Does anybody remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer becomes Bart’s peewee football coach, and to show that he’s a loving, supportive father, he puts his son in all the best positions and refuses to recognize that he can do any wrong? Well that’s basically how President Taylor is acting right now with her daughter. While watching the show, almost on a weekly basis, my dad turns to me and jokingly says, “That’s why we can’t have a woman President.” He’s kidding, of course, but can you possibly imagine David Palmer – hell, even WAYNE Palmer – agreeing to make an idiotic statement in a highly important national address so that he doesn’t hurt his child’s feelings? Yeah, didn’t think so.
And speaking of that little speech, in the midst of all her bravado, did the president even bother mentioning the way she spoke out against her own country over the Internet? Did that not make the final draft?
It was great seeing Morris again, wasn’t it? He’s one of the genuinely enjoyable “out there” characters (honestly, I STILL haven’t completely warmed up to Chloe). When he helped Moss find Jack, I totally feared that this would be the end of his marriage, but I loved the calm, rational way he justified his actions. He reminded Chloe that while they both owe Jack an awful lot, he’s simply not worth sacrificing their marriage or their relationship with their son. And he’s completely right. I’m glad that Chloe didn’t argue, despite the fact that she was clearly disappointed.
And now that I think about it, this series is really rough on marriages, isn’t it? Jack’s wife died. Tony and Michelle divorced. They got back together, but then she died. Then he kinda died. Bill and Karen seemingly divorced. President Palmer and Sherry divorced. And they both died. Logan and Martha divorced. And she tried to kill him. And she possibly went insane. Something tragic happened to her, that’s all we know. Oh, and President Taylor’s husband is in surgery after having been shot in the chest.
Anyway, the genuine highlight for me was the interaction between Jack and Senator Mayer. One thing this show does a phenomenal job of is avoiding the whole one dimensional villain thing (which is part of the reason why season six was such a failure: the “bad guys,” particularly Jack’s dad, were cliched caricatures). Mayer may have come off as your standard big bad politician – and he wore that suit to perfection with his highly inappropriate and poorly timed “what have you done?” criticism during the White House siege – but this episode showed that he doesn’t blindly disdain Jack. Instead, he truly believes in his crusade (and he validated his opinion quite eloquently during their discussion), and when it appeared that Jack was onto something, he was willing to stand by him and help. To tell you the truth, I was absolutely shocked that he was killed.
So it looks like the super awesome tag team of Jack and Tony are getting back together. Awesome. One thing I did notice, though: When Mayer asked Jack to turn himself in if his theory didn’t come to fruition, Jack silently refused. Just a couple of hours after urging Tony to turn himself in. Like I said near the beginning of this season, the least Jack should do is allow Tony to putz around in Africa for a few months before turning himself in.
I mean, it’s only fair.
Matt Basilo has been writing for Inside Pulse since April 2005, providing his insight into popular television shows such as Lost, Heroes, Prison Break, and Smallville. You can visit his blog at A Case of the Blog.
