Once again, last night's episode of 24 was entertaining and somewhat exciting, but it also served as a sad reminder of how amazingly tight last season was. Yes, I'm a die-hard 24 fan, and I will never give up on this series, which even at its worst is still loads of fun. But this sixth awful day is feeling more and more like that dark spot on the 24 franchise: season three -- with its wildly divergent storylines, questionable premises, and annoying inability to build on the previous season's cliffhanger. Nevertheless, I'm not hating. I'm just... readjusting expectations. And it's not like we didn't have lots of amusing stuff to keep us occupied last night. There were Karen Hayes and Tom Lennox barking up an Emmy-worthy storm at each other. There was Milo triumphantly climbing upon a soapbox to defend civil liberties. And there was Jack, continuing to wonder which was better -- China or his family. Oh, and did I mention Chad Lowe?
This week's episode began with a little spelling lesson for us. Jack's brother, alternately called Graham or Grey, is actually named "Graem." Seemed kind of like a strange name, but maybe that's why he's so damn angry. I've been trying to figure out why the producers would choose such a bizarre spelling for the name, and the best I can come up with is that "Graem" is actually an anagram for "gamer," which is sort of what Graem is. Oh, never mind. It makes no sense. Moving on...
Anyway, one of the first things we saw were the assembled workerbees of CTU standing around, watching President Palmer 2.0 address the country in his typically unconvincing manner. No matter how many times we see Americans riveted to Wayne's speech, I'll never believe him as the President. First of all, he's entirely too in shape. Second of all, he looks perpetually scared -- and not in a "I'm scared because a nuclear bomb just went off" kind of way. No, he looks scared of his own shadow -- not a very presidential quality. Truth is that the writers have never gotten a handle on Wayne. In season three, he was kind of shifty and impulsive, getting himself tangled up in that ludicrous subplot with Julie Milliken that resulted in the death of Sherry Palmer (sorely missed). In season four, well, I don't think he was in season four. But in season five, he suddenly was a badass, shooting off machine guns and picking off bad guys one by one. Now he's the second coming of David, and I just don't believe it.
Nevertheless, while Wayne gave his big speech, Tom and Karen got into a whole brouhaha over civil liberties. It was the same old story again. Tom didn't want the temporary security measures (ie. detention camps, racial profiling, lynch mobs) to be temporary. According to him, they were going to be a new way of life. "Now you're making policy unilaterally," Karen charged bitterly. Oooh! Nice unilateral policy zinger!
Well, the two began bickering, and Tom said something about how when the constitution was drafted, people used muskets that took half a minute to load and fire whereas Fayed had just destroyed several thousand people in a second without even aiming. I think he was trying to comment on how the nature of warfare has changed over the years, but it was kind of a labored point. AND HE CALLS HIMSELF A VILLAIN!
Anyway, Karen and Tom became so heated that for a moment, I thought they might actually kiss, but then I remembered that this was 24, not Broadway. Besides, we all know what happens to jerks who sass Karen Hayes: the ol' bitch slap. I'm sure Miles is still smarting from that one.
Ultimately, this Karen-frontation climaxed with her seething, "If you think you are going to wear me down, you are sadly mistaken!" Consider that a verbal bitch slap, Tom.
Ah, but Tom had a reply. He lifted his fist up Ralph Kramden style and said, "Actually, you are wearing me down." He then added, "One of these days Karen... POW, right in the kisser!"
To the moon!
Anyway, Tom headed out to the hallway and met up with his evil sidekick, played by none other than an uncomfortable looking Chad Lowe. Tom commanded this NewMiles to get rid of Karen. She was no longer an irritant. She was an obstacle. Technically, she could be both. Tom should really brush up on his irritant/obstacle observations.
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Comments (25)
i'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned this but...
i was just re-watching the 5th ep & it's obvious jack & graem's wife have a history.
but does the fact that graem's kid looks EXACTLY like kim bauer have something to do with it?
could kim & the kid be... gulp... brother & sister?
i mean, he looks like a friggin' male clone of elisha cuthbert.
& if this is a part of jack & mrs graem's history, my only question is...
when does he get kidnapped?
1 of 25 | Posted by ProphetOfRage
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Posted on January 30, 2007 7:37 PM
Waleed deserves to get beaten up. I would have just dropped the phone on the ground and acted like nothing had ever happened.
They really should find a way to bring back Behrooz. He was great.
I wonder why they couldnt get Donald Sutherland to play Jack's dad.
2 of 25 | Posted by mangos
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Posted on January 30, 2007 8:53 PM
This season has been kind of a disappointment so far, but I'm hoping that it will get better. As long as we have Jack beat the crap out of/kill Graem, I will be happier.
There's no way that someone as hot as Nadia would go for Milo and his awful facial hair. Also, I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds Morris annoying.
Does thinking sexy thoughts about a male clone of Elisha Cuthbert make you gay? If he runs and jiggles a lot, I'll either call him a fatty or become more interested, depending on the situation.
3 of 25 | Posted by Elder Young
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Posted on January 30, 2007 8:54 PM
I'd try to wrap my head around the whole "evil Bauer brother" development but goddamit I'm still mourning Curtis. Why couldnt Jack just have made it a flesh wound!?!?!
Alhough, the brother bombshell just feels forced. Watching last season you know the writers didnt intend him to be his brother or they would have dropped a hint. This smacks of gotcha desperation. Like when what used to be a great show isnt anymore so they go after whatever gimmick they can to try and spice things up no matter how asinine and stupid, but it just makes things worse.
I pray im wrong (I love me my Bauer), but Ive' seen it happen before.
4 of 25 | Posted by EdHill
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Posted on January 30, 2007 9:34 PM
It has to be said -- Good Lord, I love 24, but this season has been almost.... awful... so far. As my husband said, it feels more like an episode of "Dallas." Please, please ditch the soap opera storylines, and get back to the action...
ANYTHING with the Palmer Sistah and Walid makes me want to blind myself. Karen resigns without a whimper? Waaaaaaaaay too much time spent at CTU doing absolutely nothing. Tactical teams get blown away like their training was in the shoe dept at JCPenney. And just every now and then, out of nowhere, they throw torture into the mix. Sorry, but I actually rolled my eyes when Jack told Graem he'd never feel pain so intense -- this again?
Have to agree with Ed that the whole surprise/gotcha family connection is just a little too weird. Though it did provide for the only interesting 4 minutes of the show right at the very end there.
Please, please 24 -- ditch this imposter and show us the real sixth season!
5 of 25 | Posted by Deb
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Posted on January 30, 2007 9:46 PM
I wish they would move the location of 24. I want to see a season where Jack is in London, NY, India....
Basically anywhere besides LA. It's so played out already.
6 of 25 | Posted by Patty
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Posted on January 31, 2007 6:37 AM
must concur with the dissent. I'm with you, b-side--'24' will have to go pretty low before I'll turn on (or away) from it--but this season has a lot of problems so far.
1. President Wayne Palmer?!?!?!
At the very least, he needs to lose the facial hair. teddy roosevelt was the last pres to sport the hirsute look, and he had a STRONG MUSTACHE, not an r. kelly jailbait brush. d. palm is more presidential talking about guys changing their pants behind the wheel than his little bro giving an oval office address.
2. dastardly chiefs of staff
how can these palmer boys be such terrible judges of character? do these guys need to rub their hands together and scream 'BWAHAHAHA!' for the palmers to detect their nastiness?
3. the bluetooth guy is . . . jack's BROTHER!?!?!?
this one reminds me of the first time i saw 'the empire strikes back.' when ol' darth dropped the daddy bomb on luke, my 8 year-old brain instantly thought 'cheap trick!' now, even though, as it turns out, this plot twist was, in fact, planned in advance, i already understood, as mark twain once said, that the only difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be believable.
jack was definitely banging rena sofer, though. glad to see she can still walk. after she showed up in a wheelchair as nathan petrelli's wife on 'heroes,' i was concerned.
4. milo and nadia
o.k., milo sucks. we all know this. he's also a huge idiot. as they have proved numerous times before (dina araz, kal penn, etc.), '24' has no problem bucking the PC police and letting ambiguous middle-eastern characters turn out to be bloodthirsty terrorists. remember that little bit chloe gave nadia in the premiere about covering her ass when she screwed up some filter/protocol/socket or whatever? nadia=the mole, and milo--in the middle of a nuclear terrorist threat crisis--just gave us one of the biggest, most glaring plot holes yet. the only thing believable about this scenario is that the only way a hottie like nadia would flirt with a slug like milo with his greasy hair and his black cornsilk molester moustache is if she was exploiting his horniness and stupidity to help her REAL boyfriend, abu fayed.
5. sandra palmer
it's already been observed that sandra is this season's kim bauer, spiced up with a little sassy-sister act. her story arc is pure, naked filler--just a device to give jack time to travel 20 miles in three minutes--and her matrix boyfriend's really lame accent completely ruins suspension of disbelief. why does he have an accent anyway, if he can't speak arabic? i know all muslims aren't arabs, but walid is an arabic name, and what kind of muslim leader wouldn't learn at least the basics of the language in which the koran was written? he's like a rabbi that can't read hebrew.
'24' is still worth the hour, if only for camp value, but it has definitely fallen behind 'heroes' on the monday night TV priority list.
7 of 25 | Posted by jack
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Posted on January 31, 2007 7:43 AM
jack (lowercase), you old soul, you. You're much younger than I had envisioned. Good for you. And I think it no coincidence that both Jacks here kick solid ass.
Excellent recap, B-Side..."Milo's goatee shimmers when someone lies to him." is a frickin' awesome line.
8 of 25 | Posted by HicksPub
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Posted on January 31, 2007 8:24 AM
before the season started most of the cast gathered on the set of ctu with larry king & they had a group discussion on all things 24.
one of the topics keifer broached was the fact they were introducing jack's dad to the storyline.
someone asked if donald sutherland would be joining the cast & keifer said they wanted him but there was a scheduling conflict or something.
i like james cromwell as an actor but could he look ANY different then his 2 "sons"?
i mean, if they aren't going to look anything alike why not go balls-out & cast a middle-eastern man & really throw jack's mythology on its ear.
they've done some wacky stunt-casting on this show but getting donald to play philip bauer woulda been the BEST CASTING EVER.
too bad they couldn't wait.
btw... the larry king interview is available as an audio podcast through itunes.
(i think the debriefing one)
spoilers are cut out so it's safe, though you do find out a stunt-cast that's coming soon that can be summed up in 2 words...
... the ricker.
hmmm....
9 of 25 | Posted by ProphetOfRage
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Posted on January 31, 2007 8:25 AM
jack -- I agree with you almost 100%. Great observations (as usual).
10 of 25 | Posted by B-Side
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Posted on January 31, 2007 8:36 AM
Great recap ... more enjoyable than this week's episode!
I agreee with little jack, the Milo/Nadia thing looks like a big-time setup for some future mole plot-twist, where she really does turn out to be secretly working for Fayed. And in Season 1, wasn't Milo some slacker dude who was eating popcorn sitting at the computer station? When did he turn into this asshole? Damn, this year's CTUers are lame...
11 of 25 | Posted by dumbanddumber
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Posted on January 31, 2007 9:05 AM
I don't know why but I was thinking that maybe the "hooker girl" with the engineer was an undercover agent of some sort. Why did she look so shifty-eyed and calculating when he was going to throw her out of the car? Other than being a hooker thrown out of a car in a nuclear blast zone?
12 of 25 | Posted by DarcyZ
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Posted on January 31, 2007 9:40 AM
i think the hooker is up to something too - it would be pretty sad if it's just a filler. Which, this week was definitely a builder episode. And where are all of Chloe's snarky comments?!
13 of 25 | Posted by Riley18
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Posted on January 31, 2007 10:09 AM
Nice recap, B-side... found something worth mentioning:
"Graem was still kvetching about how CT was going to come after his family."
CT is going to set up a wicked haaaahd perimeter around Graem, and then challenge him to a game of Push Me.
14 of 25 | Posted by Chloe
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Posted on January 31, 2007 10:27 AM
Interesting that Jack decided to torture his brother without any real knowledge that he might be evil or hiding something. Nice way to work out some childhood issues. That being said, I enjoyed watching Big Bro cry like a woman in the first part of the episode.
15 of 25 | Posted by dumbanddumber
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Posted on January 31, 2007 11:19 AM
I can not wait for the episode when Henderson shows up and throws Graem into a vat of toxic waste and then explodes when hit by a car. Seriously, google it, there are screen caps of it.
16 of 25 | Posted by MODULUS
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Posted on January 31, 2007 11:37 AM
I can predict who will play Jack's mother later this season, and it will explain everything. Charla from The Amazing Race!
17 of 25 | Posted by Bauer's Sweetheart
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Posted on January 31, 2007 1:03 PM
MODULUS, I think that Jack is gonna chop his arm of with a whirling helicoptor blade first.
Dude's had some memorable screen screen deaths and torture for a pretty mid-level character actor...
18 of 25 | Posted by dumbanddumber
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Posted on January 31, 2007 2:57 PM
Great recap as usual! Jack and Graem couldn't be more physically different! It's just not believable that they are brothers. I love 24, but I haven't been overly impressed this season. I agree with jack's observations too, especially about Wayne Palmer. Why the hell did they make him President?? He is totally not believable. Oh well, I will never give up on 24, I just hope it gets better as the season goes on....
19 of 25 | Posted by Jojobear
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Posted on January 31, 2007 3:24 PM
I just have to add...
DAMMIT!!!!
20 of 25 | Posted by IrideBlimp
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Posted on January 31, 2007 9:25 PM
By my count, Jack was suffocating Graem for 6 minutes.
If this show is gonna go campy, they should do it with the best actors they have on set. Hanging plotlines on Milo and Audrey from Vegas Vacation is a bad idea. I can barely understand her speaking CTU-ese.
I want a prequel season with all the dead favorites. Please. For the last season.
That said, I'll watch this show until they pry the DVDs from my cold dead hands.
21 of 25 | Posted by dizzlevizzle
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Posted on January 31, 2007 10:45 PM
jack's comments are mostly dead on, but jeez are you wrong about Arabic. First, not only are not all Muslims Arabs, but most Muslims are not. (I would also note not all Arabs are Muslims, but that's another matter.) However Arabic names are common whether Muslims are Arabs or not. Second, even if Walid had some instruction in the Qur'an as a kid, the book is in classical Arabic. It is far from the language spoken in the vernacular in the jail yard and even that one varies from region to region. A Palestinian would have trouble understanding the everyday Arabic of a Moroccan etc. Plus, he is a political activist, not an Imam. Plenty of people don't know the language of the book their faith is in. Christians included. Finally, why on earth do you think it is odd for Walid to have an accent? What about him not knowing Arabic should make him sound like he is from the Valley or something? I think the Walid storyline is a bit weak (as is the rest of the new season) but not for any bizarre linguistic irregularity.
22 of 25 | Posted by Leila
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Posted on February 1, 2007 9:37 AM
thank you, leila, for correcting my vast cultural ignorance. mea culpa. or, should i say, Aasef! Ahtaaju an atadarraba 'ala al arabia!
--i still think walid has a really phony sounding accent, though. must be a glitch in the matrix.
23 of 25 | Posted by jack
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Posted on February 1, 2007 10:13 AM
I can handle Milos stupid pubic chin, Chloes lack of all the fun things we love a bout Chloe. Chad Lowe being desperate for a job. But (Regina King) Sandra Palmer is destroying this season. Kim was better than this. She has done nothing but SCREAM since her first appearance. Jack needs to do a season 2 beheading on her fast. That will shut her up, maybe.
24 of 25 | Posted by Murfy
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Posted on February 1, 2007 11:07 AM
seriously, your recaps read like charles nelson reilly on crack...
25 of 25 | Posted by missrhodisland | Posted on March 27, 2007 11:12 PM