24 TADS: (11:00 AM -- Nooner)

Well, it sure has been a while, hasn’t it? I was just getting on a roll doing these things, and then LIFE ATTACKED. It’s been busy here at the day job, so the energy I summon to write these babies at night has been sapped to the point that it’s...umm...un-summon...able. Anyway, enough excuses! It’s time for the show!

24 Things I Think I Thought About Day Six while basking in the glory of my newly H-Deified 62” of Awesome television and counting down the minutes until I can get back to watching IMAX movies on Discovery HD. Technology is grand.

1. I am Tomatoless. In the words of the puppet Kim-Jong Il, I’m Ronerryyy....Oh, so Ronerryyy. Here all alone, LIVE from my living room with not a roommate to be seen. Did I mention that my TV is big. Clearly, I’m overcompensating. Also, 24 is not as much fun when you watch it by yourself. Sigh....

2. Hey, this show is done in REAL TIME. Nice touch, having us pick up right where Palmer 2.0’s speech left off last hour. Honestly, sometimes I lose track of the fact that the show’s in real time, y’know, with all of the teleportation around LA and total disregard for the fact that Jack was in a CHINESE PRISON 6 hours ago.

3. Great Line #11. Yanosh leads the league in Great Lines. I think it’s his pragmatism that makes him so swell. Anyway, the shot about needing “preparatory steps” because “Fayed just killed 12,000 people in less time [then it took to load a musket back when the forefathers were writing the Constitution], without taking aim” was especially convincing. I even almost forgot that Karen Hayes is kinda hot, and that I always side with the hotter girl.

4. CTU- No Hotness Allowed. Woah! Wait? Dare I say it? Did CTU learn from its mistakes and actually install an extra level of security in CTU against moles? What a novel freaking concept. Although, clearly, since they only racially profiled against those of Middle Eastern descent, This Year’s Mole will certainly be a white middle class American. Because 24 teaches us that you can’t spell “Diversity” without “E-V-I-L”. Okay, well. You can. But that’s like, really close. Shut up.

5. Not Dessler, but it’ll do. Aunt Hottie’s got some geeeEEEEE-orgeous baby blues. That is all.

6. So she’s just a slut? Cracked out Reese Witherspoon isn’t a techslut? I thought that M. Moulton, the Evil Brit,’s girl was the replacement techie. I guess now she’s just eye candy. No objections, here. Sweetass Maserati, by the by.

7. AHHHH! I CAN’T ESCAPE WORK!!! Bald Bad’s getting all up M. Moulton’s grill (over the phone, no less) about “Have you found an engineer yet?!?!?!?!” and I’m totally having flashbacks to every attempt I’ve ever made to find a family practice expert to review one of my cases. FP’s and oncologists are like, impossible to find. Ortho’s are a pain, too. I’m just saying.

8. Needless Bureaucratic Melodrama drives me nuts. MMM can’t get any work done because Hotness is pulling the whole operation down because she doesn’t have security clearance. MMM goes to Bill Buchanan in order to get the problem fixed, just like he should, and he’s getting the runaround from Bill and Hotness. Why, exactly, do we need to hide the reason for Hotness’s inefficiency from her direct supervisor, again? I mean, didn’t we just establish that everyone universally agrees that the rule sucks? So why hide the reality that Hotness’s hands are tied from everyone who needs to know? To protect her feelings? Whatever, this is CTU—I’m pretty sure that the CTU crest has We Don’t Care About Your Feelings emblazoned in Latin across the bottom. This is dumb.

9. Crap. MMM just took a moral stand and gave Hotness his passcode. This is going to end well {insert sarcasm here}.

10. Walid: Muslim Patriot. Hey, this Walid undercover stuff really isn’t all that bad. The play-by-play by Aaron West Coast and Mrs. Tidwell is beyond tedious, though. I can tell what’s going on, dammit!

11. Great Line #12. “What are you smoking?!?” Well played, Yanosh. In fact, this whole back and forth between Karen and Yanosh is money. We picked up Great Lines like “Do you want to get in the ring with me, Tom?” “You’re a sunuvabitch!” and (in response) “I never claimed otherwise”. It’s GREAT to see that someone in the CTUniverise if finally standing up to cheap political gamesmanship! You go, Karen!

12. Crap (again). Yes! Karen’s pulling a Kresgy and is headed straight to the office of Palmer v. 2.0 in order to rat out Yanosh! Wha? She...she’s resigning? Karen...., dammit!

13. Acting like King David! That a way, 2.0! Don’t accept her lameass excuse of “personal reasons!” See, I told you that 2.0 could actually be a leader. He’s going to get all Palmeresque 2: This Time It’s More Palmeresque, and deny Karen’s resignation! Wha? He...he’s letting her go??? Wayne! You loser. Dammit!

14. The movie that came and went in the time it took me to write this review. “Breach,” eh? Laura Linney. Chris Cooper. King David Palmer. This movie will be exceptional. Too many good actors. Pity I have absolutely no interest in paying money to see it.

15. The NATO Phonetic Alphabet. Apropos of nothing, I love the phonetic alphabet. You know, like when Jack reads a license plate as Yankee Tango Uniform Niner. That’s just cool.

16. It’s trick to rock a rhyme to rock a rhyme that’s right on time, it’s tricky! Just like Walid: Muslim Patriot! I can’t believe that Random Incarcerated Terrorist #4 fell for it man, the oldest trick in the book! Walid: Muslim Patriot pretended to fall, and somehow stole RIT4’s cell phone. He’s like Linus in Ocean’s 11, or the Artful Dodger! Good stuff. Totally unbelievable good stuff, but no moreso than Jack dodging bullets and shaking off that stab wound in the back of his neck.

17. Ooops. Walid just got caught. Now his ass is getting (literally) kicked. Perhaps he’s a little more Maxwell Smart than James Bond.

18. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot? Seriously, Aaron West Coast’s walkie talkie didn’t work? He and Mrs. Tidwell had to personally save Walid from certain mob-doom? Stupid.

First Appearance: The WTF Moment Award

19. ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. No, really. Has anything happened this hour? Wonder if it’s going to end with James Cromwell calling off the dogs and introducing himself as Jack’s father. Thanks for giving away the ending, fellas. Wow, this is a lot less fun without the Tomatoes.

20. Fresh Meat! Ladies and gentlemen, please meet the newest CTU Perimeter Makers—Curtis’s replacements, AppleJack and One-EyedJack. Nice to have you aboard, boys. Welcome to your first Op. You should know, however, that if you go into that building with Jack, it’s far more likely than not that you’re going to take a bullet. Just a warning. Godspeed.

21. ANOTHER shredding program? Perhaps “Shredding Program” is this year’s “Nuclear Football” –style catchphrase instead of “suitcase nuke,” because this is the second time one’s been referenced. Can I ask a seemingly dumb, rhetorical question, though? Okay—if you have a super-secret shredding program that’s designed to ruin your hard drive and shred all of your super-secret evil documents of terribleness, why, pray tell, would its window stay open on the screen when it’s done and why would it bother to show you a list of the encrypted files and times that they were deleted? Sounds like a pretty shitty program, if you ask me. My money says it comes standard with Windows Vista.

22. Daddy Bauer. Ladies and Gentleman, Philip “Rollo Tomasy” Bauer. Three thoughts: 1) James Cromwell is an exceptionally fantastic actor; 2) His skullet is embarrassing, 3) there’s no way that he’s not really EVIL. As soon as he turns, I’m calling him “Rollo”.

23. Dirty pool. I don’t like Yanosh’s power play over Karen, if only because it morphs him from “Cool, Pragmatic Villain that’s only a villain because he has an unpopular ideology” to “Traditional Mustache-Twirling Two-Faced Bureaucrat 2007”. Also, can someone please tell me what I’m supposed to know Chad Lowe (Yanosh’s flunkie) from?

24. Nothing good ever happens in a 24 Office. In the grand tradition of the Little Blonde Warner shooting everyone, Jack and Audrey under siege, and Robocop getting the drop on Jack last year, we are presented with this week’s DIAMOND CUTTER MOMENT: Opie’s Official Heel Turn. I seriously thought that Phil was going to be evil-er than Opie, but they turned it all around on us and Opie went and took Jack and Phil hostage. Sweet. (it’s about time something happened). Oh, by-the-by, Opie killed AppleJack and One-EyedJack. We hardly knew ye. Dammit.

Stats:

Dammits: 1(5) – Jack to Opie.

Terrorist Casualties: 0 (?) Weak, just weak.

CTU Casualties: 3 (?) The aforementioned AppleJack and One-EyedJack, via Opie’s flunkies, and don’t forget Karen’s political career.

Player of the Game: Tough call here. I’m giving it to Tom Lennox, though, if only because he took out Karen and had a crapload of great lines to go with his political maneuvering. That, and he’s been so deliciously annoying/villainous so far. Yanosh is money in the bank.

Final Verdict: 2.5 out of 5 Lynn Kresgy swann dives. Well, I awoke just in time to see Opie’s unexpectedly early major heel turn, so that was cool. I honestly expected that he would manipulate Jack a lot more than he had. I also expected that Phillip would be a lot more dastardly than he is. I guess it’s early, though. All-in-all, this week was a lot of setup. I hope the payoff comes as quickly as Karen’s surrender. Also, Palmer v. 2.0- please sack up soon.