Dina and Jack Try Some Deep Cover

Although I loved last week’s episode of 24, there was something missing. You know, terrorists. Don’t you just love watching Jack and the Super Friends take them out? I guess you could say the corporate commandos and the executives of McClennan-Forster were terrorists and Jack and his friends did take them out, but it’s just not the same. The commandos would have stopped killing with Jack, Paul, and the two random kids running the sporting goods store. Marwan and his bunch are out to kill, well, the American way of life would be a good start.Jack made it out of the firefight alive and with all of his appendages functioning. Paul Raines was not so lucky. He decided to step in front of two bullets headed for the man who tortured him only a few hours before. Paul was able to run several multi-million dollar companies at the same time, but couldn’t deduce that maybe he was more vulnerable to bullets since he didn’t have any kevlar. But you can’t really rip on him for being a good person.

While they are in the helicopter flying to CTU, Jack calls Audrey on the phone and lets her know he is all right. But when he tells her that Paul was shot, she has that skeptical look on her face that said “Did you shoot him?”. I am sure it was in the back of her head, along with “Maybe it was better when i was sleeping with the enemy…”

I also have a great idea of what was going on in the back of Paul’s head. It was something like “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE DON’T LET ME BE TREATED IN THE CTU CLINIC”. Sorry Paul, the crack team of doctors that took such good Myra Driscoll are now going to get a shot at you. I am not sure why they didn’t go to Cedars Sinai or perhaps the USC medical center, god knows they have seen their share of bullet wounds. If you had just been tortured by an electrical appliance, maybe you would try the CTU clinic. I am really not so sure about everything else.

Also, is it normal for governmental agencies to have clinics and trauma surgeons hanging around? I know they have to keep people around with all of the torture going around and all, but what about the other parts of the government that are torturing people? Do they have their own clinics? I thought we were supposed to be in a new era of interdepartmental cooperation. Oh well.

Whatever happens to Paul, you know that his sacrifice wasn’t for nothing. CTU was able to pull a bunch of names off of the encrypted printout that Paul gave them, including one person who was on the terrorist watch list. The only problem was that they had no way to get him, no way to tell if Marwan hadn’t contacted him first, and no assurance that he would take them to Marwan when they got there. They needed somebody with some knowledge of the cells and a credible plan to get them inside. There is only one man for the job, and we know it’s Jack, but Jack needs help, and there is only one person who can help him. Dina Araz.

I do get a little titillated at the thought of Shohreh Aghdashloo on screen. She is such a ridiculously great actress, she steals every scene. And that VOICE. Amazing. I could do the Dina Araz voice all day. “Behrooz, it will be OK”. “Navi, you killed our son! Our only son!”. “I am only doing this for my son.” “Why should I help you?”. Go ahead, try it yourself. Get some practice and then use it on some of your coworkers. You will be the hit of the water cooler.

Dina betrayed her cause once in order to save her son, so Jack thinks she will do it again if he can find some more leverage. He finds her in the interrogation room, and offers her a chance at witness protection, and a life with her son. Since Behrooz is the only thing she is living for at the moment, she decides to take a chance.

Last week, we were given a teaser for the next big terrorist plot in store for us. They weren’t able to behead the Secretary of Defense, and they were only able to destroy one nuclear reactor, which is bad, but if you look at the percentages, their score wasn’t even enough to get into Sacred Heart. But they had backup plans for all of their failures, and this time was no different. We weren’t sure what was going to happen, but it had to do with a very creepy looking white dud dressed up in a pilot’s uniform.

At first I thought that Marwan had found somebody within the Air Force to carry out his next plan, but he found the next best thing. He did have an Air Force pilot in mind, but our creepy dude was going to be a body double. All that was left was to find this man in a compromising position and/or threaten his family to get him to go with the plan. For good measure, both happened. As our pilot friend was just getting off of his girlfriend, his wife called. On his girlfriend’s phone.

Of the million things that he must have been thinking about at that moment, one of them probably wasn’t that his family had been taken a hostage and he would have to cooperate. He surely wasn’t ready to turn around see that the girl he had just been boning a few minutes earlier had a gun pointed at him. When he did get his wits about him and try to take that girl out, he must have been equally as surprised when she knocked him to the ground and said “I learned those moves from my friend Mandy”. OK, I made the Mandy part up. We are not quite sure what this pilot’s job was, but it was obvious the body double would be performing his duties that evening.

At CTU, Jack debriefed Michelle, and she agreed to the plan. What is that plan, you say? It’s actually quite simple really. You have Dina Araz drive to this guy Fayed’s house, walk in, and ask to meet Marwan. He has probably never seen her, and her husband has already told Marwan she is a traitor. But they have thought of all of that as well. To prove to the terrorists that Dina is still loyal, she will take a hostage. That hostage will of course be Jack. Since they have to do it quickly and know that the terrorists will be waiting for somebody with a tracking device, they will have to go in with only satellite and remote audio surveillance. Wow, I can’t think of anything that could go wrong with this scheme.

Michelle knew she would need her top people there, and she was getting kind of worried about Edgar. He did save thousands of lives a few hours ago, but you can tell his nerves were getting a little thin. He mouthed off to Tony, and it seemed he was losing his focus. But could there be anybody out there that was good enough to work the computers. Well, we know the best damn systems analyst in the country was fired because she clashed with Erin Driscoll. Ms. Driscoll was gone, so why not call her back.

I have been lucky enough to recap when a lot of the big names came back. First there was Tony Almeida, then there was Michelle Dessler. As much as I like those two characters, they do not have half the personality that Chloe O’Brian. Michelle knew right away that she should call Chloe, and we were right away treated to some of that great Chloe style. When Chloe heard that Driscoll was no longer in charge of CTU she said “Oh, she got fired? That’s too bad”. Edgar has done a good job of keeping us amused and doing the computer mojo at CTU, but it’s going to be good to have Chloe back. As soon as she gets to CTU (and it looks like she lives about two minutes away), she gets right into it with Edgar. Edgar might look upset that Chloe is there and Michelle didn’t have confidence he could do his job, but you know he is just happy to have his crush back.

Many of you may have sort of wondered why Dina would actually go through with the plan. She has already said she wasn’t upset with the nuclear meltdown. She could just double-cross Jack. Except, of course, for Behrooz. (Go ahead, do the voice again – “Behrooooooooz” ) I know she loves her son, but during the scene when she told him that she was going to go along with the plan, did anybody else sense a little bit of Elektra complex going on there? Dina told Behrooz what would happen, Behrooz didn’t want her to go. Dina proceeds to plant about a thousand kisses on her son’s face. God Dina, you’ll see him again, you don’t need to go overboard.

Jack and Dina get to Fayed’s house. They made an elaborate alibi that she was being transported when some more of the terrorist cell tried to rescue her, because, you know, it would be awful if somebody martyred themselves for the cost. In the resulting firefight, all of the terrorists were killed and Dina was able to take in Jack, who had been injured. Well, we all know that Jack in fact had not been injured, so how was he going to fake that? Why, stab himself in the abdomen of course!

We have seen Jack do some crazy shit, and we know Dina Araz is pretty ruthless, but I think everybody was pretty amazed when Jack just stabbed himself in stomach. I mean, it’s not like he cut his hands off to save Los Angeles from a plague, but it looked painful nonetheless. And when Dina saw him do this, she had this look on her face that said “Shit, why do these high strung guys always pick me for their missions? First Navi, now this guy. What the hell was I thinking?”

Dina took Jack to Fayed’s door. If you are trying to imagine what this guy looks like, imagine a Lebanese version of Edgar, except Fayed is a bigger slob. Dina and Fayed were part of two completely different cells, so they never saw each other, or even knew that he existed. When she was at the door, he said that he had no idea what she was talking about and would call the police. Well, we know THAT is a lie, and so did Dina. She eventually gets him to let her in. He knocks Jack over the head, calls Marwan, and gets instructions to make a swap. Although the people at CTU weren’t able to trace the call, they were able to listen using the parabolic transsomethingorothers and get some information.

There was some other developments at CTU having to do with Paul Raines. Audrey was distraught waiting for him to come out of surgery, and her dad helped to comfort her. He stayed around just long enough for the surgeon to come out and say that they needed to bring a neurosurgeon in, because one of the bullets had lodged on his vertebrae. Surprise, surprise! The clinic at CTU wasn’t able to handle it, so they brought in a doctor…from Cedar’s. Hey, I would have airlifted him there in the first place, but what do I know? Secretary Heller then had to be whisked away for some important business with the president. I think he’ll be OK though, because no CTU security detail was following him.

Although CTU believed they were closing in on Marwan, they had no idea about what was going on with Marwan’s next work of art. Now, when the pilot was threatened with his life and his family’s life, what did he really think would happen? He already tried to ambush his way out of there once, he wasn’t going to just stay silent and do nothing. The pilot (the real one) drove onto his base, and somehow he got past the security with a dude in his trunk (probably in the spare tire area or something?). He actually seemed surprised when his doppleganger told him his family was dead, shot him twice and stuffed him in his own trunk. He would have been to relieved to know that his doppleganger chose to cut off his thumb after he killed him and not before.

So Fayed takes Jack and Dina for a ride in his Taurus. CTU has them on satellite, and they are being followed from behind. Michelle Dessler really gets things done, there is now way anybody can escape! Well, actually there is a way. They pull into a tunnel, so the satellite images don’t help. While inside the tunnel, some of Marwan’s goons take Dina and Jack out of the car and into an anonymous white van. Fayed drives off, and naturally CTU follows him. He pulls off onto a bridge, waits for a few agents to get close, then detonates a car bomb. There goes another crack member of the CTU security team.

Well, Michelle better act quick. Her CTU field team didn’t do so well, and they need to find that van. Set up a perimeter! THAT ALWAYS WORKS. The van rendezvous in a dark alley with Marwan. He doesn’t believe that Dina is not a traitor, so he asks her to prove her loyalty. Take this gun and shoot Jack.

This is a scene we have all scene before, and it happens every season. Last year, Jack actually shot Chappelle, but Dina can’t shoot Jack. We’ll just get a shot of her pointing the gun to his head, and then….tick, tick, tick, tick. Then again, MAYBE NOT. We did get a shot of Dina pointing her gun at Jack, but then she turns it on Marwan and shoots!

No ammo.

Damn, that has got to be kind of awkward, don’t you think? Marwan, he is really one sly bastard. He takes Jack in one direction, and leaves Dina behind. She is taken off to a part of the alley, and then bang, bang, the best evil woman since Sherry Palmer bites the dust. (Or at least we think so. We didn’t see her die, but a couple of hits from a Desert Eagle at close range kind of leaves a mess. What it doesn’t leave behind is organs or brain matter.) I bet she was happy she got those last few kisses in earlier.

As big of a deal as that is, we still have to deal with the fake pilot. We know he has something to do with the president, we know he is going to be flying. He makes his way to a secure access area. Oh wait, what about the fingerprint reader? Phew, that’s right, I did remember to cut off the guy’s finger so I could get my way in. And what’s behind the door? Fighter plane!

I don’t know what is going to be happening next week, but in the words of reader MyMomStalksB-Side, “Two thumbs up for 24!”