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.