Cable for One: 24 – Day 6 – 9:00 PM

Shows

Things are really picking up steam in 24 land this week. We had arm-choppings, wire tappings, secret meetings, captured terrorists, a nuclear strike and even an exciting hand-raising vote!

When trying to persuade the cabinet that he was fit for duty, I thought it was odd that Wayne focused only on his own health and state of mind. I figured bringing the way VP was continually changing his justification so he still got to nuke Fayed’s country would have worked in Palmer’s favour. But then we learn that Palmer, at some point along the line, has become a fan of the playing with nuclear bombs strategy.

The nuclear strike (assuming it isn’t some bizarre ploy on Palmer’s part) seems to be quite a deviation from Palmer’s earlier stance. He had previously threatened the ambassador of Fayed’s country that if there was a second nuclear explosion Palmer would have no choice but to allow a military retaliation, but even then he never implied it would be a nuclear-based retaliation. I’m not sure if he just took ‘Assad’s’ assassination attempt very personally or if he’s really just worried about looking weak. Alternatively he could just not be thinking clearly due to the massive amount of drugs coursing through his system, or he could just be jealous that Daniels got to order a nuclear strike and Palmer didn’t.

I’m not sure what Tom and Karen can do now. While they were having their truce conversation I expected some kind of swerve, just because of it was almost time for the episode to be over, but I (and they) certainly didn’t expect Palmer to be nuke-happy (though it is kind of suspicious that Karen didn’t follow Tom when he ran to try to confront the president).

If President Palmer really has launched a nuclear strike, Tom and Karen (and Sandra, I suppose) really don’t have a lot of options available to them. Even if they tried to rally support for having Wayne Palmer declared incompetent, that would just put Daniels at the helm; it’d be like impeaching Bush so that Cheney could be President. And the presidential elections are almost four years away. Apart from somehow bringing down the entire administration, there doesn’t seem to be a lot they can do.

CTU learned a valuable lesson this week. If you’re going to implant a tracking device in your suspect inject it somewhere they can’t cut off so easily (I recommend the neck).

In the process of teaching CTU this lesson, Gredenko also learned his own lesson; cutting your arm off with an ax can have a detrimental impact on one’s health. Gredenko even sacrificed Fayed to create a diversion, and then he ended up collapsing under a boardwalk a few minutes later. Given his current condition and location, combined with the fact that CTU presumably is smart enough to give all area hospitals information on Gredenko, and one assumes that Gredenko is (or will soon be) dead.

With Gredenko probably dead and Fayed at least temporarily in CTU custody, that leaves one of Fayed’s flunkies in charge. Said flunky seemed much less concerned with maximum damage than Fayed was, so one assumes he’ll want to go ahead and use the nukes even without the schematics to the power plant.

Back at CTU, the whole thing with Doyle was kind of odd. First he called Nadia and told her to not say his name and come to his office without talking to anyone. Of course, the effectiveness of a secret meeting is somewhat negated when you have that meeting in an office with GLASS walls.

I’m not sure what Doyle’s angle is on this one. I suppose his covering up for Milo’s mistake could be his bizarre way of making amends. Doyle’s claim that he just wanted to have everyone on board to improve their chances of finding the nukes seems unlikely. Seeing as everyone else is busy with the finding of the nukes, it is unlikely that anyone else would have stumbled across “Milo’s mistake” (I’m not entirely convinced that A) it really was Milo’s and B) it really was a mistake) until sometime after the current crisis was over.

With the capture of Fayed followed up by Palmer’s heel turn, this episode ended with a bang. I’m very looking forward to seeing the fallout on next week’s show.

Sir Linksalot: 24