Cable for One – 24 Day 6 – 3:00 PM

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When Jack’s dad first agreed to trade Josh’s life for Jack, I was wondering at the logic being used. Phillip’s big concern has always been protecting his company, but as soon as Marylin spilled the beans to Jack, that ship had pretty much sailed. Once he saw that Jack was with Marylin in the hotel room, Phillip would almost certainly assume that CTU was aware of what Phillip had done. It turns out Jack didn’t actually tell anyone at CTU about what was going on (at least not on camera), and Milo (the only person around when Jack found out) may or may not have overheard the conversation between Jack and Marylin. So, if Phillip had killed Jack, Marylin and Josh, it’s possible (though unlikely) that he may have been able to protect the company after all. But common sense would tell Phillip that there’s no way Jack DIDN’T let CTU know what was going on, so there was no reason to kill Jack.

We saw at the first of the episode that Phillip found the (inaccurate) news of Jack’s death to be distasteful, even though he felt it was necessary. So when Phillip was suddenly wanting to kill Jack, for no apparent reason other than simple revenge, I thought it seemed quite out of character. But it appears that it wasn’t illogical behaviour on Phillip’s part. He never intended to kill Jack on that rooftop; it was merely a ploy to rid himself of some dead weight (Josh) and also give himself a chance to escape. I’m not sure if he always intended to give Jack the the phone message or if he decided on that only after learning that Gredenko was at large. Of course, if Gredenko had been captured already, Jack would have nothing to gain by calling Logan, but it still would have bought Phillip a little more time to escape, so the phone message may have been part of the plan all along. It definitely ensured Phillip had time to escape, as Jack’s far too busy with Charles Logan to come after Phillip.

I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to see President Logan turn up again after last season. I steer clear of spoilers so I don’t know just how secret his return was, but it surprised the hell out of me. Gregory Itzen was awesome last season and his return practically guarantees next week’s episode will be great.

I’m curious as to what actually happened to Logan after the end of last season. I’m guessing he was impeached or forced to resign. It seems doubtful, however, that the real reason behind his being forced out of office was ever publicly revealed, for many of the same reasons Secretary Heller gave when he was trying to get Logan to resign in season five. From what little we saw of him this week he obviously isn’t in prison, though I suspect he’s be under some sort of house arrest (though probably a covert one).

It may have been because Josh annoys me, but I had to laugh at the scene where he was trying convince Phillip he needed a soda from downstairs. He kept giving excuses regarding the lack of selection in the mini-bar and how he didn’t feel like using room service and you knew that Phillip totally wasn’t buying it. Of course the situation was partly Phillip’s on fault for his habit of making death threats on a cell phone while within earshot of other people. Still, it made me laugh.

The plot continues to thicken in the White House Bunker. It didn’t take Tom a long time to change his mind; a few kind words from Wayne and he does a 180 on the whole thing. Apparently he’s only okay with killing presidents who aren’t nice to him.

There was no way something as anti-climatic as Tom alerting the Secret Services was going to work, but I was expecting he would be thwarted in a different way. When Tom called the Secret Service guy, I just assumed Secret Service guy was in on the assassination plot. But apparently that wasn’t the case, and he just tipped Reed off with his nervous behaviour (well, tipped Reed off enough so that he listened at the doorway when Tom made the phone call). I did think it was kind of strange from Tom to make the call from the room with all the pipes; cell reception can’t be too great in there, and the more people who are around, the less likely Tom is going to be stopped from alerting Secret Services. But I guess it was necessary for him to make the call from there so nobody could see Reed kick the crap out of him afterwards.

The only part of this week’s episode I didn’t really like was Morris’ storyline. It has never been established that Morris’ is an alcoholic before now, so the situation came off as contrived. Granted, it’s not really easy to casually work in a reference to someone being a recovering alcoholic while dealing with various terrorist crises, but you could easily picture the writers sitting around in a conference room, coming up with the idea:

Writer 1: Okay, how do we show that Morris is really upset about this whole nuke thing?

Writer 2: I know! He could start drinking on the job!

Writer 1: I like it!

Writer 3: And to make it even more heinous, we could have Morris be a recovering alcoholic!

Writer 2: Brilliant!

Writer 4: Won’t that seem a touch contrived? I mean we haven’t even hinted Morris has a drinking problem, and we’re going to introduce immediately before he has a drink?

Writer 1: Shut up.

Right now, the Morris the recovering alcoholic storyline seems to exist only to give the audience a break from all the stuff we actually care about. Sadly, I don’t foresee it going anywhere interesting in the near future either.

Still, if you give me an episode that is mostly entertaining, with a few scenes devoted to a subpar C plot, I’m still a happy viewer. And, with Logan returning, I suspect we’re in for another excellent episode next week.

Sir Linksalot: 24