Tony's Choice

24 Season 7 Episode 6
1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
1.26.09

Every time you hear someone say CIP device...

Tonight, Tony reiterated his "I don't cross certain lines" stance and forever sealed his fate with CTU startup and its righteous blue GMC van of justice.

Which isn't all that bad. Startups can be fun, as long as they have fun drinking games. CTU startup's involves taking a shot whenever someone says "CIP device."

Tony: What about the CIP module? Does that count? Jack Daniels says yes.

What doesn't count is a terrorist character whose main purpose was to add minimal tension and explain a plot hole.

Evers: You got out of CTU because we non-killed you that day. Your heart only "kinda sorta" stopped beating, just enough to fake out Jack. It's a real condition that happens on House every three weeks.

Tony is alive here, thanks to Jack's bear-claw grip to the head.

(And as long as we're in the land of make-believe where veins get missed and people live, why not bring back Edgar and say the gas didn't completely close up his throat? That's right, I love that fat bastard.)

Then Evers mentions Michelle. Tony cries. Jack, who once wrote an essay for the New Yorker titled "There's No Crying in Counter Terrorism or in the Back of Yellow Vans," gave Tony the are-you-ready-shoot-your-friend-in-the-goddamn-throat look. Tony nodded. Then cried again...on the inside.

However, he's not crying because Evers will be a bloody mess on the couch, spouting off "Go to Hells" whenever he can. He's crying because he's traded in a life of leather jacket, bad-boy cool to hang around with a crazy old man who drives his blue GMC van of justice like a drunk frat boy while searching for buried treasure in abandoned construction sites.

Brokeback Bill Buchanan: She's here.

Chloe, aka Scowlface: How do you know?

Brokeback: I can feel it. Down there. In my undercarriage area.

Sure enough, CTU Startup finds Buried Alive Walker and revive her with the Dramatic Adrenaline Shot, which always takes a couple of seconds to kick in. This allows the music to swell.

Walker, awake from her dirt nap: "Who are you??"

Brokeback proceeds to explain the entire plot of the last four episodes in a couple of sentences (granted, he leaves out the lame sideplot of the president's husband and his obsession with his son's death which I consider a form of torture for us all).

Scowlface, armed with the First Aid kit from the CTU Startup kitchen, administers a bandage on Walker's neck. It won't do anything, but it's the only kind of health care CTU can afford right now.

President Taaaaaaylor can't afford to pull U.S. troops out of Sangala because she's too committed to Operation I'm-Not-Touching-You with the African country. It's equivalent to walking over to a friend, sitting down next to him (this only works with a dude) and run your hand around him while saying "I'm not touching you" as often as you can.

General Dubaku has played this game too long and has ordered U.S. troops to retreat (translation: stop not touching me). When the Prez says no, he makes two planes crash in midair. But because there was never a cut to a scene showing a family on the plane talking about how the can't wait to go home, I don't really feel America's pain with this one.

President calls cabinet so she can throw her balls on the table with another patriotic speech about how American will never back down and that people should prepare for "tough times ahead." The reviews of the speech resemble the same given to Paris Hilton's "The Hottie and the Nottie" with hallway critics saying things like "Ugly in more ways than one" and "An insult to mankind."


Taaaaylor responds to that by telling everyone to be at "Full Battle Readiness," which is the same position I take when I use the bathroom at work after the guy we affectionately call "swamp-ass."

As the cabinet is freaking out, they get the idea to call the First Husband, who has been paralyzed by his rogue Secret Service agent and forced to listen to him swoosh around an apartment with plastic pants. You don't know real pain until you experience endless swooshing and lack the will/strength to slap the shit out of the person doing it.

SS dude is there to kill...eh, I don't care. This plot sucks. First Husband gets Hulk Mad, makes fists, kills SS dude. It's been 10 minutes and all I want to do is jump on my coffee table to see if I can make it break.

Back in the hanger, Bauer readies for the exchange of Sangala PM by equipping a hand-cannon, which he promptly shows off to Pretty Dead Girl Walker.

Bauer: You OK?

Walker: You shot me and buried me alive...let's make a baby.

The best part of all this? I'm imagining that Larry the FBI guy has gotten nowhere in his search, thanks to his love of doing everything "by the book." The last time Bauer saw this "book" he took a massive shit on it and howled at the moon.

Tony makes the exchange (after Bauer kills more people) as the PM and his wife are taken away. PM has a tracking device implanted on his teeth (put there by Chloe's stay-at-home mom skills).

But since Taaaaylor has no idea CTU Startup exists, she continues her unfounded hope that "somehow" Sangala's PM will be found by "someone" in the next hour.

General Dubaku is not amused. He hasn't been amused for the past five hours and will now taken out his aggression on Ohio.

Why? Because when you want to make a terrorist statement in America, you go after the most popular and well-respected cities in the nation: Cleveland.

The Deadly Art of Seduction

24 Season 7 episode 5
12 p.m. to 1 p.m.
1.19.09

"Feel the lameness." - Larry Moss

The more I watch the inner workings of the FBI in the world of 24, the more I'm convinced it's some high school version of CTU, where everyone is a little too dramatic with a side of raging hormones.

At one point, I was expecting Special Agent Larry to start singing about how hard it is to be caught in the middle of love triangle between him, a redhead and the law. Especially after he said "You just want to nail Agent Walker to the wall."

Um yea dude. We all do. This makes you qualified to run the FBI? Stating the obvious? Or does having a douchey name like "Larry" trump that? The only cool Larry I've known wore a Lesiure Suit made out of pixelated awesomeness. And he wasn't even real.

Larry's lameness is balanced out by Sean Hillinger's OC-riffic life of saving his wife's plane while talking to the blond in the office he banged the night before. Why save the wife's plane you ask? Because sex with a blond is better when it's wrong.

Larry is under a lot of pressure. His FBI (Fuck Buddy International) crush just admitted that she performed S&M on some random dude, after all those nights he begged and pleaded for her to whip him.

Larry the FBI Guy: "You can't use torture to coerce someone into giving you information. It's wrong."
Hot Agent Walker: "Fine. I'll deal with the consequences later. And I'm too hot for you. Phone off now."

Walker is emulating Bauer in the classic cat-and-mouse high school game where she emulates him in an effort to get his attention so he'll ask her out. No wait, that was Grease. Whatever, it still applies, especially since people break out into song in that too.

She's on her way to the residence of the Prime Minister of Sangala, the small African nation sitting on a goldmine of diamonds and a state-of-the-art infomercial studio where they parade children around asking for malaria nets. Why? Because it's easier to mine for diamonds when you're healthy.

Prime Minister Matobo and his wife are locked in a safe room, which enrages head terrorists Emerson enough to torture the black security guard who keeps telling him the door, much like the heart of drunken bastard, can only be open from the inside.

Emerson cocks the gun and prepares to blow the guard's head off when a phone rings. It's FOX.

"It's MLK day and Obama's inauguration is tomorrow. Stand the fuck down."

Oh and guard guy? Who programs the FBI's number in their cellphone to come up as "FBI"? Really? Unless that's the nickname of a cohort, the Bureau's number should always be come up under the codename "Hot Pants." It's in Constitution 2.0.

And guard was right. The room that the PM Matobo and his wife are locked in can't be accessed from the outside, no matter how many This Old House episodes Jack has watched.

Instead, he does what any aggravated man does when a home improvement project isn't going his way: he suggests making homemade gas. We do this at the apartment too. It's called "dinner."

Matobo is ready to die for his cause. His wife isn't. This creates a problem in their marriage, especially since the gas doesn't allow them to talk it out and can only express their feelings by flailing their arms and staring at each other (which, interestingly enough, is the same way marriage counseling is conducted, sans the gas).

Wife isn't having it and eventually crawls to freedom by opening the door, reminding Matobo of the "Bros before Hos" class he failed in PM school. He finally understands. Alas, it is too late.

As Terrorist Jack helps extract the PM outside into the bright yellow van (is the thinking here to be as ridiculous as possible so people laugh instead of suspect?), Walker calls Larry the FBI guy to gloat that she's finally "going to make it right" by getting Bauer and Almeida. Then she gets caught and thrown into the "cage."

Walker: "You lying son of a bitch! How much are they paying you? And you touched me! And I'm confused and angry. Oh and Matobo? Sorry I suck at protecting people. "

Bauer employs active ignoring, which is the special education term for "I don't hear you now." I use it whenever I hear "American Idol strikes gold in San Francisco!" from either the television or someone's mouth.

Madam President uses active ignoring too, like when her staff tells her she should give in to the terrorist demands and all she hears is Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down" in her head.

Petty doesn't back down. Especially when he's sitting.

The writers may have it as well. After being told to write about the vast government conspiracy, all they apparently heard was "write lame side story about dead son."

I dropped a potato chip on the floor last year and I was more concerned about that then this asinine plot about a family who is obsessive about uncovering the truth. I won't be into it until the shadow government is revealed...and I get that potato chip (or one of equal delicious value) back.

General Dubaku, who is angry because the only thing he's done in five hours is make demands and pace around the room, is pissed and wants to kill. And he may soon get that chance, once he gets his paws on the sexy and dangerous CIP device.

Terrorists have had it with Walker's lack of intel and Matobo's wife is feeling threatened at the sexy white woman in the car. Jack is ordered to kill her in a ditch. He obliges, thus beginning Bauer's deadly art of seduction. Here are the steps:

1. Gain trust
2. Break trust in the most heinous way possible
3. Plant seeds of rage through inexplicable actions (escapinig FBI headquarters)
4. Join terrorist boys club
5. Mark woman he likes by grazing a bullet across her neck
6. Bury her alive for added sexual tension

Like the Tao of Steve, this always works. Most of the time. As long as you're desireless to begin with.

Walker will no doubt reciprocate by kicking Bauer in the balls and making out with Tony. And eventually, when they finally get together, she'll lose her memory and the deadly art of seduction will begin once more.

Bizarro World collides with Brokeback Buchanan

24 Season 7 Episode 3 & 4
10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
1.12.09



Somehow, Jack should have known his day would lead to a bunker "not far" from the Metropolitan DC area with wood paneling on the wall and a scruffy Bill Buchanan staring back at him with weepy puppy dog eyes.

The Bauer: I wish I could quit you. But I'm only here because you people are the only ones I trust. The minute you do anything to make me think otherwise, I'm turning you in.

Settle down Jack. All gay cowboys say that at first.

And how did we get here?

Tony's has kidnapped a tech-guy (high school equivalent to the wimpest kid in school) and forced him to make a CIP device that can tear down the country's infrastructure because it can break through a Firewall (hse = making wimpy kid do your homework while you play with his videogames in the next room).

The US can't rebuid the Firewall. They can't even rebuild roads properly.

So now he's' in FBI custody and because Freckles (hot redhead FBI agent) wants to jump Bauer's bones, she pushes to have him interrogate Almeida because "it makes sense."

The interrogation plays out like all of Bauer's reunions with old friends: angry accusations about the last time they hung out, someone says something about Bauer's dead wife, an elbow ends up on someone's neck, and Bauer starts screaming "I will kill you myself and make sure you stay dead" (No one ever really dies unless Bauer kills them).

"Blue sky"

WHAT? There's a safe word for just this type of situation?

At some point, and I'm assuming it occurred during one of the many hostage takeovers at CTU, Tony and Jack came up with a safe word in case one of them was involved in a double secret undercover mission or simply high on Colombian Bam-Bam and needed a ride home.

And out of all the words in the English language they came up with BLUE SKY, which must have taken an extra day of training to figure out how to say it with a straight face (or maybe they were high and listening to Wilco).

From here, the curtain is pulled and we realize we were watching non-bizarro 24 and that DC really is LA and, eventually, a wild animal is going to run free through the streets ( and keep in mind that "wild animal" can also include Kim Bauer).

Operation Blue Sky now involves busting Tony out of FBI custody.

Step 1: Neutralize the hot girl. Don't fight it. Don't...

-Awesome Jack. Say goodbye to sexual tension because now you're just like every other guy at the dive bar on a Saturday night.

Step 2: Hacker Faceoff between Scowlface and Cryface (Garofalo looks like she stubbed her toe five years ago and has been holding in the tears ever since).

-This can only mean the jello-fight is near...seriously, I will be SUPER pissed if Chloe never meets Bizarro Chloe this season. And when it does happen, it better be awesomely awkward. Like I-just-saw-my-dad-naked-and-now-he's-talking-to-me-about-it awkward.
-"Anything is possible if you know what you're doing" is probably on a t-shirt with a picture of a rainbow on it.

Step 3: Break window with fire extinguisher. Jump out.

-How was this not part of the original plan? The parking garage was right there.

Step 4: Get to street

-For Tony, this simply meant jumping out and landing on top of a car in an area completely bereft of any Feds whatsoever. Perhaps some of the CTU drones found their way to the FBI.
-For Jack, this meant hot-wiring a car and busting out of the parking garage on a vehicle of freedom. This will be part of the Jack Bauer Experience ride opening at Disney in 2020.

Step 5: Wait for van

- And not just any van. A bright blue panel van thatmay as well have"The Mystery Machine" painted on the side of it. Apparently CTU Startup has no shame.

CTU Startup is operational thanks to a cable modem, a suped up Mac book and numerous take-out menus. But Bauer is pissed, mostly because he wasn't invited to Tony's Welcome Back party at Chuck E. Cheese, where adults gather to engage in melees with pepper spray.

Brokeback Buchanan, complete with tight turtleneck, tussled white hair and the look of despair in his eyes, has recruited Chloe "I fantasize about Jack while watching him on C-Span" O'Brian. Once they get a dog and "Hang in There" kitty poster, CTU Startup will be complete.

Scowlface: I saw you on C-Span Jack. Can't believe what that senator said about you. You looked good though.

When is Jack going to get it over with and have a night of weird animal sex with Chloe?

This is what sex with Chloe entails. Extra points if you incorporate the bomb.

There's an overreaching conspiracy within the US government and Team Brokeback Buchanan is now determined to bring it down. But in order for Tony to regain his cover, Jack must go along for the ride (hence the aforementioned "I wish I could quit you" moment).

After Bauer beats the shit out of terrorist thugs and plays the recession card ("I need this job! I have nowhere else to go!"), he is accepted and given a proper change of clothes. Oh and there's no such thing as a recession card. Believe me, I tried.

Now that CTU has gone rogue, confusion abounds in the world of 24. Though, in case you get lost in the plot, the president and her adviser are there to rehash the plot for viewers everyone 24 minutes.

Tony's been involved with a group connected with Colonel Ike Dubaku from Sangala, who just made demands and now wants to start blowing shit up. I love this guy.

The demands means Madam President Alison Taylor (MPAT) has to decide between killing unknown Sangalans and tens of thousands of sweet, innocent, delicious American lives. According to MPAT's advisor, American lives are worth more on the public scale of worthiness.

Any downtime in the show as was given to First Husband Henry and his "paranoid quest" to prove his son was murdered, only to find out that he was right. He then sits on a park bench and realizes crazy isn't all that fun when you're right.

The FBI is thoroughly confused since it thought it had a mole (Billy Walsh from Entourage!) and Hot Agent Walker (HAW) is now determined to make this right because the guilt inside of her is just too much for her hot womanly body to bear.

HAW is the Lifetime version of Bauer, which means she only has great power when she's either being mocked or threatened by a man. So after shaming a perfectly good Who-are-you-working-for moment during a hospital interrogation, HAW accepts her Lifetime movie dystany and finds the first penis-looking object in the room (oxygen tube) to squeeze the life out of it (metaphorically, this is what happens in all Lifetime movies).

It works (and like all Lifetime heroines, it gives hope to scorned women everywhere) and leads HAW to the home of the Ambassador of Sangala, who was just at the White House begging for guns (the weakening global economy has affected us all).

It also brings HAW closer to Jack "the lay that got away" Bauer.

Here, Jack, Tony and Emerson (...so the terrorists are all ex-military men. Hmmmm) are attempting to bust through the panic room where the Ambassador has locked himself in.

Emerson tries to get the door open by threatening to put a bullet in someone's head while Jack rages at some drywall with a golf club, which shows how lame walls are when they are not made out of fire and just how off the handle the Bauer has become.

Day 7 begins...in Bizarro World

8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
1.11.09

We've stepped into a new dimension where things appear familiar, save for a slight change. It's the same dimension you experience at high school reunions and when you name the stripper giving you a lapdance after an ex-girlfriend. You've been there before, and it feels wrong.

How different is bizarro 24? The above photo is now irrelevant.

In an effort to forget about the horrible season 6 the same way Rocky fans refrain from mentioning the name Tommy "Machine" Gunn, the show has brought back Tony Almeida, only this time he has more scruff and he likes to play chicken with commercial planes.

Yes, this is now bizarro 24, where things are completely different: Tony is bad, Jack answers questions and the phrase "Muslim terrorist" hasn't been mentioned once.

Oh and Chloe 2.0 is now an emotional Janeane Garofalo who is apparently honoring the character with an out-of-place purple shirt. Same quirky attitude...but with glasses.

But how is Tony back?

"EMTs picked him minutes after you last saw him Jack. Hours later you were in China. You never saw him dead."

That's FBI Agent Walker explaining the plothole with just enough vagueness for people to shrug their shoulders and say "eh, whatever." Her sister, Texas Ranger, would have done a better job, but she's busy teaching karate.

24 is now in Washington DC, which means no more sunglasses, no hot teenagers in revealing clothing and no CTU. Instead we get a suited-up Jack Bauer back from his African vacation to answer questions and endure being called a dumbass from this guy.

But Bauer has no regrets about torture. Nor does he have regrets about the following:

-sneezing after falling asleep in a bread bowl of chili
-going "commando" every day of his life
-buying a copy of "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot"

Oh and you know what else he doesn't regret? Not having a lawyer at his Senate hearing because nothing screams "I'm not crazy" than "What's the first question" with a squint of insanity.

Thankfully, the FBI needs Bauer and interrupt's Red Foreman's Congressional dumbass whipping for a matter of national security (read: they are out of ideas and have now cracked open the seldom-used bathroom suggestion box reserved for such occasions).

Bauer is needed because Tony "The Hoarse Whisperer" Almeida is the new "home-grown" terrorist in the US. Yes, he's the former CTU agent who allegedly died in Season 5 and who has now returned from the dead. Still don't believe it? Peer into Agent Walker's eyes of hotness to free yourself of reason so you can move on.

"Tony's back and I'm corporate hot. Deal with it."

Despite the FBI's overwhelming budget and advanced technology, they don't have the Bauer's "I'm people that know people" skill on the street. This is important because the national firewall is about to get Almeida'd and torn to bits.

Because the firewall protects everything from the power grid to the secret stash of twinkies, a breach in the system can potentially cause massive power outages, stop the production of clean water, and rioting in the street. It's good thing this can't be caused by anything else...right?

What's a firewall? It's a wall made of computer monitors displaying rotating balls of fire. I'm totally kidding. It's not that secure. A real firewall involves bits of code that protect network and internet systems. It's also something that apparently has to be constantly explained.

Homeland Security: "Madam President, the national firewall has been breached."

Rock-throwing Warden from The Shawshank Redemption: "That's a security system for various agencies and infrastructures around the country."

President Allison Taylor with a dropped jaw: "It's just technology! We should be able to just unplug the bastards! ARGH!"

The conduit of fear this season is technology and how this unseen beast rules everything in the world. Sure we want a safer world, but I better be able to update my Facebook status in the process.

Almeida kidnapped the dude who created this far-reaching national firewall and coersed him into making a device to hack it. He did this by threatening the dude with a low whisper, the same type of whisper people use when they discover velociraptors are in the room.

This leads Bauer and Walker to interrogate a tech guy who used to do off-the-book work for CTU. The F. B-following-the-law. I. agent is supposed to follow the law, but that is until she gets a wiff of the intoxicating Bauer Craziness that hits like an Axe-cologne for bored Federal agents who have affairs with their straight-as-an-arrow boss.

Walker: "Jack, you're coming with me and you're doing this my way." I've heard married women say the same thing at Chippendale shows.

Before long the "I'll keep him on a short leash" promise is replaced with the "Do whatever it takes" speech, essentially unleashing the Bauer in the seemingly strict No-Torture-Allowed city of DC, which is as stringent with that rule as most dog parks are about unleashed dogs.

Why does she do this? Because Bauer is the Marly of the counter-terrorism world. He rips sofas of search warrants and shits on lawns of bureaucracy. But you can't help but let him roam free because, at the end of the day, you enjoy the idea of having craziest dog at the park.

Bauer celebrates his freedom to torture by putting away his gun and grabbing the first thing he sees: a pen. Possibly to poke the dude's eye out or draw on his face. I can't decide which is worse.

And we'll never know, since Tony's thugs shoot the dude in the chest before he can give him up, which leads to Bauer speculating there is a mole in the FBI. Predictably, Walker gets pissed at the accusation and puts Bauer in a timeout, which is the same thing you do to a dog who barks too much.

Meanwhile, Tony has used the device to play Air Traffic Control and had two planes "nearly miss" each other on the runway. Nearly miss? Does that sound wrong to anyone else besides me and the late George Carlin?

Air Traffic Control informs the White House, who has its hands full with starting a war to end genocide as well as dealing with a possible crazy First Husband who may or may not be chasing a wild goose chase that his son was murdered.

War Against Genocide in the fictional Sangala = interested because Tony's device is connected with the Mad Men of Sangala

War Against sanity = eh (he thinks his son's former girlfriend was paid off to hide the murder and YAAAAAWWWNN)

Tony's shooter who took out the tech dude Jack was going to blind is now stuck in a building swarming with FBI. One agent finds him, only to reveal he's part of Tony's crew and gives shooter a jacket.

Jack, who just got an "I love your work man" comment from another Fed, gets out of the car and points out shooter because he's wearing different shoes than everyone else. See? In bizarro 24 it's fashion profiling instead of race. This also leads to less frivilous lawsuits in the court of public opinion.

BaWa (Bauer and Walker because now I'm tired and that word makes me laugh) tail shooter back to Tony, who has chosen a boat as his terrorist hideout. Within that boat, he picked the "Pilot House" as his place of refuge.

BaWa apprehend Tony thanks to the flying-bear-hug technique invented by the Ringling Bros, but perfected by the U.S. military. It's especially effective when you throw your gun away as you leap.

As Tony is taken into custody, Bauer stares his friend in the face and utters "What the hell happened to you?"

Here are your list of options from most likely to least likely of what happened to Tony:

-Evil robot: science made him half man, half robot, and all evil
-Grew his beard out, saw his came in the form of Terrorist Scruff and decided to run with it
-Got drunk in the Middle East, woke up a terrorist
-Watched "Die Hard 2" and "The Rock" one too many times and now can't decipher between the films and reality
-Found he was better at scaring people than saving them
-Needed to get paid
-Recruited by circus workers in Utah, woke up a terrorist
-Bought real estate in Sangala and is SUPER pissed about the downturn in the housing market
-Recruited by a secret government agency and working undercover.

Name of agency? UTC. It's bizarro world, remember?