Red Eye

2 a.m. to 3 a.m.
5.1.06

Karen Hayes, formerly of Homeland Security, has now switched to the underground operation that is CTU 2.0. It's a secretive bunch that has a special handshake, decoder rings, and requires you to lie to everyone you know all the time. This is also the same job description they give to political lobbyists.

K Hay has embraced the power of Bauer and is here to help Old Man Buchanan and Scowl Face, at least a little bit. The Homeland Security drones are on the way and they have to leave. Because Buchanan is an old man and prefers to be led places rather than to lead, he tells Chloe to run to the nearby hotel. It's his "prostitute hangout" after midnight when he just wants to talk about dirty sex and baseball. Prostitutes love baseball. (BTW: YANKEES SUCK!)

Before the drones show up, Old Man makes sure to take off his shirt. It's always suspicious if you're dressed up in your home with no where to go, which is why I always walk around in my underwear and a chicken mask when I'm in the apartment…and sometimes when I'm at work, but only if it's someone's birthday.

Scowl Face gets to the hotel and finds a bar where she can set up shop in a dark corner. It's a typical hotel, complete with lounge music that's easy to ignore, low lighting, and a drunken businessman who is ready to hit on anything with a pulse.

Drunky: "Hey baby, you got shoes on. Lemme see your bra." (I actually heard a guy say this in a bar…to a donkey).
Girl: "Um, no thanks. I only touch Buchanan and that's only after he slips me an Abe Lincoln."
Drunky: "Whoa! Don't get all feminist on me."

Drunky, you poor idiotic soul. Feminism has changed. They don't bother debating you any more. Women already know they're smarter and have evolved to merely shocking us with a stun gun, allowing them to breathe a couple minutes of penis-free air. I've heard that penis-free air smells like potpourri.

Jack is stowed safely away with the baggage on the plane and has proved once more that anything he touches receives special powers. Even though he's on the bottom of the plane, Jack's cell phone works perfectly, not because it can, but because Jack told it to. You don't want to know what happens when Jack touches himself.

With the movie "United 93" released around the country, it's no surprise that Jack wanted to show people how a successful hi-jack looks like. No planning is needed and neither is a heavy dose of religion. All one needs is a disregard for personal space and one fluffy pillow.

The Air Marshall was totally at fault. Never let anyone sit in the middle seat when you have the window. It's common human decency to have a buffer zone in that situation. Not doing so either leads to you engaging in banal conversation for hours or getting smacked in the face. Either way, you'll wish you were dead.

Don't we give our law enforcement personal any sort of training they can use? Or at least give them a more authoritative-sounding name? "George Avila" isn't going to stop anyone from doing anything (especially if it's Day with no Immigrants day).

Jack finds the guy with the connection to Anti-Bauer and brings him into the baggage area, all before the flight attendant starts serving drinks or noticing a strange hooded man roaming around the cabin.

However, Scowl Face discovers that it's not the right guy because people with German accents take an extra long time to get through customs (it's still safe to not trust German people).

But by now, the flight attendant has figured out that someone's missing and that the Air Marshall is down. This leads them to lock the hatch to the baggage area and to start decompressing it.

This marks the second time people have fucked with Bauer's air and that pisses him off, forcing him to yell "Damn hatch" and "son of a bitch" into his phone, which is a huge indication that he's not a federal agent. Only third grade teachers and postmen fly off the handle that bad.

I always knew Jack had a way to get to people, but I had no idea he had such power over inanimate objects. Besides terrorism and snakes, planes have a new fear. The fear of some lunatic ripping open their "private area" and pulling on what I can only assume are its gonads. If someone started pulling on my balls like that, I'd be running into walls every second and throwing myself off of balconies.

It was enough for the hatch to be unlocked and Jack to enter the cabin with a gun, freaking some people out and filling the minds of others with Steven Seagal fantasies of taking down the terrorist on the plane. (Why the hell does Seagal have a guitar in his hands?) But one dopey white guy with a crazed look in his eye is no match for a Bauer with a gun. Especially when he's in a crappy mood (he's still pissed about his air).

What's even more distressing is that the captain has to take the plane down and Bauer only has 15 minutes to search everyone on the plane for the coveted recording, which is freaking Logan out back on earth.

Logan has sent Crazytown back to her room with a bottle of wine and posted the Secret Service "nerd" to bore her to death with his blank stare and lack of personality. She finally gets hold of Novick and convinces him to bring her drugs and that something is wrong, though she can't say what.

The only thing she can do is drunk dial her husband and scream into the phone about how she wishes Logan would just talk to her. Even if he wanted to, talking to a crying drunk girl on the phone is as appealing as waiting in line at the DMV while the fat guy in front of you lets out a greasy fart every five minutes.

Logan hears of the hijacked plane and wants updates of the entire situation, "minute by minute" if necessary. Unless it's Ashley Judd doing a striptease, does anything have to be updated minute by minute? I think not.

Old Man Buchanan is finally led back to CTU-Homeland 1.0 where he and K Hay put on the façade that they hate each other. The truth is, Buchanan has finally found the love monkey he's been looking for and once this dirty business of the recording is put to rest, they'll be doing the no-pants dance all over CTU 2.0.

He'll also have to get rid of the ass-muncher who's freelancing as a "tattle-tale" and calling politicos in the middle of the night whenever something makes him feel "icky" inside. Thankfully, he's shot down by Novick, but I'm sure he'll find a way to piss everyone off.

And speaking of shooting things down, it seems that's the only way Bauer is getting off the plane. After figuring out the co-pilot was in cahoots with Anti-Bauer, the captain pulled the old "I'm old and my leg hurts" gag to open the cabin door. This allows Bauer to bust through and stare down the co-pilot.

"You don't look like a man ready to die for Henderson."

He isn't. The man who is willing to do that is a fat drunk that hangs out in hotel bars using feminism jokes as a pick-up line. At the moment, he's being stun gunned into submission for the second time so that Scowl Face can bring him back to her tech cave where she will cybersex him to death.

And the only reason that man is willing to die for Henderson is because he's got no where else to go except hell.