Jack pretty has one goal in mind - save Audrey Heller. Yes, he loves her, but saving her is also going to make it easier to receive all of the pardons he is going to need after he spends a day breaking governmental protocol in order to get to her. What's better? Make-up, conjugal visit, or post-captivity sex? Whatever it is, Jack is sure to have plenty.

It was fairly easy to predict that Ronny would die. Not only has he never been seen anywhere, but he also laid a fist on Jack Bauer. Don't pull on Superman's cape, don't spit into the wind, and don't mess around with Jack. After the terrorist, who CTU knows only as "The Hostile", but we know as Kalil, kills Ronny and the MTA guard, he speeds off in his Lexus. See, he needs to find a safe place to interrogate and/or kill the computer programmer in order to find out how much he knows. While it might be Andrew's best interest to have Jack save him as fast as possible, Jack decides that he doesn't want to give up on trailing the kidnapper just yet. If Kalil is connected to the kidnapping, he just may lead Jack to the place where Secretary Heller and his daughter are being held

Unfortunately for Jack, his new boss doesn't really agree with him. She wants him to bring the suspect back as quickly as possible. And for this one, I sort of have to agree. Just a little more than an hour ago, Jack was demonstrating just how skilled he was at intimidating people into talking. Why did he all of a sudden decide that this terrorist wouldn't crack under the constant questioning and psychological torture? I am not sure, but he must of figured that Driscoll wasn't going to let him anywhere near a subject after his little bullet wound to the femur fiasco the last time around. Jack pulled the old "you're breaking up" over the cell phone, and proceeded to tail the evil Lexus, but not too quickly. Driscoll obviously didn't buy Jack's excuse, and informed everybody at CTU that Jack was rogue, and they would use all of their resources to find him. All of their resources except for Chloe O'Brian that is. Jack has been secretly contacting Chloe and pressing her to help him from the inside. Chloe wants to help her friend, and doesn't trust Driscoll, so she helps him by tapping into the feeds of highway cameras.

The evil Lexus, for its part, is not stupid. Kalil doesn't believe that anybody is following him, but pulls a triple lane change onto an off-ramp just in case. This surprises Jack, and he is forced to exit and the next on-ramp, which puts him head on with other traffick, including a school bus. But with no satellite surveillance, he had no other choice, and he still has a huge problem. Apparently the highway the Lexus is heading for is two lanes and lightly traveled. That means that Jack won't be able to follow him as closely as he would like, and might even lose him before he gets to Heller.

Back at CTU, things are still pretty crazy. Driscoll has been trying to explain to the president how they lost an agent in the field, but have nothing to show for it. She's also trying to explain why Jack is now a field agent. She begins discussing a contingency plan with the president. The major media outlets are cooperating by not showing the trial, but they are worried they can't stop the internet feed because shutting down the internet would disable their command control. I am not a military guy, but I figure that most of our command control depends on satellites and we could make due if the internet went down. But forgetting all of that, they contemplate just how careful they should be Heller. When it comes down to it, national security is more important than the Secretary of Defense, so he might be collateral in the fight to take out the terrorists.

Apparently, CTU is a very efficient outfit, but when they need help on something, they hire some outside consultants. With the country on an elevated alert status, that means that the consultants get called in. One of the consultants is Marianne Taylor, played by the very scrumptious Aisha Tyler. OK, Marianne would have been one of the consultants except for Curtis, the CTU black guy made the list of consultants to umm, consult, and left Marianne off that list. We find this out because Marianne calls Curtis and let's him know she has a problem with it. It turns out that Curtis and Marianne used to sleep together, but that Marianne seemed only interested in sleeping her way to the top. Curtis was fine with that until Marianne stopped returning his calls. Later, we find out that Marianne was able to squeeze some classified information out of Curtis in between blow jobs. Now I see why she is a consultant - she is very efficient. In order to get into CTU, Marianne goes directly to Driscoll, who puts her to work right away at a desk.

Posted by J-Unit on January 11, 2005 9:59 AM