Jack Bauer wants to believe in the resurrection of CTU

24 Season 7 Episode 20
3 a.m. to 4 a.m.


CTU is back, along with it's complicated, illegal-searching servers, to save the country with Big Brother tactics and racial profiling. Oh you have a problem with that Air America?

Janice: Talk about Big Brother

Finally, Garofalo has become relevant on the show as the liberal mouthpiece of the FBI, talking about freedom, the bill of rights and everything else Bob Marley wanted you to have. And it only took 20 hours.

The 24 producer's Bauer's response? GO WHINE SOMEWHERE ELSE! The only thing missing was a colonel's uniform and a speech about how no one has the courage to pick up a weapon and stand guard.

Despite being bombed and constantly infiltrated with moles and obese computer technicians (I'm gonna go ahead and throw the leftovers of my ham sandwich on the ground for Edgar Styles), CTU apparently did a better job at protecting America than people thought. However with Tony enacting the "I think one bomb is enough" plan, the country needs to fight crazy with crazy. Hence, the resurrection of CTU her sexy, know-it-all servers.

And, like most of the missions old-school CTU engaged in, Bauer opened the department up with his tried-and-true "I know you have lost friends and colleagues today, but we have to work" speech.

Tony, like a dog humping a stuffed animal, has an agenda and it involves an anonymous group of people willing to meet late at night to scheme how to wage war on the general public.

If I'd had to guess, I'd say this group is the National Association of Realtors, a group that probably spent countless encrypted 4 a.m. phone calls dreaming up terms like PMI (it's like rent only with PMS) and how to make sure a cloud of raining pee is perpetually showering a home's backyard the second you close on said house.

Someday, Realtors of America, the cloud of raining pee will be above your head, causing the housing market to crash, banks unable to give out loans and more people turning to apartments...

I'm not sure what Realtors would do with the canister, but I'm almost positive it would be to clear up some space for some low-priced, high-risk model homes situated near the ghetto. The draw? A built-in fireplace and Tony Almeida as a handy day worker who can replace shower curtains and give motivational speeches about taking terrorist opportunities when they present themselves.

Bauer: I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I wanted to believe.

Yes, we all wanted to believe that, deep down, illegal aliens are good. But the sad reality is that they're not. They're like Tony Almeida, a man who's ready to go the distance for one last terrorist attack. And the plan? To blame it on a real illegal alien who's doing right by the country he's visiting indefinitely by making breakfast in the middle of the night and watching the news...because that's not suspicious at all.

Jeez, Al-Zarian. You know why it's never a good day to be a Muslim? Cause you pull creepy shit like that. Listen to your brother and try to look as Puerto Rican as possible. The only thing they're suspicious of is being too awesome at dancing and baseball.

Unfortunately for Al-Zarian, he falls under the umbrella of enemy combatant, which is reserved for anyone who has killed Americans or who looks suspicious. That is, unless you're old, white and rich. In that case, you can do what you want and in the end, get a vacation from any sort of responsibility thanks to Witness Protection.

Jonas Hodges, who sucks at domestic and internal terrorism, is alive and screaming about protecting his family and suicide. Eventually, Bauer gives him the aural version of Twitter's beloved Fail Whale and tells the old man that he's "already dead" (which is a common tactic to confuse senior citizens into giving up vital information such as bank account numbers and where they hid their supply of vanilla wafers). In exchange for information, Hodges will get a proof of death certificate.

However when that doesn't work, Bauer places a fake late-night drunk dial to a Washington Post journalist because Hodges is old enough to remember when the print media mattered.

This tactic works, thanks to the combination seniors fear most: the press and not having their obituary in the paper.

If Hodges wasn't so out of touch, he would have realized that any journalist awake past midnight is either drunk or begging for sex and hardly working on a story.

And the one's who are working? They're getting screwed by the president's daughter, who has ceased to be the Chief of Staff and has become a crazed woman thirsty for revenge (or maybe just a hug from Aaron. The red-headed Secret Service stranger and cure all with his open arms, even if one is in a sling).

The only thing Olivia is good for is calling random men in at night. Her newest contact is apparently "too hardcore" for politics and may be the answer to her feelings of revenge when it comes to one Jonas Hodges.

As for Bauer, he's running on pure feelings of rage, which is emerging through his hatred for the liberal media, writing "terrifying reports" about his day and placing old friends into the enemy combatant pile. He's losing patience, the same way regular people stop caring about a cappella groups halfway through their song.

The worst part? He's apparently reverted back to Season 2 and thinks Palmer is still alive.

When the entire world lies, the truth will be locked in a man full of rage

24 Season 7 episode 19
2 a.m. to 3 a.m.



Everybody lies. Those who don't are stricken with a bioweapon or killed in a firefight, all because Tony "Climate Change is Real" Al-Queda (thank you to the "Anonymous" commenter from last week's post for that one) wants to sell off a little bit of dementia-causing gas for a shit load of money.

The payoff? He gets to keep his street cred and his badass jacket.

But his mission has come at a price and has claimed the life of Special Agent Larry Moss, along with Tony's love handles on the left side of his body.

Hot Agent Walker, who was gearing up for a 5 a.m. "talk" with the Moss, was informed she had been promoted, which allowed her to issue her first order: someone tell Moss' ex-wife and it can't be me.

Janice: "I'll do it" (looks up with sad dog eyes).

Yes, Janice is the obvious choice here especially since she's so good with people. At this point, did we really need Garofelo on the show? I keep waiting for her to do something and all she gives me is a "Why won't you save the environment?" sad face staring back at me. 24 could have hired a dog to do the same thing.

Moss' ex isn't the only one getting hit in the face with horrible news. Jonas has called his hot blond lawyer to help him out of a jam, only she gets hit in the face with a paralyzing spray and finds out she's being replaced by someone just as pretty who is taller. Ouch.

The lesson? If you're blond and you wear glasses, you're replaceable. Same goes for people who wear jackets that say "FBI" on the back of them.

"You've left us in a difficult position," says the blond to Jonas while he's behind bars. "In fact, you've put everyone in a difficult position."

(wait, I've seen this porno. And incidentally, it ends the same way with the old guy putting something in his mouth and then having a heart attack)

Apparently Jonus' hijinks were too crazy for the faceless "others" to handle, which has caused them to turn to their precious little "bright spot on a dreary day."

Tony, who's treating most of the FBI with the same respect the Navy SEALS has for Somali pirates (read: none), has somehow concocted an impromptu plan to get the bioweapon into the hands of the his buyers. I say impromptu because if they say Tony planned everything that happened today, I'm calling bullshit right now.

There's no way an undercover counter agent who was secretly a terrorist figured out how to manipulate Underground CTU, an African nation and the White House in one night. And if he did, this better have been plan 143 in a list of plans that started with the alphabet.

Bauer, who can't properly debrief himself yet still thinks he can be helpful in the field, follows Hot Agent Walker to the area where Tony's Special Forces Bad Guy is roaming around with a canister of evil.

Sure Bauer's sick, but even with him firing at 50 percent, he's still better than most of the FBI agents on the field combined, especially since they can't notice a blinking red light in an abandoned building in the dark that may have been making a slight "beep" sound.

They are also fooled easily by a distorted walkie, which allows them to believe Tony's inside man about finding the suspect in the apartment building, as well as the detachable finger trick, which just brings them shame a children's birthday parties.

It may be because the FBI isn't allowed to feel. Hot Agent Walker has turned robotic since word of the Moss death hit her and the Asian FBI again who said "Code Yellow" did it without irony. If only they held more Friday bowling nights to get to know each other better they could feel more human.

Walker: "Don't tell me what to feel or how to feel it." Fine. Be dead inside. Oh and now you want me to save the environment too? Psssft!

In what may be the greatest insult, Tony and his Special (Forces) Friend attempt to fool the FBI with its own blood and rub it all over themselves, partly for disguise and partly because human blood just feels good after it hardens on your clothes. I can't tell you how I know that.

The zombie disguise is good enough to get the friend to the ambulance with the package, but not before Bauer, a man who sufferers from debilitating dementia and who must take a shot of drugs to stop from shaking involuntarily, sees through the bloody faces to the lie.

Why is this? Because, unlike the FBI, Bauer feels emotion and his current mood is Angry Rageful Rage, which is only heightened by the fact that he's paralyzed by dementia and shock now that Tony has walked away with this anti-dementia-shake needles.

And, like most of us last week, Bauer will be pissed he wasted so much time trusting Tony and will want to exact his revenge, Cajun style...which is waterboarding, only people think they are drowning in Tobasco.

Jack Bauer is Confused, Sad and Creep'd Out

24 Season 7 Episode 18
1 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Evil Tony Almeida, taking a shit on your expectations.

After all the promises of a massive conspiracy where Jonas "I'm with the unremarkable genius" Hodges is a mere cog in a giant machine (which doesn't make sense btw), we find out that Tony is, in fact evil and was after the bioweapon all along.

Thanks 24. I just wasted approximately 15 hours watching all this "plot" just to get us back to where we were in January. For those who stopped watching then, here's what you need to know:

Larry Moss is a wuss, dead and had "history" with Hot Agent Walker

Jack Bauer has some sort of Africanized Dementia and, without stem cells, will be dead soon.

The president's daughter is a whore.

Sure, stuff happened in between now and then, but apparently Dubaku, a White House raid and occasional assertions of a government conspiracy was just the precursor to what we already knew: the Tony Almeida we knew is dead and all that is left is some bastard who waits till the final couple minutes of the game to intercept the football so he can run down the field and throw RP7 fuel on the other team's mascot as he lights it on fire with C4.

Oh, there's a good reason for Tony to have stayed in the shadows and bide his time? Did he change his mind when he found out Bauer had the advanced dementia and will used the small bioweapon canister to gas a doghouse? A mini cooper?

There's barely any left and now Tony has it. I'd say it would be for a trophy, had it not been for the snuffing of one Special Agent Larry Moss.

It's as if the show knew the second I started to turn pro-Moss that they would ax him out. Even Renee was coming around, especially after Larry had no problems with a raid on Starkwood. We should have known something was bound to happen. Larry has a problem with everything, even himself.

Which is why he and Renee were going to have "a talk" about "things," which mostly like meant sex or something awkward that happened during sex (fart, strange armpit odor, dead look in the eye, etc). Knowing what I knew about the late Larry Moss, it was most likely the latter and all three of the possibilities happening at once.

You know who else likes to talk? MPAT and her favorite discussions are about the futility of what people are trying to do in the world. Does that include trying to donate stem cells to an estranged father and reaching for things in a drain when you have short arms? Yes. Yes it does.

Bauer is in pain and now, thanks to Hot Agent Walker's meddling, he's in emotional pain because his spawn Kim Bauer has shown up with her luscious, life-saving stem cells that he refuses to take. Why? Because that's how estranged fathers roll. The second they start accepting free gifts, they turn into a deadbeat dad and end up on this show.

This was right after Jack "did the right thing" and told Tony to go off the grid on a secret mission to blow up bioweapons with little canisters of C4...all without being detected. Oh but he's been undetected for so long. Cause he's eeeeevvviiiil.

Without the missiles, Jonus Hodges has no collateral and no means of sitting with the president to present his 27 eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, explaining in triplicate why he and Starkwood should be the rulers of the universe with level 6 clearance (which gives knowledge of where the "good" cheese is hidden).

It was a fine sales pitch, one filled with intrigue, blackmail and condescending looks on the both sides of the table. And it would have worked out, had it not been for those damn CTU kids.

Confused? So is Jack Bauer. Pretty soon he'll be hallucinating and reenacting different moments from his life, only in current circumstances...oh wait, he's been doing that all along.

Bauer "feels" like he's losing part of himself and, according to the CDC, this new demonized version of dementia may cause him to bring out various personalities.

This week's inner Bauer was frightened turtle cry face. Don't get used to him. I'm sure pissed off raccoon will show up eventually, as will a possible second appearance of a sexual panda, especially with Larry out of the way (too soon?).

His death is being monitored by the White House "in real time" as well as by the CDC who has enacted its sacred "wait-and-see" technique for the disease.

But don't worry about the stolen bioweapon or the fact that Almeida has emerged as the new terrorist. CTU startup is back in play and has released an informative PSA to combat the evil in the world.

"We here at 24 care about being green and will fight global warming. But Jack can't do it all cause he has a lot on his plate. So you help now."

And cue creepy smile from Chloe...now. That's O'Brian. That face will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Jack Bauer Can't Die and the Power of Shame Sex

24 Season 7 Episode 17
12 a.m. to 1 a.m.


A domestic terrorist attack is brewing in Virginia, Jack Bauer has the shakes and the man seemingly in charge "can't find an opening" for justice or sex. And if Bauer dies, this blog ends up in an internet woodchipper.

Starkwood, who has spent most of its career pulling America's "tight" ass out of the fire, is set to penetrate various cities on the Eastern seaboard with missiles armed with the dementia-giving bioweapon. The silver lining? The missiles are from Pakistan, so there's a decent chance they'll just fly into the ocean or just give up and fall over.

The FBI had a chance, but fell for the empty warehouse trick, which led Jon Voight to show up and yell "Where are the WMBs? There's nothing here at all!" This...sounds familiar.

So, like any other old man who finds varmint on his property, Voight was prepared with a small army aiming weapons at the heads of the soldiers with the FBI, giving more proof that Voight, aka Hodges, is "out of control."

"Who does he think he is?!" yells MPAT. He's Jon Freak'n Voight and this is his way of arranging a sit down with the president.

Because the bioweapon has a hold of Jack, which causes him to shake and his eyes to pop out of his skull with fear, Tony is left to do the all the high-flying attacks and uttering "dammit" under his breath. He's a decent Bauer substitute and can be an army of fun at times. Though it's like watching the Golden Girls when you really just wanted to watch porn.

Like this gross sex tape I just found on Vimeo showing a journalist tending to one of his sources with shame sex, which is the only true way to actually communicate with a member of the press (I started Shame Sex Club at the weekly I used to work for).

Journalists are known to be drunken, immoral buffoons who constantly have to blackmail women to have sex with them (they've tried begging and it doesn't work). They are also slow on the uptake with technology (many of them are just discovering the internet now), which was clear from Ken's OMG-phones-can-take-video look.

Yes, Ken. But only Sprint phones. They are the only ones that can film sex, document bioweapons and allow you to video-mock the president of the United States. All on one charge.

So why do journalists engage in shame sex? It's better than crying into a bottle of whiskey or, for the recently unemployed, a can of Pabst.

The only thing the phones can't do is stop you from putting your foot in your mouth like when Tony told Jack he was "really exposed here" right before he broke into the WMD warehouse. Right Tony. You're exposed. Not the guy back at FBI headquarters who looks like his skin is about to turn inside out.

(Routine Rant about the FBI: Janice always says the things she's doing when she's doing it. "I'm loading the system now. Typing in the word. I just ate some crumbs on my keyboard. They were good.")

Though Tony has located the WMDs, Hodges is still claiming that it's a great day for Starkwood Actually, he's right. They finished their project on time, reduced costs by letting their board of directors go and have setup a one-on-one meeting with the president. Given this economy, that's a capitalistic victory, save for the impending war and the mutant population it will produce in the aftermath when the bioweapons are unleashed.

We are now in hour two of the Bauer Deathwatch and only NOW are we hearing about an experimental treatment that can use the healing power of stem cells? Did the CDC just google "bioweapon + stem cell" and come back with that?

And where would such stem cells come from? They must be extracted from a spawn and since Bauer either killed or frightened most of his family, that leaves only Kim "I only show up when dad has a bad day" Bauer. Oh you clicked on the link? You're welcome.

This is why Bauer can't die: he will be cured (and probably given super powers) and convince the nation to embrace stem cell research.

If history and Rocky IV have taught us anything, it's that the American people don't latch on to moving political speeches or scientific evidence. They react to an actor embodying a political issue on screen in the form of a boxing match or terrorism.

Rocky IV and Stallone's "If I can change" speech helped melt the hard feelings from the Cold War. Bauer springing to life and kicking more ass thanks to stem cells will convince the rest of the country that such research is a good thing. I'm calling it now. Oh, the side effect? A glowing Dr. Manhattan-style, blue penis. It's bright and here to make you uncomfortable forever.

So Bauer's diagnosis of "Will die in 24 hours" has been elevated to "Slight chance of living." Only he refuses to talk to Kim. Apparently Rocky IV can only melt certain Cold Wars.