Showing posts with label 24 season 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 24 season 7. Show all posts

3.02.2009

The Candyman is on the Prowl

24 Season 7, Episodes 11 & 12
6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

General Juma, in his Coming to America garb.

Juma's team has infiltrated America and done so with the greatest of ease thanks to young men with non-threatening faces who are skilled at the art of small talk. They were so ingrained in our culture that white people were inviting them to weekend parties that were serving Chinese food. Add a drunk donkey in the backyard and it doesn't get any more American than that.

They've been hiding in the background of society, doing menial jobs and getting by with plastic ID tags that are apparently legit enough to fool FBI agents standing guard in hospitals.

"Picture match face? You go now."

This is all to lay the groundwork for General Juma's Coming to America party, only instead of searching for a queen (which was apparently Dubaku's side mission) he's here to conduct a good ol' fashion home invasion against the White House, "the high value, high impact" target.

No one could have figured out that the White House was the high value target? Did anyone even try to guess the Lincoln Memorial? Or maybe it was hard to ignore the draw of the National Building Museum, a place dedicated to, of all things, buildings.

MPAT: "Juma's HERE? In DC? He is guilty of crimes against humanity and must be caught!"

His crimes? Genocide and securing funding for enough Olive Garden commercials to last a century. Juma knows where to hit you where it hurts the most: your heart and your pop-culture soul.

But in order to get to the White House Juma needed help, which came in the form of one Ryan Burnett, politico tool for hire who happens to work for Senator Mayer, Red from That 70's Show, and who has watched the Don't Tase Me Bro video enough times to know how to take a hit of electricity.

Thanks to some vague information from Tony in the form of "Dude, um, someone told me something is gonna happen. Here. Like soon" Jack is ready to go balls to the wall with his constant nemesis: sanity.

In five minutes, the two rogue former CTU agents hatch a plan:

-Enter White House.
-Steal Taser.
-Torture Burnett with a combination of taser-ing, medical explanations about what electricity does to the body and counting down the tases from 128.
-Use word "paralysis" as a last resort
-Get arrested

Plan B involves the tried and true offer of immunity from the president.

And because the plan falls into the N category for "Nuts," Bauer subdues Old Man Buchanan with the Brokeback Mountain "It's alright. Don't fight it" hold.

This is how Bauer protects, by rendering you incapacitated and unaware of his antics. It's also how he gets free Happy Meals on the weekend.

As always, he's getting help from Chloe, who has the master list of all the people Dubaku had contact with in Washington. I have a similar list locked away that has the names of the people who farted in or on my car. You know who you are (dad's on there twice for two separate infractions).

However, she's getting hounded by her nemesis, Cryface, who initiated the Awkward IT War with a preemptive strike by monitoring Scowlface's calls and online activity. When she intercepts a cell phone call from Jack to Chloe, Janice turns Scowlface in to Lame Larry and goes on a rant about the alleged "wiz bang" computer geek.

And a word about the beautiful, worlds-colliding awkwardness in Chloe-Janice exchange of computer phrases: awesome. It was uncomfortable with a side of the same tension you get from watching your parents fight on Christmas or when your significant other shames you into admitting what you were "doing" in the home office last night (for future reference, the correct answer is "working on the blog").

With the FBI alerted to the fact that there is another attack that will occur in DC, Bauer's taser-fun time will be cut short, even though he has 128 "pokes" left. At least he got to taser the phone for yelling at him before the room was stormed in.

Unfortunately for Bauer, MPAT was in the Oval Office with Senator Red Foreman who has a foot he wants to stick up Bauer's ass for being the founding-member of Team Torture.

"I don't care if his source is the Blessed Virgin Mary! It's wrong!" said Senator Red as he points to the tortured pile of goo that is his traitorous political aid. So the BVM doesn't count as a source? But what if she comes to you in a dream and tells you to save people by torture?

(Anyone else find it hilarious that after Bauer called Senator Red "weak" there was a commercial for the Army to be "strong"? At least, this was in the Boston market where audiences appreciate subconscious advertising messages).

After MPAT scolds the traitor like a 4-year-old ("What did you say?!?"), she charges him with Title 18, providing aid and comfort to the country's enemy. Comfort? Did Burnett give Juma a Snuggie too?

There's still hope for America, provided Agent Walker will just allow herself to accept the Bauer-side that's in her soul. It's the part of her that follows gut feelings and has no qualms jumping after a boat.

Unfortunately she has yet to acquire the Bauer gear, which would have allowed her cell phone to work after get wet (a pain I know all too well).

It's here where Wet Walker finds General Juma's plans for his attack that conveniently has a picture of the White House as the last page, just in case the Sangalans got confused as to which building they were going to hit. They are, after all, foreigners who just want to know what love is.
By employing scuba gear and an underwater drill (why can't that underwater technology be incorporated into a cell phone so that when you accidentilly wash it, it'll continue to work? I'm not bitter) Team Juma infiltrates the White House thanks to one of their own working on the inside (Remember their skillful small talk banter? No one suspects a weapon when you're talking about food).

With enough weapons for a small war (Less War on Drugs and more War on Banality), the Candyman (Tony Todd is good at playing crazy and scary) is on the prowl to lead his team into the White House with some killer dance moves and oversized overalls. Wait, that's something else.

Candyman and company is on the prowl for the president who, thanks to Old Man Buchanan initiating Operation Run Around, has distracted Team Juma long enough for MPAT to enter the safe room with Bauer.

Buchanan: He's into distractions, not torture.

With Buchanan taken into custody, the White House is now under the protection of the Secret Service, the men and women known for jumping in front of bullets rather than shooting them from a gun. They are also easily fooled by veiled threats.

To enter the lockdown room, Juma's men attempt to crack the entry code with technology. After Bauer sees this, he combats it by using his favorite inpromptu weapon: a lamp. He's used it before to shock people to tell the truth and this time he used it to short-circuit the keypad. You what else kills electronics? Water (stupid cell phone).

Because Juma's men don't have a plan B, he's forced to call Jon Voight, who's shoving Chinese food into his mouth while watching television. I'm fairly certain Voight isn't acting here. That's really what he's like.

He alerts Juma to the pressence of Olivia, the First (and only) Daughter who has been locked in a room with Aaron for at least two hours. And, in true Myspace Whore fashion, she has managed to alienate everyone that's gotten close to her.

Despite his best efforts, Aaron can't do much with the Myspace Whore, except drag her around as eye candy, which is one of the main skills of the social-networking entity. The other skill is taking up cyberspace. She also sucks at finding flashlights and relaying morse code, which gets her and Aaron caught and thrown in with the rest of the hostages.

Just before Juma is about to filet Olivia like a fish, MPAT comes out of the room and is slapped by the Candyman. He wasn't here to knock her boots after all.

Jack is confined to the hostages and remains the sole member of Team Torture. But the tides may be changing, especially since he's convinced his financial backers that Team Torture has to somehow be green now, even though the organization is dedicated to car explosions and firefights in the street.

1.12.2009

Bizarro World collides with Brokeback Buchanan

24 Season 7 Episode 3 & 4
10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
1.12.09



Somehow, Jack should have known his day would lead to a bunker "not far" from the Metropolitan DC area with wood paneling on the wall and a scruffy Bill Buchanan staring back at him with weepy puppy dog eyes.

The Bauer: I wish I could quit you. But I'm only here because you people are the only ones I trust. The minute you do anything to make me think otherwise, I'm turning you in.

Settle down Jack. All gay cowboys say that at first.

And how did we get here?

Tony's has kidnapped a tech-guy (high school equivalent to the wimpest kid in school) and forced him to make a CIP device that can tear down the country's infrastructure because it can break through a Firewall (hse = making wimpy kid do your homework while you play with his videogames in the next room).

The US can't rebuid the Firewall. They can't even rebuild roads properly.

So now he's' in FBI custody and because Freckles (hot redhead FBI agent) wants to jump Bauer's bones, she pushes to have him interrogate Almeida because "it makes sense."

The interrogation plays out like all of Bauer's reunions with old friends: angry accusations about the last time they hung out, someone says something about Bauer's dead wife, an elbow ends up on someone's neck, and Bauer starts screaming "I will kill you myself and make sure you stay dead" (No one ever really dies unless Bauer kills them).

"Blue sky"

WHAT? There's a safe word for just this type of situation?

At some point, and I'm assuming it occurred during one of the many hostage takeovers at CTU, Tony and Jack came up with a safe word in case one of them was involved in a double secret undercover mission or simply high on Colombian Bam-Bam and needed a ride home.

And out of all the words in the English language they came up with BLUE SKY, which must have taken an extra day of training to figure out how to say it with a straight face (or maybe they were high and listening to Wilco).

From here, the curtain is pulled and we realize we were watching non-bizarro 24 and that DC really is LA and, eventually, a wild animal is going to run free through the streets ( and keep in mind that "wild animal" can also include Kim Bauer).

Operation Blue Sky now involves busting Tony out of FBI custody.

Step 1: Neutralize the hot girl. Don't fight it. Don't...

-Awesome Jack. Say goodbye to sexual tension because now you're just like every other guy at the dive bar on a Saturday night.

Step 2: Hacker Faceoff between Scowlface and Cryface (Garofalo looks like she stubbed her toe five years ago and has been holding in the tears ever since).

-This can only mean the jello-fight is near...seriously, I will be SUPER pissed if Chloe never meets Bizarro Chloe this season. And when it does happen, it better be awesomely awkward. Like I-just-saw-my-dad-naked-and-now-he's-talking-to-me-about-it awkward.
-"Anything is possible if you know what you're doing" is probably on a t-shirt with a picture of a rainbow on it.

Step 3: Break window with fire extinguisher. Jump out.

-How was this not part of the original plan? The parking garage was right there.

Step 4: Get to street

-For Tony, this simply meant jumping out and landing on top of a car in an area completely bereft of any Feds whatsoever. Perhaps some of the CTU drones found their way to the FBI.
-For Jack, this meant hot-wiring a car and busting out of the parking garage on a vehicle of freedom. This will be part of the Jack Bauer Experience ride opening at Disney in 2020.

Step 5: Wait for van

- And not just any van. A bright blue panel van thatmay as well have"The Mystery Machine" painted on the side of it. Apparently CTU Startup has no shame.



CTU Startup is operational thanks to a cable modem, a suped up Mac book and numerous take-out menus. But Bauer is pissed, mostly because he wasn't invited to Tony's Welcome Back party at Chuck E. Cheese, where adults gather to engage in melees with pepper spray.

Brokeback Buchanan, complete with tight turtleneck, tussled white hair and the look of despair in his eyes, has recruited Chloe "I fantasize about Jack while watching him on C-Span" O'Brian. Once they get a dog and "Hang in There" kitty poster, CTU Startup will be complete.

Scowlface: I saw you on C-Span Jack. Can't believe what that senator said about you. You looked good though.

When is Jack going to get it over with and have a night of weird animal sex with Chloe?

This is what sex with Chloe entails. Extra points if you incorporate the bomb.

There's an overreaching conspiracy within the US government and Team Brokeback Buchanan is now determined to bring it down. But in order for Tony to regain his cover, Jack must go along for the ride (hence the aforementioned "I wish I could quit you" moment).

After Bauer beats the shit out of terrorist thugs and plays the recession card ("I need this job! I have nowhere else to go!"), he is accepted and given a proper change of clothes. Oh and there's no such thing as a recession card. Believe me, I tried.

Now that CTU has gone rogue, confusion abounds in the world of 24. Though, in case you get lost in the plot, the president and her adviser are there to rehash the plot for viewers everyone 24 minutes.

Tony's been involved with a group connected with Colonel Ike Dubaku from Sangala, who just made demands and now wants to start blowing shit up. I love this guy.

The demands means Madam President Alison Taylor (MPAT) has to decide between killing unknown Sangalans and tens of thousands of sweet, innocent, delicious American lives. According to MPAT's advisor, American lives are worth more on the public scale of worthiness.

Any downtime in the show as was given to First Husband Henry and his "paranoid quest" to prove his son was murdered, only to find out that he was right. He then sits on a park bench and realizes crazy isn't all that fun when you're right.

The FBI is thoroughly confused since it thought it had a mole (Billy Walsh from Entourage!) and Hot Agent Walker (HAW) is now determined to make this right because the guilt inside of her is just too much for her hot womanly body to bear.

HAW is the Lifetime version of Bauer, which means she only has great power when she's either being mocked or threatened by a man. So after shaming a perfectly good Who-are-you-working-for moment during a hospital interrogation, HAW accepts her Lifetime movie dystany and finds the first penis-looking object in the room (oxygen tube) to squeeze the life out of it (metaphorically, this is what happens in all Lifetime movies).

It works (and like all Lifetime heroines, it gives hope to scorned women everywhere) and leads HAW to the home of the Ambassador of Sangala, who was just at the White House begging for guns (the weakening global economy has affected us all).

It also brings HAW closer to Jack "the lay that got away" Bauer.

Here, Jack, Tony and Emerson (...so the terrorists are all ex-military men. Hmmmm) are attempting to bust through the panic room where the Ambassador has locked himself in.

Emerson tries to get the door open by threatening to put a bullet in someone's head while Jack rages at some drywall with a golf club, which shows how lame walls are when they are not made out of fire and just how off the handle the Bauer has become.

1.11.2009

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?