes in the middle east to be called off. And, after all those hours of searching for the microchips and audio files, all it took was a phone conversation to prove the conspiracy? Max, the head German baddie, will rue the day he ever asked for itemised billing.
By the way, at this point in the storyline, Peter Kingsley is still looking for Peter Hewitt. Despite him sending a search party to his apartment, and the fact that Jack left his dead body on the roof of the adjacent building, Kingsley is still under the impression that the geek is alive. When Mrs Palmer confronts him towards the end, he still thinks that he'll get Hewitt. Is he the stupidest baddie ever, or what? Maybe the search party thought 'fuck it, it's too early, we'll just go back to bed'.
I didn't understand the scene with Bob and Marie Warner. I mean, why? It was nice to see where Bob's been for the past ten hours or so, but it was a completely pointless addition to the plot. Was Marie's threat to Kate meant to act as some kind of cliff-hanger to the next series? Will she escape her Hannibal Lecter-like cell and come after her family, biting on their necks like she's some kind of brainwashed vampire? Is this Second Wave's Plan B? I hope not.
Ryan Chappelle then offers his full support to Jack in his quest to bring Kingsley to justice. They come up with the ingenious idea of using some audio software to record Sherry and Kingsley's conversation and sending the results over to Prescott in the White House. However, we still have no idea why Novick, Chappelle and Prescott are prepared to listen to Bauer's evidence now when they wouldn't previously. I think it's because the writers have to spin this out for 24 episodes. Maybe it's because Prescott nipped off during one of the ad breaks and sold his oil stocks, I dunno.
And anyone who wonders where CTU got a sample of Peter Kingsley's voice from - remember that Alex Hewitt had recorded his phone conversations with the guy and we heard some of it last week when Jack was trying to find a recording of Hewitt's voice.
By now, Jack's staggering about all over the shop with his oncoming heart attack. Like I said when Palmer was torturing Roger Stanton, he needs to borrow Homer Simpson's defibulator - 'it just pays for itself'.
Kingsley searches Sherry for a wire - a good job that Jack gave her a wireless wire, then. All this technology, eh? It's literally a life-saver. Kingsley eventually gets suspicious of Sherry's stalling and a gun fight ensues. Thankfully, Jack takes out Kingsley's sniper and grabs his big gun. Sherry runs off - forgetting about the stabbing she received last week, supposedly. And Jack, forgetting about his oncoming heart attack - gets all Matrix on our ass and kicks down a Kingsley minion with some cool karate moves whilst running up a wall. No, seriously.
It's all set for an OK Coral-style shoot-out between Jack and Kingsley. Unfortunately, Jack's out of bullets so a guy on a helicopter offs Kingsley. Meanwhile, the White House are still listening to all this. Prescott calls off the bombers. Prescott then resigns - hurrah! - along with half the cabinet, but because Palmer's such a nice guy, he refuses to accept the resignations.
So, it's done. The story's over, and all the characters can go back to their normal lives - kinda. Chappelle and Tony have a little bitch-fight; Tony acts like a dunce and forgets to snog Michelle whilst he thanking her for her hard work; Jack gets wheeled off on a stretcher whilst Kim has a little cry (and we all thought she'd got tough since she's been going around shooting people); Sherry is carted off in handcuffs; President Palmer calls a press conference.
Oops.
Wrong move, President Dave.
What follows makes much more sense to those of you who saw the first season. Those early birds amongst you who watched the very first episode of '24' will remember a character called Mandy who blew up a passenger jet plane. Well, this woman who gives Palmer the anti-Midas touch is the very same Mandy. We'd all thought she'd disappeared mid-way through the first series. Turns out that she works for the same baddies that Kingsley, Johnathan Wallace and Syed Ali all worked for.
After reaching his limo, Palmer looks down at his right hand. The flesh on it has been eaten away. He gasps for breath and falls to the ground. The crowd panics as the Secret Service aim their guns at a non-existent assassin. The camera zooms out and concentrates on a helpless Palmer. For the final time we see the clock count down and, instead of the usual digital bleeping, we hear Palmer's fading heart beat...
Well, fuck me. Wasn't expecting that.
