This week’s episode sure was full of things that, while suspenseful and exciting, didn’t really make much sense.
I had to laugh when they spent a whole fifteen minutes trying to keep us in suspense about the target Cheng’s men were going to attack. Even for those who hadn’t seen the preview (which I didn’t until about an hour after seeing 24 due to catching the preview on another channel while watching Heroes), it was painfully obvious that they were going to attack CTU. Because they were all being so vague about it (referring to it as ‘the target’), it had to be some place we already knew about, and seeing as there weren’t really any other established locations Cheng could attack, CTU was the only logical option. So instead of dreading an attack on CTU, I spent fifteen minutes laughing during all the scenes with Cheng being vague about the target and CTU trying to figure out his destination.
Once Cheng’s men stormed CTU, we had more nonsensical behaviour with the killing of Milo. First, Cheng’s men killed a whole bunch of faceless CTU security guys on the way in to the building, so it’s not like they needed to kill someone to prove they were serious; second, Cheng specifically stressed that their goal was to retrieve ‘the package’ ( i.e. Josh Bauer) and not causing casualties; third, they ended up needing to use the person on charge to tell Doyle that everything was okay. If Milo had really been the person in charge, they would have had a harder time convincing Doyle that everything was fine (not that I’m entirely sure Doyle doesn’t know there’s a problem now anyway). Really, the only reason to kill Milo was because his character didn’t have much point anymore (Milo had a drastically reduced presence in the second half of the season, only showing up every once in a while to be jealous of Doyle).
At first I thought Morris was setting himself up to be killed during the attack on CTU. The conversation he had with Chloe about how she’ll never be able to forget what Morris did is just the sort of conversation one expects from a secondary character moments before they are brutally killed. But then Milo had his own conversation in a similar vein (where he apologized to Nadia for being a jerk and said he would be fine if something happened between Nadia and Doyle), which also pretty much wrapped up his only remaining plotline, immediately elevated himself above Morris in the ‘likely to be killed during the attack on CTU’ pool.
Even with all the other nonsensical happenings this week, the Bauer clan can lay stake to making the least sense. While it’s a bit odd, I’m willing to accept that Josh and Marylin were still at CTU. It made no sense however for Chloe to be sent in to get Marylin to confirm her earlier statement. Not only was it after 2 AM (a rather odd time for transcription analysis) but Marylin’s statement had nothing to do with the current crisis with the Chinese. There’s no way that CTU, while using all their resources to try to locate and capture Cheng, is going to be wasting time tidying up reports about the last crisis. The only reason Chloe had to be there was to establish that Marylin and Josh were still in CTU and so someone could tell Marylin about Audrey’s return. Both of those are things the writers wanted to have happen, but there was no logical character- based reason for Nadia to send Chloe in with that transcript when she did.
Jack’s father had his own difficult to explain moments this week too. There are only a couple of reasons that I can think of as to why Phillip would agree to fix the component in exchange for Josh and neither of them are very good. It could be that Phillip really cares for his grandson and wants to be with him but given that Phillip didn’t seem to have many qualms about using Josh as a bargaining chip earlier in the day, this seems unlikely. The other possible explanation is that he wants to be able to threaten Josh’s life if Jack tries to track Phillip down. This second explanation seems more likely but surely Phillip could have waited a few hours to carry out a much easier abduction once Josh had left CTU. As an added bonus, the easier abduction would have had a higher chance of success and a lower chance of Josh accidentally getting shot (and Phillip’s got to know that if he were to get Josh killed that would just make Jack even more blood-thirsty).
My first impression was that the Bishop/Lisa storyline was yet another example of people doing things that make no sense, but I’ve actually reconsidered that one. Given the current situation, Mark should have jumped at the chance to get a look at Lisa’s PDA, even if he had to act a little strangely himself. But it almost seemed like he was going out of his way not to be alone with her PDA. So either Mark’s a really crappy spy or there’s something else going on here.
There are a couple of possible ‘something elses’ that could be going on. It’s possible that Bishop somehow knows that they are on to him so he’s just stalling for time by pretending to be more interested in Lisa than her PDA. Alternatively, he’s only a secondary spy (or he’s a spy for some Russian corporation that is just looking to get some spending bills passed or something) and the primary leak is somewhere else. Now that I think about it, didn’t the Russians find out about the stolen component before Lisa knew or Mark had a chance to access her PDA? If so then that information had to have come from somewhere/someone else. I have a feeling that if there is another yet to be revealed spy it will end up being Karen Hayes. I know, it makes no sense (and I have little confidence in the writers making it make sense) but it feels like exactly the kind of swerve the writers have been throwing out there this season.
While there was a hell of a lot to complain about this week, there were a few good things. We got to see Jack go on one of his commando rampages. You just know if he hadn’t been weighed down by civilians he could have killed all Cheng’s men singlehandedly.
More importantly, the situation at CTU seems like a prime set-up for the return of Bill Buchanan. Much like many of their employees, morale at CTU has to be shot to hell; Nadia’s probably going to be dealing with a heaping of survivor’s guilt over her not identifying herself as the person in charge quickly enough and thus getting Milo killed and the person Division was supposed to send over to take charge seems to have gotten lost. Putting Buchanan back in charge (at least temporarily) seems like the best way to give morale a bit of a boost. And considering everyone who survives still has to help track down Cheng, they’re probably going to need all the pick-me-up they can get.
Well, it makes no sense how we got there, but by the end of the episode the stakes were raised quite a bit. So I guess that’s a good thing, right? And all the writers had to do was completely ignore common sense and fill the episode with tons of arbitrary events. Yay!
