The Hunted

Aiming is for Amateurs

24 Season 8 Episode 9
2.22.10
12 a.m. to 1 a.m.

It's now midnight and as the drunken hipsters of NYC line the streets of the Big Apple in search for an over-priced can of Pabst Blue Ribbon at a trendy bar, a band of would-be criminals are hitting the streets in search of the one they call Faraad, which I'm sure can be translated to Failure in a bunch of different languages.

Here is a quick list of his fails:

-being a good brother
-negotiating with Ukrainians
-running away
-looking like Jason Schwartzman

He's being hunted by his people because he refused to allow his rods to go off in New York City. Sadly, he's in the minority (more so than before. BURN!).

Even Bauer wants to get his rod to go off and placed a booty call to medical to make sure that Renee "I will stare you down instead of answering questions" Walker knows that she "has" him. That is CTU code for freaky monkey shower sex at 0h-three-hundred-hours.

But like most rods that are set to go off, Bauer's is cock-blocked (yes, I've abandoned the metaphor) by Bubba Gump who revealed that he is talented at hearing gunshots through a phone and getting appointed by White House Chiefs of Staff (staff. hehe. everything goes back to rods. I'm calling Season 8 to be one long penis joke).

Walker is forced to defend her eye-stabbing as self defense and Justice ain't having none of it. And if she had her way, Walker would go to jail.

"Excuse me sir you can't..." [Throatpunch!]
"Hey! You can't just come in here and... [Throatgrab!]

I completely understand. When a man has sperm built up in his system, it's not right to let it linger. Every sperm is sacred, which is why Jack refuses to sit or play by the rules. It damages the sperm.

Sperm is so sacred that even the potential of another man's seed getting close to your woman is enough for a CTU agent to go AWOL. This is also true of the urge for drunken tacos, but in NYC, that doesn't happen till 3:30 a.m.

Diet Cole-a (he looks like a regular CTU agent, but has less personality and oomph. So in the long run, he's healthier, but less exciting) is on the hunt as well, only he's tailing his fiancee Starbuck.

She's hunting with a silencer and watching her prey from a distance as they enjoy the company of two women of the night who apparently don't mind getting in a van that will eventually park itself in the woods. What they do have a problem with is when someone gets a little too "freaky." I can only assume Kevin's friend I'm with Stupid wanted to play the "Who Has Herpes?" game. Or maybe, just maybe, even strippers from Jersey city have standards.

What has all this been leading up to? The handover of Cole's command of a CTU strike team to 12-year-old Owen, a boy-man-child who looks like he just came off the soccer field and is ready for combat with cleats and shinpads. He also has "Destined to Fail" tattooed on his arm. He got it when he and Faraad when to Fail Camp as kids (the camp's motto is "Everyone Falls. Not everyone does it epically).

Instead, Hastings brokers a deal with Bauer because out of all the men and women CTU NYC has, his best bet is an aging retired agent with a history of being a loose cannon. It also proves that a man will do just about anything for booty...even go back to work.

Bauer and the Way of the Monkey Fist

Everyone has a monkey full of rage inside of them

24 Season 8 Episode 8
2.15.10
11 p.m. to 12 a.m.

While the nighttime is the right time for love, it's also the right time for torture, stalking, falling into distrust with your partner, revealing to your father about your secret relationship and cutting carrots.

I know...who cuts carrots that close to midnight? Old men from Ukraine who Americanized their accent so much that you can't tell where they're from anymore. Or maybe he's really a stripclub owner from Jersey City who is trying to hide from the rift-raft who hole up in there.

That would be Kevin and his friend Rage Boy, whose secret power is yelling at (people) or into things (phones).

And what's Kevin's secret power? Getting ex-girlfriends to do stuff for him. Illegal stuff. That and sweet talk with phrases like "We got something good here" and "Things change."

Things do change, and once you say that to a woman, or your friend Rage Boy yells at her, she's likely to change into American Psycho who stalks her prey from the champagne room (there's no sex, but there's plenty of peeping Toms).

Why is Starbuck doing this?

Bubba Gump Hastings: "I don't know."

Well, where is Jack?

Bubba Gump Hastings: "I'm not sure at this time."

Have you seen a CTU drone that was actually useful?

Bubba Gump Hastings: "We have exhausted our workforce in an attempt to answer that question."

The Buba Gump subplot of stupidity is starting to run its course. Someone needs to give the man a shotgun and something to do. Or maybe something stronger since shotguns can't even break tables in a late-night NYC restaurant.

Just as Petrovich (I don't remember his last name) who decides to blase wine glasses instead of Jack when he discovers his prisoner has escaped. A table can sustain a shotgun blast? Really? And then that same table can be used as a weapon to knock out the guy shooting said shotgun. Really. O.M.F.G.

I can buy the Jack hanging from pipes and knocking people out with his monkey feet. I'll even buy that Chloe was quick-thinking enough to cover for Starbuck.

But a guy getting knocked out after being table'd by Jack? Unless that table was dripping with remnants of nuclear material and maybe had upside-down nails glued to it.

Jack's game of manhunt-for-a-viable-Sprint-cellphone (it has to be Sprint because that's the only service Bauer understands) again showed off his monkey attack skills. Apparently grandpa Jack has been hanging out at the senior center jungle gym to ensure he stays in shape.

Hassan should learn from Jack and start hitting the streets and manhunting the people plotting against him. That way he wouldn't have to feebly "forbid" people from messing with him. It never works. Inevitably someone comes storming in to tell you they are doing your chief security officer. If it's not a mutiny, it's something else.

And great idea Daughter Hassan. That's exactly the kind of news your dad needs to hear when he's an angry-as-fuck head of state with the power to enact his own version of the Patriot Act.

But worse than that is playing Sophie's Choice with your two sons and not expecting any real consequences.

So now the nuclear rods are free and in the wild, and ready to ram someone new up the ass on the way to the black market. Let's all hope it's Kevin and Rage Boy so we can kill two dumbasses with one nuclear stone.

The Men Who Stare at Rods

24 Season 8 Episode 7
10 p.m. to 11 p.m.
2.8.10

There's a great danger roaming through the plains of the USA and it exists in Mac Trucks hauling wooden boxes filled with penetrating rods of nuclear power and the men who stare at them.

These men may look harmless and unassuming, but they are in, in fact, there for a reason. They are the transporters of evil and are charged with the task of answering satellite phones and occasionally mumbling something in Russian.

And it is with this mission that they are the focal point of 24, the show that has found a way to weave the meandering lives of a special group of people hell-bent on proving they have what it takes to make it through yet another day of terroristic fun.

What is terroristic fun you ask? It involved wearing a pair of round black glasses and pointing a gun at someone's head as they drive a car.

"Jack…seems to be in control."

You know who isn't in control? All the women on 24.

If they aren't stabbing Russians and angry Germans, they're being naïve and thinking they can talk sense into their fathers or that their bone-headed ex-boyfriends can enter the right four-number code into a keypad.

"There's too many numbers."

I'm surprised that Starbuck was surprised that Kevin and I'm with Stupid couldn't handle a 15 minute getaway time. If they couldn't handle a keypad code, it was a safe bet they couldn't handle the concept of time.

Starbuck should have just told them the money was going to disappear if they didn't leave the magic building of wonders in time. At least those would be terms they would understand.

Instead, they go through the lockup looking for candy and eventually hit a cop with a baseball bat. Then they celebrated by drunk driving around NYC, proving once more that only dumbasses drive in NYC.

The other subplot of futility involved Hassan's daughter who sounds like a character that stepped out of Disney's "It's a Small World" ride and accidentally took the shuttle bus Guantanamo Bay.

"Everything will be alright...once I talk to my fah-ther."

Fah-ther Hassan is pissed and has succumbed to the sweet temptation of torture because once a man loses his Friday night hussy and his family in a matter of hours, the only thing left to do is beat the crap out of someone.

Bored with this subplot? So is Renee. So much so that she wants to call your attention away by stabbing some fool in the eye. In. The. Eye.

There's a special kind of rage that takes over a woman who will stab a man in the eye, and then when that man is down to repeatedly stab in him in the stomach and the balls. But it takes an even crazier dude to try to bed that woman.

Bauer: Let's fix you up and take you home. Duffman! Oh Yea!

For Bauer, a stomach stab wound is a part of foreplay, as is waterboarding and public threats. He followed this up with hiding her in the closet with a loaded weapon. Had the Russians not showed up, Jack's top sexual fantasy would have been complete.

Instead, he's hauled away in underground tunnels where CTU drones are unable to detect anything.

While Bubba Gump gets Bubba Gump furious at his team for not "caring" about their sudden lack of enthusiasm, Jack is hauled away by the people who are trying to sell the rods because thanks to the shitty economy, selling nuclear power on the black market is the new 401K.

And once it's sold, those people won't have to kill off their sons and daughters because of a lack of healthcare.

Life with Vlad and Going Dark

How Jack relaxes as Mier

24 Season 8 Episode 6
9 p.m. to 10 p.m.
2.1.10

In this week's installment of Russian Soap Opera, which has been brought to you by the Human Resources department of Mother Russia, we find all the storylines that have enthralled audiences for years: shameful five-minute sex, drunken (and empty) apologies, makeshift medical treatment and special guest star Jack Bauer reprising his role as Meir, the bespectacled troublemaker who's always smoking Marlboro's and speaking in an American accent.

But let's not forget everyone's favorite subplot with Starbuck. Her ex-boyfriend has dropped in for a visit with a friend and his van with a yellow-mustard hood. Why? Because people with vans live by a different set of rules. I'd explain them, but you really have to be at a Denny's with a Lumberjack Slam in front of you (Technically, that's rule numero uno).

CTU apparently lives by a different set of rules as well, which don't include things like implementing "sexual harassment policies" and avoiding a "hostile environment."

Arlo: You always have my shoulder to cry on if you need it. You can also have Big Arlo downstairs, who's always ready and willing to serve at a moment's notice...I'm talking about my penis.

Starbuck: (stares intently and without the slightest hint of sarcasm or human emotion says) I'll remember that.

So wait, women like sexual harassment now? Or is everyone in the nation now completely enraptured with Mad Men?

Sadly, the Starbuck, or the female creepfest magnet, was nothing compared to Vlad and his vague notion of how relationships, and nuclear arms deals, should go.

According to Vlad's book of love, first you get drunk. Then you do what comes natural. In his case, it's being creepy and reneging on nuclear arms deals. Yes, scotch is just that strong.

Oh why is Renee showering before a deal with German Bauer? Because that's what crazy people do when the are a bomb about to go off. That and they have really bad BO (it comes with being crazy. The body can't help it).

Those who don't listen to Vlad get a taste of Drago. The English translation of this is to "roid out" and say things like "I must break you."

And you know what else crazy people do? They go "dark."

It's never good to do that. Eventually your dad finds our you've gone dark and send two thugs to kill everyone in their path until they get to you. Then they kill your Uranium-poisoned brother...in the very room he was supposed to die in the first place (dramatic pause).

There are other ways to go dark, such as rounding up assumed criminals from your country and holding them without any cause or legitimate evidence...waaaaaaaiiiit a second....

President Hasaan, who I noticed sports a healthy head of Elvis hair, is angry. Like throwing-stacks-of-paper-and-screaming angry, which is a special kind. I did the same thing when daughter Hasaan picked up her cell phone to take a car from Ridiculous Subplot 5.

The final way to go dark? It's at the counter at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ask for the dark meat with extra sauce. Then close your eyes for the big surprise (warning: it comes with a side of diarrhea).

Soon we are treated to Bauer's CTU Drama Crew skills with his Harry Potter glasses, German tongue and that special tinge of insanity that is present in all nuclear arms dealers. Vlad wants no part of it (he only deals with human arms dealers) and plans to steal $5 million instead.

However, we get Freddie "Why won't anyone explain anything to me?" Prinze Jr snipering the double cross agents in Vlad's mob.

The result? Potter Bauer Meir is now pissed off and ready "to go to war" with Vlad if he does not comply. Judging from the glasses, I'm assuming going to war with Potter Bauer means it will be a seven-year operation against the same enemy for vague reasons. There will also be a bunch of old men who claim to be "wizards" who hang out with young children all day.

Either way, it's gonna get weird.