This week’s 24 promised to have the ‘most shocking moment in 24 history’. While they didn’t really deliver on that front, it was still a pretty good, though somewhat slow-paced, episode.
Tonight marked the return of both Martha Logan and Agent Pierce (who is apparently her lover and/or caretaker now). That Martha sure is one impressive lady. Even after being arrested for stabbing her ex-husband with a knife she was still able to convince the Russians to arrest Markov. Actually her powers of persuasion are quite impressive. Martha was able to explain the situation to Anya and convince her to try and get her husband to arrest Markov. Anya was then able to go to her husband and convince him to arrest Markov. Yuri called Markov and explained what he wanted. All of this happened in the span of 25 seconds. That’s some damned efficient persuading.
I must say, I did kind of anticipate Martha attacking Logan. I don’t think I would have normally, but the previews were promising ‘the most shocking moment in 24 history’ so I was trying to think of shocking things that could happen, and it really seemed like the most logical choice (though I expected a shooting until Martha started playing with that knife). And while it was (kind of) shocking for her to just randomly stab him, I don’t think it qualifies as most shocking moment of the season, let alone the series. At least Martha has a ready-made insanity defense.
So does Logan’s stabbing officially make it a running joke that being US president spells certain doom? While Logan wasn’t officially dead when the episode ended, he was flat lining, and really, his purpose has been served so it seems quite probable that Logan is/will soon be dead. I missed seasons 2 and 3, but as I understand it, David Palmer was president for both seasons. So the last four presidents of the United States have suffered a fatal or near fatal injury in the last three seasons. I wouldn’t want to be in Vice President Daniels shoes right now.
Speaking of Daniels, he sure was acting suspiciously this week. In his conversation with Tom he said that what was important was that neither he nor Tom were involved in the assassination attempt. At least inside the context of the show, nobody has raised the slightest suspicion that Daniels was involved in the attack on Wayne Palmer. So for the VP to bring up how he wasn’t involved without any prompting kind of seems like a case of protesting too much.
Whether or not Daniels has any connection to the attempted assassination, he sure seems to enjoy threatening of violence. As the ambassador pointed out, even if Assad really did try to kill Wayne Palmer, he also spent most of his life fighting against the government of unnamed mideast nation. Even if people accept Assad was the one who detonated the bomb, it is still an incredibly flimsy pretext to bomb the hell out unnamed mideast nation. I have no doubt Daniels will follow through on his threats (even before seeing the preview for next week) if there is another attack; not because he really believes that unnamed mideast nation (I really wish they would pick a country, even a fictional one, for the ambassador to represent) is behind things but because everyone loves a good scapegoat (we’re just lucky the real US government doesn’t go around invent pretexts for invasions… *cough*…).
In other news, it looks like we’ve finally got a new semi-important field agent, Mike Doyle. Ever since Curtis was killed, any time a CTU task force was given a task of any real importance, you knew it was doomed to fail. Now that they’ve got a new guy around, stuff can be accomplished even when Jack is elsewhere. Granted, the new guy is kind of an asshole, but on 24 it is pretty much standard to start characters off as unlikeable as possible and then make them into someone who is more identifiable and/or sympathetic at some point later on. Assuming he survives the season, I’m guessing that Agent Doyle will follow that pattern.
If the preview is any indication, the shit is really hitting the fan next week. More on that in seven days or so.
