24: Amor De Hermana!

Hola Gasmii! I’m sorry this recap is a little late this week, but I was side-tracked with my little vanity project. Rest assured, next week’s will be on time…and look on the bright side! Now you only have to wait a few days for the next recap!

The name of the game is DRAMA this week. Sisters will fight over a man. Mothers and Daughters will fight over everything. Two mousy computer geeks will fight for dominance. One man will fight for his life! Sadly, nobody will fight for their right to party. No time! It’s the MOST.DRAMATIC.EPISODE.EVER!

And it’s all recapped for you, mi amors…after the JUMP!

It’s 4PM in the Korean Grocery across from Dubaku’s apartment, and Agent Walker is running outside to meet that ambulance Jack barked at her to call 5 seconds ago as Episode 8 was ending. Renee’s newfound Zombie powers apparently include telepathy. She must have willed the ambulance to arrive while she was racing up the stairs. Outside the store, there’s also already a cop on crowd patrol duty. I’m going to give the producers the benefit of the doubt on this one. DC is always a couple years behind the curve, so he was probably already there trying to control one of those “flash mob” pranks that were oh so trendy a couple of years ago.

Anyhoo…Renee tells the cop to keep the hipsters at bay, which shouldn’t be too hard since the grocery doesn’t sell ironic T-shirts. She races into the basement with the EMTs and mentions that Henry Taylor is the victim, which I suppose explains why these medical professionals follow her dutifully with barely a glance at any of the dead bodies they are stepping over. When they arrive in the Back room where Jack is tending to the First Hubby, he screams “Over Here!” at the rescue squad who are 6 feet away and already racing in his direction. Calm down a little, Jack! Nobody does their best work when being yelled at.

As the EMTs get to work, Jack tells Renee to search the dead bodies in the other room for clues regarding Dubaku’s whereabouts and phones President Taylor. She’s still in the Oval Office anxiously awaiting news and wringing her hands. While waiting, she must have taken a powder break and applied a butt-load of mousse to her hair, because she’s sporting some serious volume that wasn’t around for hours 1 through 8. No judgement…everyone deals with stress differently. Personally, I like to go for a run or drink gallons of booze! To each their own. Jack has to relay the bad news, which would make anyone’s hair stand on end, that First Hubby sustained life-threatening injuries and will be taken to “West Arlington Hospital”…oh yeah, and they still have no freakin’ clue where Dubaku is, but suspect he’s going to try to flee the country now that his last ditch plot failed.

After Mousse and “Girl Talk” break with Bill in the bathroom

After the call, Madame Prez informs Kanin that she’ll be heading to the hospital. Kanin tries to talk her out of it, because they have that whole “invasion of a foreign country” thing going on, and also because the Secret Service is compromised and they can’t guarantee her safety outside of The White House. President Taylor, who has disregarded every single piece of advice Kanin has offered all day, of course tells him she’ll be going to the hospital anyway. This prompts Chia Bill (who looks like he accompanied the Prez on that mousse run) to pipe in that he’ll gladly be responsible for her safety if she reinstates his credentials and puts him in charge of all White House staff. Ambitious, Bill! From outcast to large and in charge in no time flat! Who knew Buchanan had a little bit of Tracy Flick in him? Bill also wants to bring in Chloe to assist the FBI, because they need someone there who’s head isn’t completely up their own ass, and plus they need an outsider to sniff out the mole business.

It can get lonely at the top, Bill!

Chia Bill is rewarded for bringing the whole plot to her attention (Not before the shit actually hit the fan…but I digress.) President Taylor basically puts him in charge of the Secret Service and all White Hosue staff, but not before a point is made that Bill knows the current head of the Secret Service (Ted Hovis) and he’s not going to like losing the reigns. Future clash foreshadow? President Taylor is firmly on Team Bill, saying it was Hovis’ agents that were responsible for her Husbands condition, so she’ll have Buchanan’s back. As Bill takes off to seize complete control and make arrangements, Kanin pipes in with his nay-saying again. President Taylor is back to bad-ass mode and basically tells him to shut the f*ck up, her primary concern is finding that “Son of a bitch” Dubaku.

Speaking of that SOB Dubaku, he’s standing around looking antsy in an alleyway behind Marika’s diner. A lot can change in ’24′ World! An hour ago, he was ambling along in the streets without a care in the world, and now he’s hiding out in alleys. When Marika appears in the kitchen, he calls her outside to confess that he has been in the country illegally and the authorities have caught up with him. (Red Flag Number 1!) He leaves out the part about mass murder, finger amputation, etc…which would have been flags 2 through 1,000. Marika immediately suspects her sister of turning him in. Dubaku tells her it doesn’t matter, and that he needs to leave the country tonight! (Red Flag Number 2!) He wants her to flee with him to his Chateau in Belize and live the sweet life he promised her. She’s all for it, but can’t just leave her sister and skip the country right that second, so he yells at her that he doesn’t have time to argue! (Red Flag Number 3!) He apologizes for snapping at her and makes nice by offering to bring Rosa along on their little exile…but not tonight. He could only arrange travel for the two of them, so she’ll be sent for later. Oh yeah, and she can’t tell Rosa what’s up, lest she make “trouble” for them. (Red Flag Number 4!) Marika ignores all of these signs and agrees to flee with him because she loves him and is a giant idiot.

After Marika skips off to quit her job, Dubaku picks up the phone and calls a nameless suit to find out if his travel arrangements are being made. The suit is having a rough time because of the whole “all flights grounded” thing…remember that? Dubaku doesn’t care about the red tape and roadblocks, he wants what he wants when he wants it, as we all know. The suit tries to dissuade him by saying that General Juma will be displeased that the mission is being abandoned, which prompts Dubaku to say he has done all he can, and if that’s not enough for Juma, then to hell with him! The suit finally relents and offers to meet at the “usual spot” in a half hour, but that’s not good enough for Dubaku. He wants to meet in the lobby of a busy hotel in 15 minutes. He hangs up and jumps in a car with driver! Finally! No more public transportation! His MetroCard must’ve run out.

Back in the basement, Jack and Renee are searching the dead bodies, when her boyfriend daddy Big Boss Moss calls to check in. After exchanging a few pleasantries and making sure she’s OK after the gunfight, he gets down to the real reason for his call. Apparently, Mrs. Vossler didn’t appreciate being held hostage at gunpoint, cuffed to a coffee table, and having the life of her little baby threatened…so she filed a police report. This displeases Larry a great deal, even though he knew what they were up to before they did it. Renee’s response “It worked, didn’t it?” This shakes Larry’s cage a little because he doesn’t like his girlfriend sliding down Bauer’s slippery slope to Torture-Town. He starts ripping into her, reminding her that Bauer’s methods and logic have him currently facing a Senate SubCommittee and yada yada. Renee catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, complete with guilty little blood stains on her hands and cheek (subtle!). As if her torture tears from earlier in the season weren’t enough proof of the internal conflict gripping Zombie Spice, she confesses that she is troubled by everything and didn’t like being looked at like a “monster.” Awww…suck it up! Luckily, this little lover’s quarrel is interrupted by Jack, who tells her he managed to obtain an address by cross referencing information on the dead dudes’ PDAs. As they race off to the address, he asks her if she’s OK, and she lies and says she’s fine…as we cut to break.

After a quick glimpse of Marika sneaking into her apartment to pack for Belize while Rosa naps in front of the TV, we see Chloe being driven to FBI HQ by her hubby Morris, while their adorable little boy Prescott hangs out in the back seat. Apparently, she went home after helping save the Matobos for a quickie with Morris, a shower, and a bowl of Lucky Charms. They have a cute little chat about how she needs to get to the bottom of the Government conspiracy to aid and abet Dubaku, but that she’ll be all finished with saving the world afterwards. Morris tells her to watch her back, and she tells him she can take care of herself, he needs to worry about watching their little boy. They watch as she enters HQ looking like a nervous little girl on the first day of school.

Upstairs in the FBI Cubicle Maze, Larry gives Janis a couple little assignments that she calls administrative crap and busy work. He tells her to STFU and do what he asks, and oh yeah…could she please set up a secure socket in the conference room? Janis is, of course, skeptical…so Larry lies that he is bringing in a consultant from Homeland that is going to be searching the network for lingering CIP breaches. Whoa! By-The-Books Moss told a lie! He probably had to douse himself in holy water and say a bajillion Hail Mary’s after that!

Just then, Chloe makes her grand entrance to FBI HQ and Larry escorts her into a glass-walled conference room facing his entire staff while Janis glares at her. Chloe states the obvious that sniffing out a mole is a sensitive assignment and might be best carried out somewhere a little less expose-rrific. Unfortunately, that room is the only place Chloe will be able to access the network she needs, and she calls the system inefficient, mentioning that whoever set it up didn’t know what they were doing. Larry hilariously says “I set up the network that way”, and Chloe responds “Oh, OK.” Haha. To cover his hurt feelings, Larry decides to take a couple swipes at Jack Bauer, telling Chloe she’s lucky to have survived the experience of working with him for 7 years…citing all the people around Jack that wound up dead. Chloe takes offense to this, and tells Larry that Jack is the most trustworthy and honorable man she knows. She dismisses him, telling him he needs to stop obsessing over Jack and worry about the mole in his office.

Outside the conference room, Agent Erika DeadSlut saunters up to Janis’ desk and IDs Chloe. When Janis tells her Chloe is there to search for lingering CIP Breaches, DeadSlut casually notes that Chloe has been de-active for years and the assignment isn’t exactly her area of expertise. As Erika skips off, Janis stews suspiciously and glares at Chloe.

We cut to Dubaku entering the lobby of a busy hotel to meet that nameless suit he talked to earlier. The suit hands him passports and his travel itinerary, mentioning there’s a plane fueling now that will fly him and Marika to the Cayman Islands, where they’ll be able to catch a flight to Belize. Dubaku asks for a car and driver for Marika, and the suit says he doesn’t know if he can find someone trustworthy on such short notice. This prompts Dubaku to note the dude at the bar, two dudes upstairs, and others outside who should be available. Dubaku smells a rat and knows they see him as a liability now and plan to take him out. Unfortunately for the nameless U.S. Baddies, Dubaku has an insurance policy which is basically a file containing the names and bank account numbers of every coconspirator. If anything should happen to him or Marika, the file will be sent to the Justice Department! That Dubaku is one smart cookie! As he leaves for the plane, the new Big Suited Baddie calls someone and confirms that they were planning to take Dubaku out, but can’t do it…that they actually have to help him escape the country.

Back in Marika’s apartment, Rosa comes rolling into her bedroom just as she finishes packing and changing. Busted! Rosa demands to know what’s up, and Marika tells her the sunny “We’re all moving to Belize!” story. Rosa, of course, is having none of that. They get into an argument again about “Samuel” and how he’s lying to her. The back and forth is all very dramatic and like a weird African Immigrant Telenovela, or something. Marika’s all: “You’re jealous of me, and no man is ever good enough!” Then Rosa’s all: “The Generale Colonel is a baaaad man.” And then Marika’s all: “Let me have my chance at happiness! You cannot stop me!”

Fortunately for us viewers, this argument is interrupted when Jack and Renee bust through the door with guns drawn and order the sisters to their knees with hands behind heads! After confirming the apartment is Ike free, they demand to know where Dubaku is. Marika has no clue who they are talking about, so they show her a cell phone picture. She tries to cover for him, saying she doesn’t know who that is, but Rosa spills the beans and tells them he calls himself Samuel Aboa and that her sister was about to leave her for him! Sounds to me like Rosa has some kind of weird obsession thing going on with her sister. Jack wants to know if she works for him and knows what he is. She tells him she doesn’t work for him, and that he’s “everything” to her. Jack and Renee should be credited for not puking or even rolling their eyes at this little piece of melodrama.

After a break, we check in on Prez Taylor, who is arriving at the hospital with heavily armed, camouflaged military guard. A nurse hilariously gets all star struck and freaked out by the President, who ultimately turns to her husband’s surgeon for answers. He tells her that First Hubby’s injuries are serious enough to warrant at least 5 episodes hours worth of surgery, but that she can see him briefly before he’s taken into the OR. Madame Prez, who’s a bottom-line kinda gal, wants to know what his chances are…the surgeon’s response: Not good. Awww.

We are treated to a sweet scene of the Prez and First Hubby as he’s wheeled into surgery. She notes that he was right all along about Roger’s death, and she knows that now. First Hubby calls Roger a hero, and she tells him that he is one too. Awww… She kisses him as he’s wheeled into the OR. As she perches herself in a window on the OR door, I noticed that she took another of her stress/mousse breaks!

By the end of the season…she’s going to look like this

Anhoo…she asks Bill if he knows someone trustworthy that can bring her daughter to the Hospital. She has a daughter?! Did I miss that from ’24: Redemption’? Bill wonders why she can’t just call her daughter, and she mentions that she’d never answer the phone. Luckily, Bill knows just the man for the job. Before he walks away to make the call, he mentions that she REALLY needs to read ‘My Mother, My Self’.

Back in Marika and Rosa’s pad, Renee is showing them pictures of Dubaku in military garb and running down the list of his atrocities. Marika begs them to stop, saying she’s heard enough. They ask where he is and where she’s going to meet him. Unfortunately, she has no clue…just that he was going to call and let her know. Jack demands her phone, so he can try to listen in/trace the call. Marika flips out and doesn’t want to talk to him. Jack sweetly gives her a little pep talk and tells her she can do it. No sooner has he finished reading his line, than the phone rings and it’s Dubaku on the horn! She takes the call and he wants to know why it took her so long to answer and why she sounds like she’s freaking out! She blames it all on Rosa and their Telenovela spat. He wants to know if Rosa is going to be a “problem” for them, but she tells him that her sister is just peachy keen now that she knows she is going to be uprooted and moved to Belize, herself, in a couple of days. Marika asks where he is and where she’s going to meet him, but he tells her not to worry her pretty little head with details and that the driver he is sending will take care of everything.

After telling Marika she did a nice job, Jack and Renee have a little pow-wow by the window to discuss “What next?” since they got squat out of the call. Jack’s idea: Let’s let the innocent young woman go to the blood-thirsty madman so we can track her via cell phone! Renee gets a “You’ve got to be shitting me” look on her face, but Jack tells her they don’t have another choice! He approaches the couch and kneels before Marika, placing his hand on hers, and switches over to s smooth calming tone of voice rather than his usual Jack Bark. Dr. Jack sweetly asks her to please do them a favor and go along with the driver to Dubaku. Rosa, of course, flips her lid and starts yelling that Jack’s idea is crazy! Marika, however, cuts her off and agrees to do it with little argument. It’s a little jarring since she gave them such a hard time about the phone call…but the episode is ending in, like 20 minutes…so who has time to argue?

Jack gets to work setting up the tracking process, while Renee is treated to the bookend of the Telenovela nonsense as the sisters weep and embrace and Rosa admits to being jealous of Marika and not wanting to lose her.

At FBI HQ, Larry takes Jack’s call and puts him on speaker phone with Chloe. Jack asks how long the set-up will take, and Chloe gets in another dig by noting that normally it would take seconds, but the system here is “backwards.” Larry Moss has been officially Chloe-tized! Burn! Larry wants to know if this chick is one of Dubaku’s operatives, and Jack says it’s a little more “complicated” than that, which is code for “I’m totally breaking the rules again!”

Meanwhile, suspicious Janis is glaring at Chloe and desperately trying to hack into the conference room computers, which is not going so well. She’s on her 4th failed log-in! She ponders what to do next while we cut to break!

When we return, we catch our first glimpse of First Daughter Olivia Taylor. She’s in the midst of a business meeting in some swanky DC watering hole where fat-cats sip scotch and decide how best to corrupt the democratic process by influencing politicians with their big fat wads of cash! Olivia is selling a potential client on her consulting firm and personal accomplishments…but all he cares about is her connection to the President. She informs him that she does NOT have the ear of the president before they are interrupted by Bill’s man…who happens to be retired secret service agent Aaron Pierce! (Fun Fact: With his appearance this season, he becomes only the second character, other than Jack Bauer, to appear in every season! Thanks Wikipedia!) He tells the First Daughter that she needs to come with him, but she gets all huffy and insists he’s interrupting a very very very important meeting. This is undermined by the dude she was meeting with, who keeps insisting it’s ‘A-OK’ with him and they can meet later. When the dude finally gets away, she demands to know what is going on and refuses to accompany Aaron anywhere until she gets an answer. I’m starting to see where this mother/daughter tension might stem from. Both ladies strike me as very head-strong and blunt. I can imagine Henry and Roger heading for the hills when the Taylor women used to start going at it! Araron tells her about her Father, and she immediately drops the pissy-ness and agrees to go with him. She may think her mother is a total bitch, but she’s apparently still Daddy’s Little Girl.

Back at FBI HQ, Janis approaches Agent D-Bag’s desk and asks for the Digital Beta Key for the server. He plays his usual suspicious, nosy self and wants to know what she needs it for. She tells him Larry asked for it, and he calls bullshit. Before he can head off to ask Larry about it, she admits that she thinks Chloe O’Brien was brought in to replace her and she wants to get a bead on what they hell they are doing in that conference room. Sean notes that it could lose them both their jobs (although he had no qualms about using Larry’s codes to ground his wife’s plane). Janis, being awesome, decides to blackmail him with the whole “Banging Erika” business…so he relents, but not before calling her “a little bitch”. Janis awesomely counters with “YOU’RE a little bitch!” Sean shoots a suspicious look of his own at the conference room as she walks away.

Chloe informs Jack that the link is up and ready to trace Marika, so he and Renee start to escort her downstairs. On the way out, Rosa stops Renee and says “You FBI, You Keep her safe!” Renee says that they will, which probably means they won’t! On the way downstairs, Marika confesses to being scared and Renee starts to tell her a panic signal she can use if things get hairy. Jack freaks out, and tells her not to signal them at all because he doesn’t want the driver alerted or suspicious. After Marika heads outside, Jack and Renee get into it a little about the SOS signal. Jack reminds her that finding Dubaku is the ultimate goal, and they shouldn’t compromise it in any way. Renee counters that poor little Marika is going to be naked out there with no backup. Jack tells her that “life gets ugly and people get hurt.” At least Marika volunteered for this, the rest of Dubaku’s victims weren’t so lucky. Methinks Jack has already written Marika off as dead bait! As the car drives away with Marika in it, Jack and Renee race to their own vehicle and ask Chloe to send the tracking grid to Renee’s PDA. Unfortunately, due to the FBI’s backward systems, she’s not able and has to talk them through it instead.

Down in the server room we saw Sean sneaking around in earlier this season, Janis enters and uses the key to hack into Chloe’s computer. I seem to remember the server room being lit with the standard fluorescent lighting of the rest of the office earlier in the season, but the darkness only helps serve the Intrigue of the scene!

After a quick break, Marika asks her driver where they are going, but he does not respond. As she looks out the window nervously, Larry updates Jack and Renee that they are less than a mile behind the target car. Janis, who is watching their every move from the server room, is startled when a colleague enters and abruptly removes the key, which cuts off Chloe and Larry’s access to the tracking grid. Larry, Chloe, Renee, and Jack all collectively lose their shit over this! Equally abruptly, Chloe’s access comes back. A convenient flashing red box on her monitor informs her that someone in the office was mirroring the terminal and knows exactly what they were up to. Larry looks out of his conference room and pans the room of his underlings, wondering who would do such a thing…

We cut to Jack and Renee’s car, in hot pursuit of Marika, but there’s trouble! DC cops are coming at them from every direction and trying to set up a road block to stop them. Jack tells Larry to get them off, but he’s unable! Jack and Renee are arrested by the DC cops. Chloe informs Larry that warrants were issued out of his office for their arrest! When he tries to revoke them, he gets a lot of bureaucratic chain-of-command nonsense from metro PD which prompts one of his patented grumbly growly faces and Chloe pipes in the current location of Marika’s car, even though nobody is following it. That’s helpful, Chloe!

Back at D-Bag’s desk, Janis returns his magic little access key and tells him about the covert Bauer operation tracking somebody. Sean pretends to be surprised by this and wonders why they are being kept in the dark. I say “pretends”, because as soon as she walks away, Sean calls the nameless Big Baddie in the suit and let’s him know Bauer and Walker were taken care of. SEAN IS THE MOLE!! So, let’s see a show of hands out there. Who’s surprised that the whiny, suspicious, undermine-y, adulterer is one of the bad guys? Nobody?! Yeah, didn’t think so. That one was obvious.

“Actually, my money was on DeadSlut…but I’m blind, so whatever.”

At any rate, Sean goes on to tell the suit that they are most likely tracking the girl by her cell phone, and that in addition to knowing all about what Larry and Chloe have been up to, he has Larry’s phones tapped. Before ending the conversation, Sean wants to know why Dubaku wasn’t taken out as that was the plan once he was no longer useful. The suit informs Sean about the file with every complicit person’s information in it, and Sean the selfish D-Bag that he is asks “Even Mine?” The suit says “everyone”…duh! Sean makes a subtle Oh-Shit face of his own as we go to a split screen showing everyone that’s been featured this hour while moody music plays.

In an alley somewhere, Dubaku gets a call. My closed captions actually identified the Big Baddie suit as “Burnett.” He informs Dubaku that Marika has been turned by the FBI and they are using her cell to track her. Dubaku doesn’t believe it, but Burnett insists it came straight from his D-Bag in the Bureau. He advises the Colonel to cut and run and he’ll have the driver take care of her. Dubaku doesn’t play along, and we end the episode with him insisting that he’ll “take care of her” before staring ominously into the camera…

Ba-Bum-Ba-Bum-Ba-Bum-Ba-Bum!

And there you have it Gasmii! I thought this was another strong hour following last-week’s hell-raiser! Did you all see the previews for next week? I was laughing my ass off when Renee slapped Jack twice and then he grabbed her wrist when she tried a third time! Oh please, oh please, oh please let them kiss passionately after that wrist grab. And I promise to Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Jesus that I’ll be the best boy ever if Larry Moss walks in on it!

What were your thoughts on the episode?