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?