At last a 24 episode that satisfied me. While it had its flaws, this episode is the first time since the first two hours of the premiere that I truly felt something while I was watching. The show spent hours 3-5 lapping around 24 cliches and repetitive plotting, and I’m happy to say that this episode pointed back in the direction I wanted it to go all along.
Perhaps the larges flaw of this episode was the fact that very little progress was made in most areas (other than the Jack + Tony story). Dubaku displayed another example of his power, the president did more of nothing in response. Henry Taylor spent the entire episode paralyzed, etc, etc. This was more than made up for by the emotional response this episode produced. It was effective drama, up to 24 standards for the first time in quite a while.
There were three moments in particular here that tickled me in a particularly good way. The first was Tony’s scene in the van. For the first time all season, Emerson seemed particularly menacing. Watching Emerson explain Tony’s past to Jack was very well done. Tony tried his best to pretend for be over it, and be the cold hard killer Emerson thought he was. But Emerson could see the instability in Tony’s eyes, very well executed by Carlos Bernard. He had to sit there and pretend not to care. He couldn’t, and it tipped Emerson’s suspicions off. Excellent scene, likely the best since Season 5.
A brief note in regards to the more elaborate explanation of Tony’s recovery: while the explanation is both pretty much what I expected, and also a satisfactory “burial” of Ton’y Season 5 death story, I am still not finding myself convinced of it. This is likjely simply because I am quite certain they did not plan on bringing him back at that point. The name drop of Christopher Henderson helped, but it was only just barely enough to quell my uncertainties about the choice of Tony to return.
The second moment came when the Secretary of State was presented with the ultimatum from President Taylor: get behind us, or get out. While it is always seemingly futile to an audience member to assume these things are so black and white, the reality is that in stressful situations like that, they have to be. As legitimate was the Secretary’s disagreement on the issue was, this was not the time for a discussion, it was a time for action. The Secretary knew this just as well as she did, and he chose to leave, when I was all but certain he was going to sit back down. What could easily have just been considered a filler moment became something special in regards of thematically presenting the nature of political disagreement when people’s lives are at stake; it is an example of why 24 is a versatile and mature drama, and not just the Jack Bauer Action Hour that Season 6 wanted to be.
It also set up the third moment brilliantly, and I am speaking of course of the 10-15 second lingering shot of President Taylor, after the initial meeting was finished and the decision to hold steady moved on. It is another example of a shot that would seem entirely unnecessary from a storytelling perspective, but what it added was beyond excellent from a standpoint of feeling what you were watching. Taylor has been one of the most distant President characters we have seen, and that was the first time we felt with her the weight of her role in the situation. Her one command was going to kill innocent Americans. What kind of person can legitimately make that decision and not feel it? Certainly not her. It was very powerful.
The trend here is that most of these things were not progressive aspects of plot, but were entirely relevant to the way the story is being presented. Many of the more impatient television viewers find fault in obvious stretching out of the story. This can be a genuine problem if the entertainment value in the show is entirely dependent on furthering the action, but 24 is better than that, and it’s time people remembered so. Frank John Hughes was back, and while his character is minor, the guy is a fantastic and intense actor, adding authenticity to the President’s storyline as her National Security Official Tim Woods.
Renee remains of interest to me. She barely did anything in the entire episode, yet choosing to present her with being unable to inform her superiors at the FBI about her wherabouts seemed unusually effective (and wouldn’t you know it, affective too) for such a small detail. 24 has always been very good, especially with its female characters, when it comes to entrapment of this kind.
Perhaps best of all was the fact that Larry and Sean, two characters I have begun to absolutely loathe after the first two hours, were virtually absent from the episode, each getting no more than 3-4 minutes of screentime.
Now for the bad: first of all, the previous episode ended right as Jack and Tony finished burying Renee. Two minutes into this one, Bill and Chloe were ALREADY THERE?! I know they needed to justify Renee being alive, but man, it was a stretch to believe they would be prepared enough to get to that exact place quick enough.
The second issue was that I didn’t like the way they killed Samantha Roth. I didn’t care for her character, but her killing was excessively brutal. We already had enough cause to hate Gedge, why rub it in? I had no problem with them killing the character herself, but the way it was done seemed like it was done to garner an extra level of dramatic connection between the viewer and Gedge which was entirely unnecessary in my opinion.
Finally, Gedge was insanely stupid (because the plot required him to be) in regards to how much paralysis poison he gave Henry. He MUST have known when the effects would start to wear off. You;d think that the writers could have given him a slightly more foolproof scheme toi pull this off, but I suppose they couldn’t. In that case, they should have disguised it better. It felt like Henry just got lucky. If he had pulled off some ingenious scheme to escape while still paralyzed, it would have been a whole lot more satisfying.
Henry Taylor’s story continues to fluctuate with me, but it remains the weakest story of the lot. I hope it is quickly absorbed into a different story and taken in a new direction.
A few more quick thoughts: whatever happened to Michael Latham? Will he come back? The relationships between the various sects of bad guys is growing interesting again, at last. I like that Jack’s role in this season has been back to what it used to be, a catalyst of the story instead of the action oriented God of the story.
Overall, an excellent episode of 24. Not among the best, but some of the most satisfying we’ve seen in a good long time.
