Neighborhood Watch and the Immense Stupidity of Kim Bauer

24 Season 7 Episode 22
5 a.m. to 6 a.m.

Uuuhhh...I get kidnapped now? Yes?

Tony is in charge and controlling every one's level of awareness, from the Muslim on the train to the random people at the airport who felt the need to look at the pretty blond girl in front of them through a laptop screen.

But what happens when people try to increase their awareness into an unauthorized level? People die...badly...while Tony...spits out...broken...dialogue...slowly.

Tony's speech is also how he gets people to do things for him since no one can really stand the sound of his sandpaper voice.

Jibraan armed with the desire to save his Puerto Rican-looking brother, is told to board the red line and take it to the final stop at Washington Square. Oh, and just to mess with him, Tony hung a "Save the World" poster in the train ticket booth.

In Jibraan's defense, those posters are pretty motivational, which is why 16-year-old girls are barred from having such things in case someone's college-aged brother gets the wrong idea.

However, no poster or PSA can save Jibraan, especially since now that terrorist blond has donned on a brunette wig with glasses, an image that is nonthreatening in society thanks to Tina Fey.

Train people don't care if an angry, hungover-looking Tina Fey shows up. But a Muslim in a jean jacket with a look of uncertainty? Then train people go on neighborhood watch and keep their belongings close. You never knew that happened? It's probably because you're being watched...by everyone (even Tony...but mostly by the suspicious train people who will turn you in to the commuter cops in a hot second).

Unfortunately, since the train people work alone, Bauer has no access to them and must rely on the only thing he knows how to do: inflict pain. And his favorite kind of pain? The one that's already there that only needs to be irritated with a harsh push.

In this case, it's a bunch of nerve clusters ripped to shreds from broken glass. Ah, the unbridled joy of torture is back in Bauer's life and with the FBI silently watching (and secretly cheering on), Senator Mayer must be shaking his head shamefully in hell. You question Bauer's methods during a congressional hearing, you go to hell.

As always, torture works and uncovers a secret emergency number for Tony, which sparks an encryption geek war back at CTU, which has created a strange universe where Chloe is the father figure and Janice is the unappreciated son looking for validation. As for everyone else, they're in the kitchen making Jello in the hopes that the geek war gets physical and sexy.

From the geek war of awkwardness, Tony's general location is found and sends Bauer to a certain neighborhood in D.C. where he has instructed himself to ram his car into anything suspicious, be it dark green mailbox, a McDonald's that runs out of Chicken McNuggets (I can actually smell them as I type) or various vans that come jetting out of streets.

There's one! And Tony's inside? Whhaaaa.....Oh wait. I stopped caring about logic and reason years ago with this show.

With the bomb set to go off in less than 15 minutes (anyone else happy the timing wasn't going to spill into the next episode?), Bauer is feeling frantic, tired and betrayed, allowing him to bring the pain on his former frienemy/friend/co-conspirator/drinking buddy/collateral damage/enemy.

But he doesn't shoot because they're just two dudes with nothing left to lose. Like the title? Good. CBS just hired a TV writer to come up with a new sitcom with that premise staring Charlie Sheen and his brother Emilio.

On the other side of town, Olivia Taylor is attempting to prevent a political bomb from exploding in her face thanks to her late-night murder-call and now has to be coaxed into a political coverup. I thought she got off on this type of stuff. OT, I don't know you at all.

And what do you mean they shot first and now demanding payment? Who did Taylor get mixed up with, real estate agents?

Besides, that's no way to make random friends. The best way is through an earpiece and telling your new friend to search a train for an abandoned bioweapon in a bag because when a person is in a crazy situation, he'll naturally listen to the voice booming into his head.

So with only about a minute left, Jibraan runs out of the station yelling "I Have Bomb!" in an effort to save the very train people who suspected him in the first place, which will only give them credence to their stereotypical accusations, even when they find out later they were wrong.

Bauer, who has run out of crafty ideas to save the world, reaches in and uses his season 3 move for the canister, only this time no teacher lunches were harmed in the process.

Now, according to Hot Agent Walker, Bauer can rest and live the last couple of hours of his life in peace. Until Kim shows up at the airport and does what she does best: the most idiotic thing in the world

Thanks to her misguided CTU training, she suspects the man staring at her as someone bad (he's working for the FBI and was ironically put there to keep her safe) and ends up walking toward the people working with Tony. The only thing missing from this scenario is an inbred mountain lion circling Kim in the woods of LA waiting to pounce, shattering and semblance of reality from the plot.

Tony's people, armed with homicidal tendencies and a well-positioned laptop, have taken (there's a movie called that about a father getting his daughter back from...heeeeeyyy I think I just got cross market'd) Kim, or at least taken the idea of taking Kim, in an effort to provoke Bauer to free Tony from FBI custody.

Unfortunately, this is bad for the FBI because when Bauer gets provoked, headbutts of rage start flying around in the name of honor, liberty and rebelling against the fashion elite.

Jack Bauer, headbutting the world for justice, so you don't have to.